Worst customer service you've ever had (rant happy)
- Thread starter Riotguards
- Start date
Took me two weeks to convince my ISP customer service that I was not an idiot and had in fact done everything I could to try and fix my dead internet connection. Only then did they try actually connecting to the node that included my apartment and find they couldn't. Turns out some tech had forgotten to reconnect all plugs after maintenance or something. All this COULD have been done within a day.
The incident that really takes the cake was in a good ol' brick-and-mortar store. I was trying to buy a shirt in a clothes store. The clerk was behind the cash register talking to what I thought was another customer. After a minute or so I deduced she was just gossiping with a friend. I cleared my throat just to let her know there was someone in the line. The cashier turns my way and literally hisses "Just wait" like a parent frustrated with an impatient child, then goes right back to hearing what X had to say about Y's new boyfriend. I just stared in stunned silence for a moment before returning the shirt in a rack and walking out.
The incident that really takes the cake was in a good ol' brick-and-mortar store. I was trying to buy a shirt in a clothes store. The clerk was behind the cash register talking to what I thought was another customer. After a minute or so I deduced she was just gossiping with a friend. I cleared my throat just to let her know there was someone in the line. The cashier turns my way and literally hisses "Just wait" like a parent frustrated with an impatient child, then goes right back to hearing what X had to say about Y's new boyfriend. I just stared in stunned silence for a moment before returning the shirt in a rack and walking out.
I have three.
The first one is obvious. I purchased Dishonored on Steam Store and it didn't work properly. I contacted support. Turns out the game was region locked. What's more, it was region locked to countries of former soviet union. The country where I bought the game is not one of them. There was no warning of this on the game's store page. steam support not only refused to refund me, they refused to acknowledge the problem. Every single one of their responses was just this pre-programmed stock answer. They didn't answer any of my questions or address any of the issues I mentioned. They just kept repeating the same, unhelpful stock answers over and over and over. It was frustrating as fuck. I never got a refund. I bought and unrestricted GOTY edition when it became cheaper than the DLC would be on its own. The region-restricted edition is still in my library, just sitting there, being useless.
Second, Acer. My laptop broke down. A faulty model, apparently - the fan didn't work (Don't ever buy Acer M5 laptops). Started making this horrible buzzing noise after a bit, which got gradually worse. In a couple months, it got so loud I couldn't actually hear what I was watching/playing on it. It started overheating. I sent it back to Acer to get it repaired. It took like two days to get it sorted, they sent it back with the fan switched for a new one. The new fan started doing the same thing after about a week. I contacted them again. And again. Their response times kept getting gradually slower. All of the sudden, it took them a week to reply to my emails. It took a month to get the computer sent into their repair centre again. I decided I wanted a refund. They refused to provide it, saying that only the retailer can do that. I contacted the retailer. They said only Acer can provide refunds. It turns out that they need to be able to confirm the issue on 3 separate occasions before they issue a refund. The laptop came back from repair and by now I was sure it was a faulty model and a new fan would do the same thing again. Except now, the computer wouldn't boot.
Acer support broke my broken computer.
This was 3 months after I originally started talking to support. The warranty was running out in another 2 months. I contacted them about the new issue and sent the laptop in for repair again. It took a month to get them to take it in. They sent it back to me, saying they didn't find an issue. The computer still wouldn't boot. It was impossible to replicate the old issue if I couldn't boot the computer.
Two weeks before the warranty ran out, I threatened law suit as a last desperate bid to get them to do their job. After which it took two days to get my money back.
Number three was years ago, when I was still a teenager. This is more of my dad's support experience than anything but I was there. One of the internet providers just came up with this thing they called Magio. It was essentially a glorified set top box for your TV but it was quite novel and high tech at the time. It also came bundled with high-speed fiber optic internet, which was brand new tech at the time. They'd only just installed the fiber optic infrastructure in our neighbourhood. We decided to go for the Magio thing. We ordered it. The people were supposed to come in and set it up in like two weeks. A month went by. We went back in, told them about it. They bumped us up in priority. Told us we would get our service next monday. We didn't. They bumped our priority up again. This went on a couple more times. Another month passed. We still didn't have the internet thing. At which point my dad marched in there and cancelled. He was quite angry (which is rare) and he just had this aura about him, it was terrifying. They tried some apologetic corporate bullshit, at which point he calmly (but in a way that made them visibly tremble) explained how very disappointed he was and that they were to expect some very poor press in the near future.
