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Who has the WORST customer service?

Posted by impauldotcom • 9/26/07 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: airlines, bad customer service, blog, blogging, customer service, delta, impaul, impaul.com, service

What company has the worst customer service?

What is your worst customer service experience?

I travel for a living and often review my travel experiences on www.impaul.com (Delta most recently). I am interested in learning other people's experiences.

User Comments

9/26/07

Blackysky

google

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9/26/07

AppleMan

Explain, please, blackysky. I'm interested.

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1. 9/26/07
  
  Blackysky
  
  When you send them specific question that require a yes no answer they send you back to see their help center .It took me 3 e-mails to finally get a decent answer however I heard they are much better with their paid services….
9/26/07

monkeytale

Well, after I got off the phone with a customer today I'm sure he feels the company I work for does. Of course, he's owned our product for a little over 7 years, and suddenly feels it's not working out for him and he wants a free upgrade. Since that's not only impossible but ludicrous he's decided that he's going to be the worst advertising our company has ever seen and I think I even sensed a veiled threat of bodily harm from the nutcase. Luckily for him i have a soft spot in my heart for the mentally challenged.

;))

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9/27/07

gerryPlanetEarth

The United Nations....at least a million disgruntled customers in Rwanda and Dharfur alone....

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1. 9/27/07
  
  crkian
  
  Good suggestion
2. 9/27/07
  
  ezrich
  
  Good one Gerry!
3. 9/27/07
  
  EavesdropWriter
  
  Beautiful. I like you're thinking. You're so right.
4. 9/27/07
  
  kab625
  
  I could never top gerryPlanetEarth's opinion. Thanks, Gerry, for helping me "step out of the box". I'm going to wear my "Save Dharfur" pin everyday.
5. 12/03/07
  
  dharmagypsy7
  
  That should be on a T Shirt... errr Organic one of course. Maybe we can sell it and the proceeds go to the Rwanda and Dharfur people?
9/27/07

wandadog13

Not us!
Jonathan

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9/27/07

crkian

AOL

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1. 9/27/07
  
  wandadog13
  
  surely any home isp providor with a premium rate number
2. 9/27/07
  
  crkian
  
  AOL in paticular cant get a word of sense out of them and you end up telling them how to do something
9/27/07

digitalflower

Best Buy

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9/27/07

ThriftShopRomantic

The natural gas distributor for my home. They threaten to shut off gas if they don't get inside to read the meter every six months. Their hours for doing this are weekday work hours only. And they can only give you a four hour window when they might arrive. Meaning I have to take a half day off work every six months for it.

If you try to schedule this reading, the number they give you to call on the threatening letter is not the right one. So you end up in a maze of customer service discussions where you read your account number over endlessly to people in various countries who pass you along.

By the time it's done, I'm always very annoyed and a bit weary.

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9/27/07

libdrone

Earthlink. Since laying off ALL of their US customer service staff and outsourcing the work their CS has become maddening. We've been trying to work with them to troubleshoot and fix problems with our DSL dropping periodically and every time you call you get yet another level 1 tech who can never find any record of the 2 dozen previous calls and open support tickets and tries very hard to insist on going through the basic troubleshooting steps again for the umpteenth time rather than transferring to the level 3 "specialist" we've been assigned. Feh

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1. 9/27/07
  
  techfun
  
  libdrone, they may want to get you to jump ship. According to a few telecom trade journals I have seen, Earthlink wants OUT of the residential end of their business.
9/27/07

wandadog13

Anyone seen the Star Wars helpdesk funny on you tube - its very funny!

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9/27/07

Efimtist

acer ...

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9/27/07

wandadog13

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q8DriPCX2o

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9/27/07

xerendipity

www.writinerary.com/2007/04/04/globelines-poor-service/ That is well elaborated.

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9/27/07

scorpy01

Verizon DSL. It's why I haven't been here much lately. If I can get an article posted on my blog now and then, I feel lucky.

Verizon DSL tech support sucks. And for the record, I did tech support for an ISP for seven years so I'm not as stupid as they think I am. (i.e. I know to reboot every freaking device possible before I call them.)

