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

Sandrutute

PeteK* wrote: »

Are you sure?

yes, you know when you call vodafone, for mobile broadband, they ask you for your line number, and then 4 last digits of your account number , So when i placed everything in, the automated voice told me that they will take a payment of 35 euro in 30th of april .
I really got angry.. The lady that gave me a cheak in customer service she said she will cancel the payment, and will give me a discount, i have not receive a call yet ...

Sandrutute

ZENER wrote: »

. . . . 30 days has September . . . .

Sorry .. I might have pressed the wrong number, sorry I was very angry when i wrote it

L1011

Very positive experience with Dixons in the airport today. Item not as described on box by manufacturer (Kensington, not an own brand) refunded despite damaged packaging which I was expecting an argument over; and a cheaper replacement found and tested before selling.

Sam Mac

Dell are absolutely shocking.

I bought a PC just over three weeks ago from their sales team over the phone. A basic unit, nothing special.

Was told it would be dispatched within a week.

After calling to say it had not been dispatched, I was told an exact date of delivery. That one never happened either.

Rang again - given another date. Never happened either.

After complaining to the sales person who sold it to me, he promised to call me back. He didn't. I kept having to chase him up.

I calked again, asked to speak to a manager. She said she'd call me back. She didn't. She also said she would email me a confirmation of what she told me over the phone. She didn't.

It dispatched today. 3 weeks after it was due.

Horrible mess of a company - even the managers fob you off!!

The_Conductor

Seems like you got Dell on a bad day- I've had nothing but good experiences down the last 15 years with them. Recently they sent me complimentary re-install W7HP disks, as I misplaced the originals- I didn't even get charged postage. They did try some weird charges when I was configuring a laptop for a family member last week- which I was able to easily avoid- but it sort of annoyed me that they were trying to sneak extra charges in by the back-door (very Ryanair imho).

Fries-With-That

+100 for this place, http://www.thedailbar.com/ a couple I know travelled to Galway last weekend for a wedding. Due to various circumstances they couldn't travel by car that morning and ended up catching a bus.

The travelled in their everyday clothes and asked a staff member in the bar would it be ok to use the toilets to switch into their wedding clothes, barman never even batted an eyelid, sure go ahead and is there anything I can get for ye.

Fair Play good service.

bungaro79

great customer service from homestore and more in cork recently.

bought a bin a while back and in the past week the open button on the lid broke. emailed them asking if i could get a replacement lid as i had the receipt. got a call back saying they didn't have any replacements in stock but i could get a better version (a well know bin brand which caused a bit of commotion on the BA section a while back!) instead if i paid a small bit extra. he was very friendly and went beyond the call of duty. always been impressed with the staff anytime i've called in there

Moocifer

Worst customer service ever from Avia health care on Thursday. My father passed away suddenly recently and within a few days of the funeral we had notified Aviva who took note.

Last Thursday a letter arrived addressed to the executors of his estate. My poor mother opened it thinking it was about the outstanding part of his policy. No such luck, it was address to the executor so they had noted he was gone but then proceed to write Dear (Dad's first name) followed by a full renewal quotation for him and my mother!!!!

Needless to say I rang them and they couldn't even see what was wrong with it!!! Was in two minds about changing my policy from them but needless to say I won't give them another cent.

The_Conductor

BOI froze my parents current account when my Mum passed away- without any warning to my Dad. He visited the branch to resolve the issue- and was pressured into bringing in her death certificate, passport and all his identification documents. His account was unfrozen and his monthly bills paid. Precisely a week later, a letter landed on the doorstep at home, addressed to my late Mom, with commiserations on the death of my father. Livid he rang them up for an explanation- and was told it was a computer generated letter, and they apologised. Cue to 2 days later, when his Laser card refused to work when paying for groceries. A call to the branch explained that as he had died, they had frozen his account. If he wants it unfrozen, he will have to present with his identification documents, and a doctor's report explaining that Mum passed away, not he.

Dad is no longer a BOI customer.

hillbloom

I travelled on the Dublin to Galway Bus at the weekend. First, the driver was parked in the incorrect slot at the station. It wasn't a proper Bus Eireann coach but Galway was printed up on the front of it. I noticed a chap getting on it & he said something to the driver & took his seat in the bus. Just as the bus was about to drive away, this chap approached the driver again & wasn't he on the wrong bus & the bus he should have taken was left the station. It all happened because when he asked the driver was it the WATERFORD, the driver just muttered & the passenges mis-understood him & he was parked in the slot for the WATERFORD bus!! He was a terrible ignorant man & didnt have any people skills whatever. Why would any company employ an ignorant man such as this. Sorry for the rant!!

kilkennycat2004

Woeful experience with Tennyson Grass Machinery Piltown Co. Kilkenny.
I rang on Friday to ask for my drive mower to be collected. They cannot do so for 5 days (Tuesday- I.e. today). I waited in all day and decided to ring at 4.30pm. The office girl gave a "cock and bull story" about trying to get through to me and asked had I several missed calls on my phone, which obviously I don't.
The girl in the office says it will be Thursday now with not even a hint of an apology.
Some companies badly need competition and CS retraining in my humble opinion.

