Your best and worst customer service experiences [rant & praise]

jimbojambo

Paypal... Complete and utter muppets. Will never deal with them or anything closely related to their name!

jimbojambo

How did I forget this one?...

I went to our local spar in Dublin last sat afternoon to get a sandwich. Walked to the counter and this little prick with a bad attitude and who had previously served me on a number of occasions decided that sending a text message was much more important than serving a customer. I deliberately stood there and didn't say anything. Checked my watch and waited. Eleven minutes later he turned around and made his way to the counter (obviously still drunk from night before) and grunted something at me like "all ri?". I felt like pulling him over the counter!!

Anyway, from a business point of view, its a recession and idiot's like this should have it kicked into them that every customer is of the upmost importance, otherwise they will all be out of a job. Not too many buying breakfast rolls n sambos these days!!

maggy_thatcher

jimbojambo wrote: »

How did I forget this one?...

I went to our local spar in Dublin last sat afternoon to get a sandwich. Walked to the counter and this little prick with a bad attitude and who had previously served me on a number of occasions decided that sending a text message was much more important than serving a customer. I deliberately stood there and didn't say anything. Checked my watch and waited. Eleven minutes later he turned around and made his way to the counter (obviously still drunk from night before) and grunted something at me like "all ri?". I felt like pulling him over the counter!!

Anyway, from a business point of view, its a recession and idiot's like this should have it kicked into them that every customer is of the upmost importance, otherwise they will all be out of a job. Not too many buying breakfast rolls n sambos these days!!

If he had to turn around before going to the counter -- are you sure that he actually saw you? If you were quiet and didn't move around much, he mightn't have known you were there in the first place. Granted 11 minutes does seem like a long time for not looking about, but it sounds like the Spar wasn't doing much in the way of business, so you may have been easily missed?

jimbojambo

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

If he had to turn around before going to the counter -- are you sure that he actually saw you? If you were quiet and didn't move around much, he mightn't have known you were there in the first place. Granted 11 minutes does seem like a long time for not looking about, but it sounds like the Spar wasn't doing much in the way of business, so you may have been easily missed?

Nah, he saw me walking in allright! I would be the first to give anyone the benefit of the doubt but this was just plain redicilous..
If I was wrong I would have put it in a different thread titled "Incompetence" LOL

tk123

:mad: Ok more of a rant than a comsumer issue I suppose.. Just in Adli there with the folks getting our weekly bits and bobs. As I brought the tolley around (you know the way you have to bring it around the front in Aldi/Lidl..) I was ordered (not asked) by the (irish) cashier to lift the bags out of the trolley to make sure there was nothing left in the trolley. WTF?! They were 2 small M&S bags in the bottom of the trolley- the ones that fold flat so clearly nothing under them. I resent the fact that the cashier basically accused me of leaving stuff in the trolley and covering it with bags! I'm short and look young for my age so I get people talking down to me like I'm a kid from time to time but I'm 31 ffs. I was speachless/embarrassed at the time and did what I was told and filled up the trolley as normal. My dad was out of earshot holding a table on the conveyor belt so missed the whole thing but when he heard he was going to walk out of the shop. We told him to leave it because he has a habit of going balastic at people when he complains and then we can't ever go into the shop again for fear of being recognised!:rolleyes: Thinking back now I'm pissed off and wish I had of said something but I was up late with work and just wanted to get the shopping, come home and chill out. None of the other shoppers in there were asked to remove their bags (I watched to see if this was the case) and I feel like the cashier singled me out cos I look younger than I am. Is there any point emailing them to complain?

Bluefoam

Poor

No

Cabaal

I believe in all supermarkets like Tesco's, Aldi etc it is a rule that staff should keep an eye out for items that may be left in the troley either by accident or on purpose.

How often they requests customer to check is upto the sales person, its no different to superquinn re-scanning everything occasionally when you do self-scan.

eth0_

No offence but why on earth did you stand there for 11 minutes without saying 'Excuse me' or walking out? A bit odd tbh..

dudara

Merged into customer service experience megathread

dudara

calex71

there are signs in aldi asking you to remove everything from the trolly i think, total over reaction imo, the guy was only doing his job , he might have phrased it better but he was far from accusing you of shoplifiting.