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9/27/07

v1ctorya

Dell is horrid

Citibank - I called and the woman went into a long story about 'the only gay man in North Dakota' and how funny he was and how I'd understand as a NYer. "What do you call a gay guy there?" she asked. "friend and neighbor" was my answer. (actually, she was really friendly, this was just inappropriate)

And AOL for sure.

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9/27/07

libdrone

could be tech fun, but given that we've just signed up and are trying to get things working properly for the first time it seems odd they would be trying to get rid of us the same month. I think it's just incompetence (ie-- they'e replaced capable staff with low paid people who don't know what the phuque they're doing

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1. 12/03/07
  
  Unfettered
  
  I used to do tech support for EarthLink. They're training was laughable, their benefits meager and the way they treated their staff abhorrent. One of the worst companies I've ever dealt with on any level. They did careful "studies" determining how outsourcing tech support would affect their customers. The customers couldn't tell whether they reached an actual EL employee, or an outsourced temp, so EL closed everyone down, one by one.
  
  I hates them, my precious.
9/27/07

libdrone

I hear you scorpy. I used to do that kind of work too. they're help people may be useful for educating newbies about basic trouble shooting but they're terrible at solving real problems

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1. 9/27/07
  
  scorpy01
  
  That's because they read a script. They have no idea how to actually listen to a problem and troubleshoot it. They go through the script.
  
  I remember once we had 5 customers in a row call in with the same exact problem. It was odd and raised a red flag. So we did some digging and discovered that a specific popular piece of tax software that all five users had installed was screwing up DNS settings. That wasn't in any script anywhere but because we were real computer techs with BRAINS and we were encouraged to THINK, we found the problem and were able to troubleshoot the next dozen people who called. AND our sys admin posted a notice on our website alerting users to the problem if they hadn't yet installed that software.
  
  Today's tech support, for the most part, are qualified if they can read the flip cards or on screen script. They don't need to understand what they're reading. That's why tech support at many places sucks now.
9/27/07

suburbqueen

The Dairy Queen (ice cream shop). Most of the people that work behind the counter are extremely rude!

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9/27/07

jleegirl

Home Depot - without a doubt.

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9/27/07

Kaliopy

I would say any health insurance company and they way they just keep rerouting you to different people.

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9/27/07

Kiwipulse

AuctionAds.

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9/27/07

zawadi

Blogger.com has the worst customer service and I use it.

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9/27/07

antibarbie

The DMV. I'd rather get a root canal then deal with those people.

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9/27/07

monkeytale

But sometimes the "worst customer service" is defined by the worst customers ever.

;-)

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9/27/07

blogcabins

Lowe's - they have a commitment to bad customer service. But if you want to stand around and chat with some groovy kids about what the haps is at college these days, it's the best, Jerry! The best!

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9/27/07

veritas227

Where should I start? Right now DirecTV is holding on to the number one spot. Any company where the call center has been relocated to India is number two. Any company where I have to use an IVR is number three.

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9/27/07

jpearce

Washington Mutual. One of the worst banks around.

Sometimes ebay.

I will give reps credit for most businesses. It's whoever writes the policies that everyone has to adhere to and then those reps have no control to make changes.

Mikster...my goal is to be their worst customer!

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9/27/07

libdrone

you go jpearce. I've never had an account with them but my late spouse did and when he died and I had to go to them and try to close the account they could not Possibly have been Less helpful. the people I dealt with were professional and courtesy but seemed hog-tied by company policies

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1. 9/27/07
  
  monkeytale
  
  Just curious, if they were following rules or company policies were these policies changed after the account was opened?
9/27/07

monkeytale

I guess what I'm getting at is when someone buys a product from us they have to sign that they're paying for it, they also have to sign again that they understand the trial period and we also have them initial in another spot that they've read it prior to leaving the store. And then they'll still come back and deny being aware of something.

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1. 9/27/07
  
  jpearce
  
  Terms and conditions: Subject to change without notice.
  
  You mean that?
  
  No I know some people play the dum-dum card then bite some innocent cust. reps. head off.
2. 9/27/07
  
  monkeytale
  
  I'm generally dealing with the public on the other end of customer service and honesty from them is lucky to average about 50% to tell you the truth.
12/03/07

dharmagypsy7

All AIRLINES... except Jet Blue.. that's the only one I really like

the worst has the be

US Air... I hate flying with them but they seem to have the best rates so I put up with it but every time I fly with them. I am banging my head... like why...

