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

Mightycraic

So rapidly that www.topgifts.ie is now saying 'Website under Maintenance'

Mightycraic

Don't things change quickly. It seems that TopGifts activity partners have today received notification that they have ceased trading, leaving hundreds of thousands worth of gift vouchers worthless.

A2LUE42

Not answering phones and disconnecting with a message to call back later. Unacceptable customer service in my opinion. Not even an option for a callback or to wait until someone is available.

January

Their phone lines may be down, happens sometimes in call centres. I'm sure it's temporary.

discostu1

I'd be ringing too if the Sunday Times and this guy are anything to go by:eek:

Huge bill from Airtricity €1056
I got a huge bill from Airticity last week. they "forgot to" bill me in February, so I had €1056 deducted from my account.

http://householdsaving.blogspot.com/

I wasn't surprised to read in The Sunday Times today that Airtricity "forgot to" bill lots of people as 500 went into the above site. I think Airtricity was trying to avoid a big switch back to ESB. The ploy was, that since ESB had reduced their prices just before Airtricity was about to issue the biggest bill of the year ( due to the cold winter). Airtricity simply did not bill some of their customers, and the customers were not reminded of the high cost of electricity. The other advantage of this ploy was their customers were now in arrears and were trapped with Airtricity untill they clear the debt. Remember you are entitled to a proper bill hopefully CER will recommend that if they didn't bill you on time that you are entitled a reduction.

Ps this piece is taken from the Alternative energy suppliers.
I phone lines do go down but that sounds to me like an overflow message so they possible cant cope with the volume and have effectively shut up shop, probably related to the billing issue quoted above but thats just my opinion
Shay Conway
Registered User

Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 2
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Huge bill from Airtricity €1056
I got a huge bill from Airticity last week. they "forgot to" bill me in February, so I had €1056 deducted from my account.

http://householdsaving.blogspot.com/

I wasn't surprised to read in The Sunday Times today that Airtricity "forgot to" bill lots of people as 500 went into the above site. I think Airtricity was trying to avoid a big switch back to ESB. The ploy was, that since ESB had reduced their prices just before Airtricity was about to issue the biggest bill of the year ( due to the cold winter). Airtricity simply did not bill some of their customers, and the customers were not reminded of the high cost of electricity. The other advantage of this ploy was their customers were now in arrears and were trapped with Airtricity untill they clear the debt. Remember you are entitled to a proper bill hopefully CER will recommend that if they didn't bill you on time that you are entitled a reduction.

Kalimah

I got a gas bill from Airtricity in March for 315 euro and a letter saying that there had been a problem with the bills that should have issued in January. There was an option to spread the payment of this bill over several months. I opted to pay half at the end of this month and half in May. I got a letter from them confirming this so I'm happy enough.

dudara

Threads merged

dudara

TonyStark

Mightycraic wrote: »

So rapidly that www.topgifts.ie is now saying 'Website under Maintenance'

Got through to www.topgifts.ie myself after three attempts. The first time she fobbed me off saying she was only a temp in. She had just done an order search and couldnt find my order. After I pressed her she admitted the company had gone into liquidation. I asked to speak to her manager and she fed me a story about she was just in to cover the phones and that her manager was not in.

I done some digging and found by some public information channels the names and addresses of the directors. I called again and asked to speak to one of them directly. She said that the director in question was on a call and would return my call. I asked if she was the director that was living at <insert address> and she hesitated for a moment.

I ran through the list of directors quoting their addresses. She sounded a little dumbstruck when I rhymed them off. I pressed her to get back to me before the close of business. She assured me that she would indeed try to get the director in question to return my phone call. I do believe in hindsight it was one of the directors I was talking to, can't be sure though.

I got a call back from a guy called Jim/Tim who at first started telling me about how his legal team had advised him not to make a payment to anyone and it had been put into liquidation. I asked him if there had already been a meeting of creditors and he said that there was on coming up. It was then he became abusive and started shouting down the phone to me saying that all this was purely business and I shouldn't started threatening his house and his childern. I explained to him where I had gotten the information and said it was on the public record - also asked him to stop shouting. I asked him what he was going to do as we were out of pocket €198.

He explained to me that there would be answers at the creditors meeting and I related to him that answers never filled empty pockets nor did empty promises or excuses which seem to be the staples of creditors meetings. He advised me that the notice was in two of the tabloids for the meetings. I subsequently got both and only found it in one.

Creditors meeting in Wynnes Hotel, Lower Abbey Street, Friday 13th of May 2011 @ 10AM.

He advised me that if we wanted to try to get some cash back then to write to them and be put on the liquidators list and the reason that the business went bust was due to corporate contracts drying up - today's Liveline paints quite the different picture. In short if you are ever booking an experience gift. Book directly with the company offering the service, avoid the middle man, pay a deposit up front and the balance on completion of the experience.