My dad's a badass.
We ended up getting faster internet with better service and a near immediate installation from a company that didn't market it as aggressively as the Magio one did.
The first one is obvious. I purchased Dishonored on Steam Store and it didn't work properly. I contacted support. Turns out the game was region locked. What's more, it was region locked to countries of former soviet union. The country where I bought the game is not one of them. There was no warning of this on the game's store page. steam support not only refused to refund me, they refused to acknowledge the problem. Every single one of their responses was just this pre-programmed stock answer. They didn't answer any of my questions or address any of the issues I mentioned. They just kept repeating the same, unhelpful stock answers over and over and over. It was frustrating as fuck. I never got a refund. I bought and unrestricted GOTY edition when it became cheaper than the DLC would be on its own. The region-restricted edition is still in my library, just sitting there, being useless.
Second, Acer. My laptop broke down. A faulty model, apparently - the fan didn't work (Don't ever buy Acer M5 laptops). Started making this horrible buzzing noise after a bit, which got gradually worse. In a couple months, it got so loud I couldn't actually hear what I was watching/playing on it. It started overheating. I sent it back to Acer to get it repaired. It took like two days to get it sorted, they sent it back with the fan switched for a new one. The new fan started doing the same thing after about a week. I contacted them again. And again. Their response times kept getting gradually slower. All of the sudden, it took them a week to reply to my emails. It took a month to get the computer sent into their repair centre again. I decided I wanted a refund. They refused to provide it, saying that only the retailer can do that. I contacted the retailer. They said only Acer can provide refunds. It turns out that they need to be able to confirm the issue on 3 separate occasions before they issue a refund. The laptop came back from repair and by now I was sure it was a faulty model and a new fan would do the same thing again. Except now, the computer wouldn't boot.
Acer support broke my broken computer.
This was 3 months after I originally started talking to support. The warranty was running out in another 2 months. I contacted them about the new issue and sent the laptop in for repair again. It took a month to get them to take it in. They sent it back to me, saying they didn't find an issue. The computer still wouldn't boot. It was impossible to replicate the old issue if I couldn't boot the computer.
Two weeks before the warranty ran out, I threatened law suit as a last desperate bid to get them to do their job. After which it took two days to get my money back.
Number three was years ago, when I was still a teenager. This is more of my dad's support experience than anything but I was there. One of the internet providers just came up with this thing they called Magio. It was essentially a glorified set top box for your TV but it was quite novel and high tech at the time. It also came bundled with high-speed fiber optic internet, which was brand new tech at the time. They'd only just installed the fiber optic infrastructure in our neighbourhood. We decided to go for the Magio thing. We ordered it. The people were supposed to come in and set it up in like two weeks. A month went by. We went back in, told them about it. They bumped us up in priority. Told us we would get our service next monday. We didn't. They bumped our priority up again. This went on a couple more times. Another month passed. We still didn't have the internet thing. At which point my dad marched in there and cancelled. He was quite angry (which is rare) and he just had this aura about him, it was terrifying. They tried some apologetic corporate bullshit, at which point he calmly (but in a way that made them visibly tremble) explained how very disappointed he was and that they were to expect some very poor press in the near future.
My dad's a badass.
We ended up getting faster internet with better service and a near immediate installation from a company that didn't market it as aggressively as the Magio one did.
not exactly impossible for them actually check my details, i have had this problem before but with a missing win 8 key and they were quite easily able to sort it out by verifying my details (from the same account) so all they needed to do was check and they'd find outJamash said:
but they never gave me a chance and instead of even thinking about the problem they just juggled me around
As a college student, money is entirely an object. I don't get financial support from home, I don't get paid well, and my savings is spent on gas and books. You also seemed to misunderstood the sequence of events, which is probably a fault on both our parts. However, I will work on getting over it all the same. Thank you for pointing out at least part of the silliness of my complaint.Dirty Hipsters said:
Does getting stuck on hold for 3 hours with EA customer service count? I think it counts, heck, its the main reason why I don't play Star Wars: The Old Republic anymore.