I've been asked to do the same more than once in aldi when i've forgotten take the bags out, i certainly didnt take the hump with the cashier over it.

Banes05

Its definitely a policy in both Lidl and Aldi stores to ask absolutely everyone to remove everything from the trolley, and probably in most other stores.You'd be suprised at the number of people who manage to "forget" an expensive product tucked away in the corner of the trolley!

Would agree that the cashier was at fault in the way he said it to you and not doing the same to others, the idea is that if its done to everyone, then nobody feels like being singled out

tk123

Yeah it was just her manner tbh and they way she talking down to me that surprised me - I've always found their staff friendly enough. I was half asleep so went along with it. I think if I had of been alert I would have questioned the way she was speaking to me and left it at that.

shoegirl

Actually the worst of all is the company I work for's Indian helpdesk. The fact that this is one of our main businesses is most disturbing.

Usually its 20 minutes, just to get your name and email right. Oh and we WORK there so these details are already on their records.

They can't do anything either, so it is 20 minutes just to pass on your name, email/phone number and a one line description of the problem. No wonder we are finding it hard to get business.

Dues Bellator

it would be nice if we knew what company your on about.

jonnyone

Praise... FBD Insurance
I had a claim recently for a piece of audio equipment that had been damaged. The girl from the claims section was really helpful told me how to fill out the claim form properly, rang me when she recieved it to say everything was in order and sent my cheque out straight away. Eight days from first contact to getting my cheque Well done!

Rant...Dept Of Foreign Affairs
Had a problem so rang them only to be told by prerecorded message that phone queries were not handled during the busy peak season and to send an e-mail with details of my problem. I never got a reply to that e-mail or the other two that I sent. So shocking service.
Why bother offering e-mail as a means of contact if its going to be ignored. The option should be removed from their website..

Kerly

I have a couple of dell computers (small company). A couple of laptop chargers have gone on the blink this week when they were just out of warranty. The XPS chargers appear to be notoriously defective but hangaround long enough to last the 1 year warranty.

- I've just got off the phone after a 1 hour call with Dell and cant get over just how useless they are.

I was patched through to approx 8 different people all of whom requested a service tag number and proceeded to pass me on to someone else despite my pleading not to put me through to another drone. Just to tell me to go and buy a charger off them, but I cant bear the though of having to ring them back again. They seriously need to move the call centre back to limerick. I was on the phone for 40 minutes last week just trying to get another charger replaced, its turning my hair grey.

They are absolute rubbish of the highest order, we bought a computer last year which had a very noisy fan and their tech support asked us to hold the phone up to it and proceeded to tell us that it was fine based on their engineer listening to it over the phone. Along with their duffing up of orders, sending out things with 2 pin plugs its enough to drive a man to kill..:mad:

I need to send a ****ty letter to their customer care, anyone know how to put the boot in there most effectively?

dudara

Threads merged.

dudara

Cunning Alias

Rant: Quinn Direct
Im not going to go into all the details but over 2 years my family had 3 issues with them all over the person on the other end of the phone either omitting details or not knowing what they were talking about.

We would ring to confirm details and ask a question, get an answer and then a week or two later they would deny what they said.

The last issue was when I rang up to renue my policy and they wouldnt honour quote and instead said I had to pay almost double. I had rang the week before to confirm that it would be valid when I rang (needed to transfer money into the credit card) and I was told there would be no problem.

The person on the phone was adamant that there was nothing that she could do and she wouldnt let me speak to a manager. I could only wait to be called back the next day. She also claimed that there was no record of me calling the week before.

Luckily I called around other companies and found one that would match my original quote +50euro, with a better policy and it was wit a reputable company.

After informing quinn that I wouldnt be renuing the policy I got a very quick call back from them saying it was all a big mistake and they would honour the original quote. I quite happily told them I wasn't interested.

The rest of my family have also decided to move companies, even if it is more expensive, as we have had enough.

nogoodnamesleft

mikemike wrote: »

Was In HN in Tralee , bought a tv there and 2 laptops in the past and found the staff pretty good , especially from a polish guy last year who couldn't have been more helpful ..