My bad experience and tuppence.

metalgear2k2

Im out of pocket by nearly €450 because of these muppets. Any advice as to how to proceed? What address did he give to write to them? I wouldn't trust them to put my name on the liquidators list.

This is an email I sent them yesterday:

Dear Jane/Paula,

Last Saturday was a complete disaster.

My 3 friends that were accompanying me to this "experience" travelled one hour and ten minutes to my house in Glanworth Co. Cork on Friday night as we decided it would be easier for us all to travel from my house as it’s close to the Dublin motorway.

We were up early Saturday morning to get from Glanworth to Kill in Co. Kildare, which is about a 2 hour journey; I myself was up at 7.30am to make the breakfast.

We left at 9.30am and were on the road about 10 mins when I rang Robert to make sure everything was all set and ready to go. He seemed very helpful up to the point of me mentioning that I had a Topgifts voucher. He then informed me that he is not excepting any Topgifts vouchers as Topgifts are not paying him the cash Topgifts owe him. He also said he had made this clear to Topgifts on several occasions. I said that I had rang 2 weeks prior and was told that everything was fine (I was talking to a woman, not him) but he just said that she must have got the company voucher names mixed up and that he was definitely not accepting any Topgifts vouchers, and repeated the reason, that Topgifts are not paying him what Topgifts owe him and that he thinks Topgifts are going out of business. I then ended the call as he made it clear that he wouldn’t take us with the Topgifts vouchers.

Now at the point I was furious, why didn’t anyone from Topgifts lift a phone or send me an email and let me know what was happening? If I had been informed it would have saved my friends and I an awful lot of time, money and hassle. The whole point of organising this was because my cousin is moving to Columbia next week and this was a kind of last hurrah for him, I made this very clear to Topgifts when booking.

When I got back to the house I tried to ring Topgifts but just got an answering machine which said that Topgifts are off for the Easter weekend, but when I got into work today (Tuesday 26/04/11) that bloody answering machine is still on. Still can’t get an answer as of 2.30pm today.

I have had it with Topgifts, this is the 3rd or 4th time that I have had trouble with trying to use my vouchers, the plane one was cancelled twice through no fault of my own, then when I wanted to use the Lamborghini one the car was no longer in use, and now this.

This is completely unprofessional and unacceptable. I want a full cash refund on my vouchers; I couldn’t care less about your terms and conditions.

I have attached a small claims court application and I will process this application in the next 2 days if I have not heard form Topgifts. I'm also writing an email to Connor Pope from the Ray Darcy show on Today FM for advice on my current position. The same email will be sent to consumer affairs.

Topgifts have caused me so much trouble now I'm not going to let this go.

Regards

caprilicious

So sorry to hear of those that have been stung by the topgifts liquidation.
In case it helps, I was stung similarly when Empower training went into liquidation.

If you paid for your voucher by credit card, contact your credit card company. See can you arrange a visa charge back.
This is what I did & I got my money back.
They'll ask you to put the request in writing to them with evidence that the company has gone bust.
Its a bit time consuming (took 6 weeks in my case) but worth it if you get your money back.

Best of luck.

metalgear2k2

would this work after 2-3 years?

maxer68

metalgear2k2 wrote: »

would this work after 2-3 years?

Only if the voucher was still valid. If it has an expired expiry date, then its void.

All Visa Credit & Debit cards, all Mastercard credit cards (not mastercard debitcards) and all amex (does anyone have amex these days?) are covered.

Laser, cash, cheque & mastercard debit cards will get no comeback.

Here's another contact phone for their offices - it for their otehr company Naturally irish Gifts (funny, the contact details disapeared off that site yesterday!)
D9 Southern Link Business Park
Naas
Co Kildare Ireland
Tel: 045 837783 | Fax: 045 882901

rainbowdrop

Very bad customer service here.

My Mother (mid 50s) went into Horgan's Pharmacy, Charleville, Co Cork to purchase some 'feminine' products. She wanted to ask advice from a female member of staff, but as there was only one male working, she was too embarrassed to ask him. She browsed the store for a further 5mins, decided there was nothing she wanted and as she was leaving the store the male member of staff called after her "I hope you won't be making a habit of this". My Mother, thinking she had misheard replied "pardon?" and the staff member replied "wandering around shops and not buying anything".
I didn't realise that by entering a shop you are legally obliged to buy something?

She won't be back to Horgan's Pharmacy, Charleville and neither will the rest of our family!!