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12/03/07

claudiorodval

HSBC and Lidl

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12/03/07

robinj

you should try ordering from tim hortons in canada with an australian accent and wendys too I ordered a cup of tea at wendys and fries with two milk I got two cartons of milk and no cup of tea then two cups of tea and no milk in the end I gave up lol

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12/03/07

acousticguitarist

my favourite bad service moment...

I was working in a hifi shop and my friend was finally over the job. He was sitting on a speaker, customer walks up and says, "i'd listen to that pair of speakers and that pair"...he pointed to a pair of jbl's and a pair of no names. My friend replied, "what do you want to listen to those for you w***** you wouldn't be able to tell the difference". My friend is now happily married and works in another industry...wait for it...teaching english to foreigners.

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12/03/07

voodooKobra

Wendy's. Chocolate milk doesn't mean milkshake and I want my food THIS CENTURY!

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12/03/07

abhatnagar19

My worst customer care experience was when we bought the DTH dish home. We had planned to install 11 set top boxes at our home..and the technicians were to arrive in the morning that day. When they didnt come for 2 days..and kept on giving excuses about the delay..we threathened to cancel the order..thats when they appeared!

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12/03/07

globalgirl

Did anyone ever have AOL and try to terminate your service? I did and let me tell you, my experience mirrored this guy:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY

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12/03/07

Unfettered

I'm going to have to add Bluehost.com to the list.

Just an hour and a half ago, I checked my domains, to find php and server errors where web pages should be. I hadn't changed anything since successful pageviews, so I knew the problem wasn't my code (which is always the first thing I check, because I'm anal and often wrong).

So I called BlueHost, where I spoke with Ann, who told me they were doing a PHP and MySQL upgrade on my box... in the middle of the evening.

Don't know about you guys, but having worked as a professional Web developer, upgrading the box is something typically done in the wee hours of the morning.

Ann told me they always did their upgrades in the middle of the evening, that the outage would last a couple of hours, and that they usually didn't notify their customers. I told Ann all of that was highly unprofessional and asked to speak to a supervisor.

After over an hour on the phone, I finally got through to the tech supervisor, who was one of those computer guys everyone dreads speaking with. Too lazy to pick up the handset, too busy to be courteous. He claims they did send out a notification, and that the only problem was that PHP 4.0 was being deprecated, so I could have just gone into my PHP config, switched it to 5.0 and been set.

He resent me the notification. It didn't arrive. Naturally, he thinks this is a problem on my end, and suggested I get an email address with a different domain.

I used to rave about BlueHost, but their customer service has become so poor, and their arrogance level so high, I'm looking for a new host.

On the other hand, if your domain is with BlueHost, and it's suddenly stopped working, change your PHP options. Also, if you get Ann on the phone, realize she is ignorant and wrong. Ask to speak with someone else.

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12/16/08

deepas345

Right from banks, airline to salons/spas, the list is endless

deepasubbaraman.blogspot.com/2008/08/agitated-customer-of-banks-financial.h...

deepasubbaraman.blogspot.com/2008/07/same-brand-different-levels-of-service...

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12/16/08

mikeny07

I hate them all. Whenever I have to deal with customer service, I either get annoyed beyond belief or it turns into a fight.

The worst are phone companies and cable operators.

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12/16/08

freeatlast

On the other side of the customer service spectrum... sometimes the customers are NOT right and extremely rude... it goes both ways.

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12/16/08

sudam08

Blogger.com the static help section lacks any voice. The tragedy is that i am using the same. Thanks

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12/16/08

Kadmiel

which is true it does go both ways sometimes being nice gets you more then if your a dick

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12/16/08

SweetViolet

PayPal. They have owed me more than $1000 USD for over four years and will not even discuss it with me.

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5/08/09

radioflyer1980

My cable-Internet provider is very helpfully unhelpful. One of the suggestions I've gotten when my connection is down is to check my account settings online. Ahem, if I could check my account settings online, I'd probably not need technical support as my connection would not be down.

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