What's the worst customer service experience you have ever had?

We used to be on Tiscali broadband, but eventually deciding that the outages and general crappy speeds were nothing to be putting up with, we called their customer service centre to cancel the contract on the grounds that they weren’t supplying the advertised service.

After answering the phone as “Tiscali Broadband Customer Services”, when the guy on the other end caught wind of what I was trying to do he informed me that I “have the wrong number, this isn’t Tiscali”.

This happened twice more, until we eventually sent a strongly worded letter to them. Somehow, confusing me into forgetting that I wanted a better provider didn’t work.

best buy has horrible service

since i do a bit of phone support myself, i don’t have any bad experience with customer service, however, last week, i was doing a favor job, and i had to work with the dreaded OS (that’s right, windows), anyway, i had to reinstall it, and after that, i had to get the key activated, seems simple doesn’t it? ha, yeah right, i called them, and the whole procedure took 5 long minutes, ugh, why can’t it just work?

I was calling to make a reservtion with a MAJOR hotel chain. This was in the early internet days and the site wasn’t working, so I had to do it over the phone. Tiffany answered and I stated that I wanted a reservation in Manchester, New Hampshire. She claims that they don’t have a hotel there. I told her I’m looking at their website and apparently they do. Finally, after a long while, she asks me what state New Hampshire is in.

I told her that it was a state, in fact it was one of the original 13 colonies and the quarter had been issued that very year.

She replied: “no it isn’t, we I can’t find it on my list”.

She then hung up on me. I called back, only to get Tiffany again. I hung up on Tiff, and waited until what I figured was the end of her shift and completed the reservation without a problem.

Way to be compassionate to someone who was obviously having a lousy day (or week, or month, or life).

Lets flip it around and I’ll tell you the worst customer I’ve had! : being called a “dumb bitch”, to my face, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it- he was scary and holding a belt!!!

A lousy day (or week, or month, or life) doesn’t make it acceptable to be completely rude to someone, ever.

@nikipedia: if you are referring to my answer, I would think basic requirements for a job that involves US hotel reservations would be knowledge of the 50 states. She was rude to begin with, and kept me on hold for more than 15 minutes.

I didn’t try to educate her until she absolutely insisted that I was wrong and it wasn’t a state. This was not an outsourced location either.

Her answer should have been to refer me to or ask for someone else to help her, instead of telling me I was wrong, bad day or not.

@CygnetSwan: Exactly why themherme’s husband should not have been rude BACK.

@Seesul: No, I was referring to the person who posted the question initially.

sorry, niki, and thanks for clarifying that. I’ve worked with the public and held in more than I care to even mention. In fact, I’m usually the one apologizing to clerks after the person in front of me has been a complete jerk and they have taken it all without complaining.

@nikipedia~ so if your having a bad, its okay to make other people have a bad day also?

@cheebdragon: So if you’re having a good day, and you run into someone having a bad day, it’s okay to make it worse for them?

Um….no. I didn’t say what the toll collector did was correct. I said what her husband did was incorrect.

I work with people who have depression. They are often experiencing so much pain and suffering and have been through so much agony in their lives. I just think it’s important to remember that if someone is nasty to you, they probably don’t WANT to be horrible, but they feel so awful or are so sick they are really struggling to keep it together.

Wouldn’t you rather make that person’s day a little bit better rather than a lot worse?

@cheebdragon: Not being argumentative by the way, just demonstrating the flip side of your point.

I’ve had many bad and/or tragic days in my life, and I’m not going to say I’ve never been short with someone unintentionally, but I think when someone rolls their eyes and ignores another person intentionally that’s a different story. Just my opinion. Also, it’s not my responsibility to determine the outcome of another persons day, be it bad, good, worse or better. Only you can determine the outcome of your own day and moods.

Recently I had to call my cable company Comcast. There were a couple of pay per view movies on my bill that neither me nor my husband purchased. (This was not the first time that this happened. It also happened on another occasion a while back.) The “customer service” representitive argued with me and insisted that we had to have ordered them because “they can only be ordered through our remote.” I looked at the bill and it said we had ordered them at 4am. We are asleep at 4am! I went back and forth with her for 45 mins. !!! I was ready to go nuts! She finally agreed to remove the charges from my bill but only if we agreed to place a password on our account to purchase pay per views. I said I would happily do that, so the “boogieman” can’t order movies on my account anymore!! ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHH! I HATE COMCAST!!!!

united airlines sucks.