Frank Black

I was quite amazed at the customer service from Samsung.
Bought a 40inch lcd tv about 3 or 4 years ago - it had one hdmi slot at the back but I didn't have anything to conect it to. Anyway about 2 years later I got a ps3 and connected it to the hdmi slot but the tv just displayed a green screen.
I phoned samsung customer services to see if there was any fix for the problem.
Even though the tv was a couple of years old, they arranged to have it collected and fixed. I was quite amazed - I didn't have receipts of proof of purchase or anything like that.
Then they called me a couple of days later and said that they were unable to fix the problem so would replace the tv.
They gave me a newer 40inch tv (which has 4 hdmi slots) within another couple of days.

Suffice it to say I will be buying Samsung tv's from now on.

Mightycraic

He advised me that if we wanted to try to get some cash back then to write to them and be put on the liquidators list and the reason that the business went bust was due to corporate contracts drying up - today's Liveline paints quite the different picture. In short if you are ever booking an experience gift. Book directly with the company offering the service, avoid the middle man, pay a deposit up front and the balance on completion of the experience.

My bad experience and tuppence.

The names and home addresses of the three directors of TopGifts are in the public domain on their filed accounts with the CRO. To save you the trouble, they are James Cummins and Jacqueline Taylor and Jane Moylan. These three are also directors of Naturally Irish (045 883677) based out of the same offices at D9, Southern Link Business Park, Naas. As you have stated above, the directors of TopGifts have lied to both their customers and their gift voucher partners. There are some very dodgy entries in their accounts that are sure to invoke some form of escalation. Fingers crossed!!

bumpydog

Mightycraic wrote: »

The names and home addresses of the three directors of TopGifts are in the public domain on their filed accounts with the CRO. To save you the trouble, they are James Cummins and Jacqueline Taylor and Jane Moylan. These three are also directors of Naturally Irish (045 883677) based out of the same offices at D9, Southern Link Business Park, Naas. As you have stated above, the directors of TopGifts have lied to both their customers and their gift voucher partners. There are some very dodgy entries in their accounts that are sure to invoke some form of escalation. Fingers crossed!!

As one of the resellers who was badly stung by these crooks, I would strongly recommend that vouchers are not purchased through intermediaries. Their whole business model is based around the sheer volume of unredeemed vouchers and where this money has gone is difficult to trace by reading their accounts. There appears to be substantial monies paid out for enhancements to leased properties, which are personally owned by the three directors and leased to TopGifts and Naturally Irish Ltd. If that's not illegal, it sure is immoral. As Mightycraic has said, there have been lies aplenty and they do not deserve to get away with that level of deception.

MitchKoobski

Praise
Brought the two younger brothers in to see Thor in 3D yesterday. The trailers starts and myself and about 4 other people there copped that there was no dialogue sounding in the trailers. Projectionist said there might be an issue with the speakers. Tried for about 20 minutes to fix it while they paused everything. Couldnt get it working in the end.
Manager comes in to the screen and says they cant get it fixed. Offers us all options.

1. Full refund
2. Complimentary tickets to another showing some other day
3. Straight into the next showing in half an hour.

So I go outside to say ill just take the seats for the next show. Instead we're given a full refund, complimentary passes for any film over the next year, refills of food and drink and then given seats for the next showing.
Excellent service.

thesandeman

^
You forgot to say where.

MitchKoobski

thesandeman wrote: »

^
You forgot to say where.

The part of the post title where it says "Storm Cinemas Waterford".....

thesandeman

MitchKoobski wrote: »

Praise
Brought the two younger brothers in to see Thor in 3D yesterday. The trailers starts and myself and about 4 other people there copped that there was no dialogue sounding in the trailers. Projectionist said there might be an issue with the speakers. Tried for about 20 minutes to fix it while they paused everything. Couldnt get it working in the end.
Manager comes in to the screen and says they cant get it fixed. Offers us all options.

1. Full refund
2. Complimentary tickets to another showing some other day
3. Straight into the next showing in half an hour.

So I go outside to say ill just take the seats for the next show. Instead we're given a full refund, complimentary passes for any film over the next year, refills of food and drink and then given seats for the next showing.
Excellent service.

And where exactly does it say that??

Jagle

thesandeman wrote: »

And where exactly does it say that??

ist in the quote, look at the post and just above in bold black writing

thesandeman

Its definately not on mine. Maybe it doesnt show on m.boards.

bumpydog

maxer68 wrote: »

Only if the voucher was still valid. If it has an expired expiry date, then its void.

All Visa Credit & Debit cards, all Mastercard credit cards (not mastercard debitcards) and all amex (does anyone have amex these days?) are covered.

Laser, cash, cheque & mastercard debit cards will get no comeback.