This time , I enquired about a new laptop which I wanted but wasn't on display , but is on Peats website ...
An Indian guy , obviosuly new , didn't know if they could get it or not so called over another guy , Irish , with a stained Garmin shirt ..
He checked his computer , said they'd have it in a couple of days .
'Great , is there any chance it might come down a bit in the near future' I asked .. 'if you could get it under €800 that would be great!'.
'Not a chance , are you MAD ?' he said .
'Do you know the spec of this thing ????'
'Obviously I do yes , becuase I gave YOU the model number , and this is the spec I want!' .
'Not a chance ,,, No way !' ..
Aggressive c*nt .... he was obviusly trying to impress the new guy who was listening closely , trying to learn how to close a sale .
I pointed out that I was a customer , and that HN's have a history of reducing prices all the time , but he just shook his head .
I asked for the manager , only to be told he wasn't there .
I left utterly amazed at his attitude and later phoned and made a complaint .
can't remember the dopes name , but what a dickhead ..

+1, I was in there a few weeks before xmas to price tvs. Was looking for a Sony Bravia 40w4000 LCD. Had the model number to ask the sales assistant for the price. First of all the display in store for HD tvs is quiet frankly shocking standard satellite feed for HD tvs how can a customer make an informed decision when they cant see the difference in picture quality?

Sales assistant i was dealing with was a muppet, didnt seem that interested that i might possibly buy something, mentioned that the price they had for the tv was overpriced as Sound Store (a retailer withing 2min drive) had the tv for 300 euro less. "Can you get that on letter headed paper? " replied the sales assistant. WTF? sure cant I just buy the tv in the other store altogether and save myself the hassel. Anyways i ended up ordering the tv from richer sounds saving myself 500euro in the process. Irish Retailers would want to wise up if they wish to stay in business.


oh hadnt i gotten such a good price from the North and headed for dubin the same weekend for the topgear live show. I would have bought it in Soundstore as they have a very good display for HD tvs and informed sales personnel something HN can learn from.

Kintarō Hattori

nogoodnamesleft wrote: »

+1, I was in there a few weeks before xmas to price tvs. Was looking for a Sony Bravia 40w4000 LCD. Had the model number to ask the sales assistant for the price. First of all the display in store for HD tvs is quiet frankly shocking standard satellite feed for HD tvs how can a customer make an informed decision when they cant see the difference in picture quality?

Sales assistant i was dealing with was a muppet, didnt seem that interested that i might possibly buy something, mentioned that the price they had for the tv was overpriced as Sound Store (a retailer withing 2min drive) had the tv for 300 euro less. "Can you get that on letter headed paper? " replied the sales assistant. WTF? sure cant I just buy the tv in the other store altogether and save myself the hassel. Anyways i ended up ordering the tv from richer sounds saving myself 500euro in the process. Irish Retailers would want to wise up if they wish to stay in business.


oh hadnt i gotten such a good price from the North and headed for dubin the same weekend for the topgear live show. I would have bought it in Soundstore as they have a very good display for HD tvs and informed sales personnel something HN can learn from.

Sorry who are you unhappy with in relation to above. Peats or Harvey Norman?

corkproducers

This isnt so much my worst customer experience but its a rant none the less.


There was an instore summer specials offer this morning in 3 Cork Lidl stores,
with the Targa Now 8821 Desktop PC on sale as advertised in the brochure.

After queing for over an hour, (since 7:50) to ensure a good place in the queue,
and after purchasing on the desktop, i noticed as i walking out that the case was silver instead of black, and then noticed it was an AMD dual core instead of an Intel, and alarm bells started ringing.

It turned out that the actual pc stocked which was sold for the same price was this older piece of ****..

I was absolutely gutted when i spotted this.

In fairness the manager was helpful, he rang the 2 other Cork stores to see if they had the correct ones in stock, but unfortuneately they didnt, and gave me a refund.

I still wrote an email of complaint to lidl, asking for priority the next time the offer is on sale....
because the way i look at it,
why the **** should i queue up for another hour the next time the offer is on,
when they wasted an hour of my time this morning!

I'm pretty doubtful they wont fulfill my request, but i guess letting them know how disappointed i was,
is better than sending no email at all.

Rant over!