SPRINT. Over and over again. SPRINT SPRINT SPRINT SPRINT SPRINT.

Next runner up: the RAINBOW SANDALS kiosk in a mall in Buckhead, GA.

Niki: first of all our day was bad, we just left his grandmothers funeral which was the only reason we were in Jersey to begin with, her attitude was extremely rude and if I had been driving I may have said worse. Its not my problem if she had a bad day she should have left her problems at the door just like everyone else. When a customer asks you a question the right thing to do would be simply answer the question, she snatched the money from his hand and ignored him as if he wasn’t there. I have been in the customer service industry forever! I was a hair stylist for about 6 years and I am now a secretary in a college dealing with some quite snotty young adults, and I can tell you this, never not once, have I ever treated a customer or guest like that. What he said may have been not nice, but in his defense she was a plain out bitch, so think about that before you pass judgement, and try sticking to answering the question instead of picking apart what I said. Now if you had a bad experience somewhere by all means tell us all about it.

I agree, Sprint sucks!! They screwed me over majorly. $5000. This was about 5 years ago. Most recently they sent my mother, who doesn’t drive anymore, 3 cell phones in the mail. She had no idea why she recieved the phones, called customer service to ask why she was given 3 phones and what she was supposed to do with them. They told her that its very handy to have 3, put one in your bathroom or in your glove box!!!! She basicly refused them and wanted to ship them back. Now they are charging her for the phones and the service that was never even activated. Over $1000.

If someone is nice to me I will be nice to them, but if someone is being rude to me I will be very rude back.

That us how I am too Cheeb. If customer service sucks I will try to track down the vice president of the company to tell them about it. I threaten and would write letters to stock holders. I do not pay money for shifty service.

I like the saying ” if u see someone without a smile give them yours”. I worked for a very busy restaurant in the city where I live. One afternoon I went to a table with a friendly greeting and the lady was a bitch. She continued to be a bitch to find out that she had just come from the hospital where her 22 yr old son overdosed and almost died. She wasn’t being a bitch she was devistated. I was the bitch thinking I am someone special. I was the help. I was able to listen and it was awesome how it turned out. Everytime I saw that woman she would remember how I was comforting to her that day. So u never know why someone is the way they are. You can’t control others all you can control is your reactions.

Worst experience was trying to change address of my TV license:
I found 3 phone numbers that potentially were the ones I had to call.
#1: Never answered
#2: Not in service
#3: Some guy telling me “I don’t deal with that”. When I asked him who does, he went “umm…wait”, put me on hold, came back with the number that never answers. I told him it doesn’t answer and just went “But we don’t deal with that”. No attempt to put me in contact with someone, no attempt to get me more information, nothing!!

In the end I stopped trying and eventually the inspector came knocking on our door so I told him I had a valid license, but for my old address and told him the full story of how incredibly unhelpful their service is. He promised to fix it and call me to confirm the following week – of course he never called, but I have a receipt to prove that he was there and would change it.

Mine was PayPal:
They sent a request for signature to a new agreement to an old email address I had updated at the same time a hoax was happening.
I tried to follow procedure which said to go to the site and accept the new agreement. The problem was there is no way to do that on the site. I systematically followed and mapped every path and there was no way to accept a new agreement. You could read it but not accept it.
I tried to email. They didn’t reply after 4 weeks.
I emailed again. They said their records showed my situation had been resolved.
I tried to call 3 times and was put on hold 48 min., 52 min and 58 min.
I tried to open a new account and it refused to let me.
I tried to open a new account for my wife and it wouldn’t let me.
I got an email asking me to rate their service and I did rating it as low as possible. They said would I like to be contacted and I said yes.
I got a notice saying that
“My account and all information related to it was permanently locked out”
Essentially my family can’t use Paypal from our current residence.
I never even got to talk to a human.

I have found something unbelievable at times when I am treated poorly by customers and employees. When i ask them “hard day” or ” Not having a good one” anything that gives me a chance to show empathy I have almost a 100% success rate of turning that persons day around or at least more pleasant to me.

I also have sever depression. I have been and am one of the people that nikipedia works with. Its to bad more people don’t react with the millions of reasons in today’s world that someone could be having a bad day rather thank taking it personally.

As far as an eye for an eye. That never made sense to me because I know that I am human and have mistakenly snapped at people myself. Unless anyone can say they have not done that, and I know no one can honestly make that claim, I don’t think eye for an eye works.

the one I gave working in a restaurant and hating every minute of it LOL. Don’t know how they kept me for almost a year