Penny Tration

Good experience with City Bins.

Signed up to them recently on a deal with unlimited weight restrictions on the green, brown and black bins. Signed with a door to door rep, which I don't generally do!

Got a welcome pack, detailing my contract clauses. These stated that I was paying a lesser amount than agreed, for unlimited restrictions on weight of brown and green bins, but with a weight restriction on the black bin.

Sent them an email, querying it. They replied the next morning, saying I was being given a better deal.

I explained that the sole reason I signed was for unlimited weight restrictions on the black bin.

They emailed back, saying they'd look into it.

Got another email this morning, apologising for the delay (it's only three days since their last email!), and saying that the sales rep made a mistake as he's new. The deal I signed for didn't exist.

However, as I signed for it, they are going to honour it.

Great customer service and very speedy responses.

dubstarr

Great customer care services from Carphone Warehouse.Ordered a new phone,delivery between 3-5 days.Didnt arrive,sent an email.They said it was out of stock.Next day money back on my card.Great doing business with someone you dont have to chase for your money back.

Packattack

V disappointed with Lifestyle Sports yest in a Dub shopping centre. I got a fine top there, which I love, and their clothes are great, and the staff are fine too, but it was the people not present at ground level that I have an issue with - management.

Firstly, they had employed no staff at the changing rooms to monitor the number of items you had, which most shops have.
And then whilst paying, I had to sign my name, which was fine, but the biros they pulled out were 20 cent jobs, wouldn't write, and there was nothing to lean on. The girl looked for a better pen off her colleague, which was just as cheap of a pen that also wouldn't write.

Now if this is the way they treat their staff, I'm not impressed with them. They've excellent flashy & cool marketing & advertisements, but they won't even spend on the basic stuff, and have forgotten some of the basic principles of customer relationship.

I wouldn't mind if they were a low-cost no frills operator like Aldi/Ryanair, but they're not. Their stock is top quality sports gear for top prices too. If you're paying this much, you expect a bit better. They have large margins, and should be putting more back into developing basic parts of their business, which they aren't doing.

It reflected poorly, and left me with a poor impression of them. If that's the kind of under-current they have running through their stores, it is not good. You wouldn't catch this in a family-run sports shop in Ireland, most of whom have been wiped out by this giant chain.

athtrasna

Packattack wrote: »

V disappointed with Lifestyle Sports yest in a Dub shopping centre. I got a fine top there, which I love, and their clothes are great, and the staff are fine too, but it was the people not present at ground level that I have an issue with - management.

Firstly, they had employed no staff at the changing rooms to monitor the number of items you had, which most shops have.
And then whilst paying, I had to sign my name, which was fine, but the biros they pulled out were 20 cent jobs, wouldn't write, and there was nothing to lean on. The girl looked for a better pen off her colleague, which was just as cheap of a pen that also wouldn't write.

Now if this is the way they treat their staff, I'm not impressed with them. They've excellent flashy & cool marketing & advertisements, but they won't even spend on the basic stuff, and have forgotten some of the basic principles of customer relationship.

I wouldn't mind if they were a low-cost no frills operator like Aldi/Ryanair, but they're not. Their stock is top quality sports gear for top prices too. If you're paying this much, you expect a bit better. They have large margins, and should be putting more back into developing basic parts of their business, which they aren't doing.

It reflected poorly, and left me with a poor impression of them. If that's the kind of under-current they have running through their stores, it is not good. You wouldn't catch this in a family-run sports shop in Ireland, most of whom have been wiped out by this giant chain.

You're joking right? You're disappointed that they trusted you not to steal stuff (the main reason for monitoring items in the changing rooms) and that the pens at the desk weren't up to your usual standards?? Really????

fondue

athtrasna wrote: »

You're joking right? You're disappointed that they trusted you not to steal stuff (the main reason for monitoring items in the changing rooms) and that the pens at the desk weren't up to your usual standards?? Really????

I thought that was a joke too! Why wud u specifically want a staff member at the changing rooms?

athtrasna

fondue wrote: »

I thought that was a joke too! Why wud u specifically want a staff member at the changing rooms?