Here's another contact phone for their offices - it for their otehr company Naturally irish Gifts (funny, the contact details disapeared off that site yesterday!)
D9 Southern Link Business Park
Naas
Co Kildare Ireland
Tel: 045 837783 | Fax: 045 882901

If the TopGifts voucher has passed its expiry date, it does not necessarily mean that the voucher has expired. In some cases, vouchers are still valid. We operate Irish Balloon Flights and have had many TopGifts vouchers extended beyond their expiry date due to weather cancellations. Not only that, TopGifts Terms and Conditions clearly stated (and I am quoting from memory) "Once a booking has been made with an activity partner, you become bound by the Terms and Conditions of that provider". Our T&C's clearly state that vouchers remain valid following weather cancellations. We will confirm as much to any Credit Card company who requires chargeback support from us.

Malcolm.

bobmalooka

thesandeman wrote: »

Its definately not on mine. Maybe it doesnt show on m.boards.

above the word praise in bold at the top of the quote

dudara

Threads merged

dudara

thesandeman

bobmalooka wrote: »

above the word praise in bold at the top of the quote

As I said- Its not showing on mine. Only thing above the word 'praise' is the posters name.

pleasant Co.

thesandeman wrote: »

As I said- Its not showing on mine. Only thing above the word 'praise' is the posters name.

It's there, but as you said you're using the mobile version of boards which doesn't display incividual post titles...that's a m.boards issue.

thesandeman

Yeah thats what I was thinking.
At least that proves to the others that Im not totally blind/nuts lol.

ppink

metalgear2k2 wrote: »

Im out of pocket by nearly €450 because of these muppets. Any advice as to how to proceed? What address did he give to write to them? I wouldn't trust them to put my name on the liquidators list.

This is an email I sent them yesterday:

Dear Jane/Paula,

Last Saturday was a complete disaster.

My 3 friends that were accompanying me to this "experience" travelled one hour and ten minutes to my house in Glanworth Co. Cork on Friday night as we decided it would be easier for us all to travel from my house as it’s close to the Dublin motorway.

We were up early Saturday morning to get from Glanworth to Kill in Co. Kildare, which is about a 2 hour journey; I myself was up at 7.30am to make the breakfast.

We left at 9.30am and were on the road about 10 mins when I rang Robert to make sure everything was all set and ready to go. He seemed very helpful up to the point of me mentioning that I had a Topgifts voucher. He then informed me that he is not excepting any Topgifts vouchers as Topgifts are not paying him the cash Topgifts owe him. He also said he had made this clear to Topgifts on several occasions. I said that I had rang 2 weeks prior and was told that everything was fine (I was talking to a woman, not him) but he just said that she must have got the company voucher names mixed up and that he was definitely not accepting any Topgifts vouchers, and repeated the reason, that Topgifts are not paying him what Topgifts owe him and that he thinks Topgifts are going out of business. I then ended the call as he made it clear that he wouldn’t take us with the Topgifts vouchers.

Now at the point I was furious, why didn’t anyone from Topgifts lift a phone or send me an email and let me know what was happening? If I had been informed it would have saved my friends and I an awful lot of time, money and hassle. The whole point of organising this was because my cousin is moving to Columbia next week and this was a kind of last hurrah for him, I made this very clear to Topgifts when booking.

When I got back to the house I tried to ring Topgifts but just got an answering machine which said that Topgifts are off for the Easter weekend, but when I got into work today (Tuesday 26/04/11) that bloody answering machine is still on. Still can’t get an answer as of 2.30pm today.

I have had it with Topgifts, this is the 3rd or 4th time that I have had trouble with trying to use my vouchers, the plane one was cancelled twice through no fault of my own, then when I wanted to use the Lamborghini one the car was no longer in use, and now this.

This is completely unprofessional and unacceptable. I want a full cash refund on my vouchers; I couldn’t care less about your terms and conditions.

I have attached a small claims court application and I will process this application in the next 2 days if I have not heard form Topgifts. I'm also writing an email to Connor Pope from the Ray Darcy show on Today FM for advice on my current position. The same email will be sent to consumer affairs.

Topgifts have caused me so much trouble now I'm not going to let this go.

Regards

Surely if this event company told you 2 weeks earlier that it was fine then they shouldl not have cancelled on you at the eleventh hour like that. whether they got the voucher names mixed up or not they had accepted your booking.
I understand the event companies must be in bother over topgifts but I dont think it is right what they did here either.

bumpydog

ppink wrote: »

Surely if this event company told you 2 weeks earlier that it was fine then they shouldl not have cancelled on you at the eleventh hour like that. whether they got the voucher names mixed up or not they had accepted your booking.
I understand the event companies must be in bother over topgifts but I dont think it is right what they did here either.

In the vast majority of instances, the activity partner does not have full details of those partaking in the activity as it was TopGifts that make the reservations. It seems that this information was closely guarded by TopGifts.