Shelflife

Sounds like a bit of sharp practice from the manager, they usually dont have a lot of these big sale items , so it looks as if they were trying to shift some of the old stock to the less vigilant customers.

corkproducers

Shelflife wrote: »

Sounds like a bit of sharp practice from the manager, they usually dont have a lot of these big sale items , so it looks as if they were trying to shift some of the old stock to the less vigilant customers.

The thing is though, the wrong model was also stocked in the other stores.
So unless you mean the regional manager, it really does seem like a mixup at the targa factory or wherever they are stored.

There was only 3 of them left when i left the store, and when the ould fella went down a few hours later to pick something up, he said there was 11 there, so almost everyone returned them!

I got an email back in only a half an hour too saying they "will investigate this matter fully with our Purchasing Department when they return to the office on Monday"......

so I'm pleased with that.

In fairness the lidl store staff are very friendly and helpful,
its just a shame the mixup happened.

Blondiegirl2009

Grr Im really angry, they "stole" my credit! 99c a day for internet it WAS, but vodafone never informed people that it was suddenly expensive again. 20 euro gone for the frickin internet!!! :mad:

Davy

Blondiegirl2009 wrote: »

Grr Im really angry, they "stole" my credit! 99c a day for internet it WAS, but vodafone never informed people that it was suddenly expensive again. 20 euro gone for the frickin internet!!! :mad:

It still is €0.99 a cent a day for access on the 'Live' apn.

SerialComplaint

corkproducers wrote: »

This isnt so much my worst customer experience but its a rant none the less.


There was an instore summer specials offer this morning in 3 Cork Lidl stores,
with the Targa Now 8821 Desktop PC on sale as advertised in the brochure.

After queing for over an hour, (since 7:50) to ensure a good place in the queue,
and after purchasing on the desktop, i noticed as i walking out that the case was silver instead of black, and then noticed it was an AMD dual core instead of an Intel, and alarm bells started ringing.

It turned out that the actual pc stocked which was sold for the same price was this older piece of ****..

I was absolutely gutted when i spotted this.

In fairness the manager was helpful, he rang the 2 other Cork stores to see if they had the correct ones in stock, but unfortuneately they didnt, and gave me a refund.

I still wrote an email of complaint to lidl, asking for priority the next time the offer is on sale....
because the way i look at it,
why the **** should i queue up for another hour the next time the offer is on,
when they wasted an hour of my time this morning!

I'm pretty doubtful they wont fulfill my request, but i guess letting them know how disappointed i was,
is better than sending no email at all.

Rant over!

Where was this special advertised? I don't see it on their website.

corkproducers

SerialComplaint wrote: »

Where was this special advertised? I don't see it on their website.

It was an instore special limited to 3 cork city stores, advertised in their leaflet.

Its totally separate from the regular Monday and Thursday specials you see online, which is why it was on a Saturday.

It was on offer 2 times before this too, each time in separate stores, on a friday.

I'm guessing they do this in other counties too?

Dues Bellator

praise {you may not belive your eyes} NTL/UPC
i was having issues again with my broadband, ive had countless idiots out that were more intrested in ticking the job off than actually solving the problem.so this guy comes out very nice and plesant, offered him a cuppa tea and before he checked anything asked me to explaine evrything that was going wrong,{basicly dropped signals to no signal}so he stripped out every old cable i had and replaced it.new modem the lot.then he noticed that the wireless router wasnt working ,i explained i rang netgear helpline and didnt speak the indian ,he said no problem and gave me a brand new highspeed router that i installed in 10 mins ,very happy

corkproducers

So anyway...
On the monday that followed (22nd of June), i did in fact receeve an email...

And the nice lady told me that they would be able to source the correct pc i wanted, and have it shipped to my lidl local store!

So got an email on thursday saying the PC would be delivered the day after,
and on friday evening i got it.

I was absolutely blown away that they would go to the effort of sourcing and delivering it for me.

You cannot ask for better customer service than that.

Sorry for the long delay, but i guess i was just having too much fun with my new machine!

And what a machine it is too, Targa have done as good as job picking quality components for their pc's, as i would have done.

Go on ze Germans!

Kriskross

The-Rigger wrote: »

NTL are fúcking dreadful. Shower of Bastards Ted.

Totally agree..The most incompetent company in this country, with a staff of
inefficient donkeys who, when it comes to Customer Support, are about as effective as a wandering tribe of ****-kickers!!