And I was just in a Lifestyle shop in a Dublin shopping centre and had to sign something and the pen worked perfectly and was absolutely acceptable to me, nothing sub standard about it!

schemingbohemia

Amazon - I bought a book for my kindle the other night, clicked on 1-click purchasing and only then realised it was £9.99 not £0.99 as I had thought, they allow a refund within 7 days without any quibble. I thought I'd end up with a complicated discussion with customer service but was able to do it all online, excellent.

gismoet

Booked for pickup on 26th May in Dublin 3 for deliver to Dublin 2 via parcel2go website. Earliest I could get was collection Wednesday 28th with a window of 9-5pm.

They had a very precise business address to collect from with a contact number.

No collection made , no contact and all you can get now is a web chat. They say they can now only offer a re-book for collection on Friday 30th May. I would have walked quicker to the delivery address at this stage.

They could not give me any reason as to why collection was not made. No apologies just a very dis-interested response 'Sorry about that, but no we dont have anyone we can contact and no we can guarantee that it will be collected on the re-book'

Fab customer service!!! Thumbs up there.

Anyone else have this experience with FASTWAY?

Rockystones80

If u expect to wait 45mins for ur Chinese to be delivered on a wensday evening order here even though u might be 5 mins drive away! Hope yous have a microwave!

dudara

Merged into Best/Worst Customer Service thread

dudara

disco girl

If you do a search of FastWay here you'll see a lot of complaints about them....thankfully I've never had to deal with them and thanks to boards I'll never use them.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

discombobulate

Rockystones80 wrote: »

If u expect to wait 45mins for ur Chinese to be delivered on a wensday evening order here even though u might be 5 mins drive away! Hope yous have a microwave!

Wouldn't have thought that was a crazy amount of time to wait. If it's cold that'd be an issue though

BoB_BoT

Do yourself a favour and never use parcel2go again, there is absolutely no way to contact them. They have a "live chat" tool, the times I needed it, it wasn't working or it wouldn't connect to an operator.
There's no email, there's no phonenumber.

I had booked in a pickup with Fastway a couple of months back via parcel2go, package was never picked up. I tried to contact parcel2go, no joy. I got onto Fastway, they told me they had nothing on the system, the following day, Fastway got back to me letting me know they now had a pickup request on the system. That was 3 days after placing the next day pickup request.

So to this day, I don't know if it was Parcel2go or Fastway that were at fault, but at least I could talk to someone in Fastway.

Benesca

ButtersSuki wrote: »

Best - B&Q; I'm clueless as to DIY and the Swords (Dublin) branch were especially helpful, knowledgable and understanding in helping me through my various DIY issues.

Worst - Tierney Kitchens; damaged my walls in my hall whilst storing wardrobe units prior to installation. When I rang to complain (whilst the work was ongoing) they asked me to put it in writing. I did so and then they said I should have notified them of the damage at the time - ah, what were the numerous phone calls about??? Going to court to resolve. Crazy. Way to build a customer service reputation.

Hi. Just wondering did you end up in Court or were you able to get the matter resolved before then?.Thanks

vandriver

Rockystones80 wrote: »

If u expect to wait 45mins for ur Chinese to be delivered on a wensday evening order here even though u might be 5 mins drive away! Hope yous have a microwave!

If the shop had 7 or 8 deliveries to do before yours, then 45 minutes seems fine.Did you ask about the likely wait time?

Mightycraic

Zero brownie points for Bus Eireann today. We have a group of 5 American tourists who need to catch a bus back to Dublin this evening from the Garlow Cross area (outside Dalgan Park where a brand new bus stop has been built/upgraded). Two separate calls to Bus Eireann's customer service could not confirm whether the bus would actually stop there, upon request! One rep even suggested that the bus will only stop at locations shown on the timetable (and not the multitude of intermediate stops between Navan and Dublin). The other rep stated that the Navan stop is at the Ardboyne Hotel and not Market Square (wrong!). Clueless.

Their website 'trip planner' is down today with server errors, as it seems that nobody travels on a Bank Holiday!

Gob****es, the lot of them!

PeteK*

Mightycraic wrote: »

Their website 'trip planner' is down today with server errors, as it seems that nobody travels on a Bank Holiday!

Maybe that's why they couldn't answer you properly, though unlikely.

Mightycraic

PeteK* wrote: »

Maybe that's why they couldn't answer you properly, though unlikely.

Do you think it's reasonable that their customer service staff do not know whether their buses will stop at a request stop without computer assistance?