The only one in recent memory I can immediately recall is the trip to the Salvation Army with my dad about a month ago. When we made our way to the register, there were no customers in front of us, and the clerk was organizing some clothes on a rack behind her. Despite noticing us, she continued to organize the clothes on the rack for about another two minutes, without acknowledging either of us, and when she finally decided to stop what she was doing, she didn't greet us, she just started wordlessly scanning all of our clothes, and shoving(emphasis on shoving) all of our clothes into bags without folding them in any way at all, and pretty much the only words I recall her saying were asking debt/credit or cash. She didn't thank us for shopping there either.
So basically, she showed zero customer service. I'd like to mention that we weren't being offensive in any way either, we weren't pestering her while she was ignoring us, or being snoody, nor were we threatening in appearance, so she really had no reason to act that way. When I mentioned it to my dad on the way out of the store, he said that had I not been there, he probably would have let her ring up all 10-20 articles of clothing, then just said he didn't want it and walked out.
So basically, she showed zero customer service. I'd like to mention that we weren't being offensive in any way either, we weren't pestering her while she was ignoring us, or being snoody, nor were we threatening in appearance, so she really had no reason to act that way. When I mentioned it to my dad on the way out of the store, he said that had I not been there, he probably would have let her ring up all 10-20 articles of clothing, then just said he didn't want it and walked out.
The few times I've used Origin support it's been quite good, actually I'd say it was better than when I've had to use steam support. Guess it's the luck of the draw.Ghraf said:
A few months ago I started having issues with my mobile phone service, I went through technical support which we're useless so eventually had to go to the telecommunication ombudsman. Customer service goes up fast once the ombudsman is involved lol.
Basically I ordered 2 vintage playstation 2 games from some store via amazon and only one arrived (a few days late too). I waited a few more days for the other to arrive, then wrote an email about the issue to the store. They said it must've gotten confiscated by the postal service, apparently a known issue, and refunded my payment for that game. A while later I got some automated mail from amazon to review them so I summarized my experience and gave them a 2/5. A score I felt was appropriate for a store that could only half execute the job it's supposed to be specialized in.
Within hours I received a fairly salty mail from the guy who handled my earlier complaint, demanding in no unclear terms I remove my review. After all, I got my money back and everything right? And almost every other review was positive!
Since this was my first time doing any business on amazon I figured a 2/5 must be a much bigger deal than I gave it credit for, plus I was somewhat intimidated and just wanted to be done with the ordeal before it tainted my enjoyment of the game it all started with. So I oblidged. In retrospect though I really shouldn't have. Because sure, I got my money back. But not until I came looking for it myself! Meanwhile, a single bad review got spotted and nuked within hours! Says a lot about where their priorities lie... Also, the more I thought about it the more the whole story about it being confiscated by the postal service started to stink. Why would that even happen? Did the postal service just destroy it? How come the other game did arrive? If it's happened before, why not do anything about it? Why didn't I get any kind of message from the postal service? And so on and so forth... The whole thing reeked of a shoddy operation run from two laptops in mom's basement. Exactly the kind of nonsense I feared from amazon so I haven't used it since.
EDIT: Oh yeah! I just remembered a much worse one. I had an issue where my internet would turn off for about 20 seconds several times an hour. After I made sure the issue wasn't on my end I made the dreaded call. The snobby thing I got on the line didn't even believe me, stating her records showed no interruptions of my service. "Of course not," I told her. "I'd be surprised if that record of yours pings every single one of your clients more than once an hour, how is it supposed to pick up a 20 second drop?" Poor thing didn't even understand the concept, and only after some insistence from my side was she willing to send someone over. Even then she tried her very best to dissuade me from it by repeating over and over that I would be charged for everything if it turned out to be my error or that nothing was broken at all. She then also made it extremely difficult to agree on a date and time: only when I made it absolutely clear that the date she stated as "the only possible spot in the next 2 weeks" was impossible for me, more spots in the same week would suddenly open up after all.
Then the day of prophecy arrived and the repairman came. After some tinkering he said he found an issue in the router, that I wouldn't have to pay anything and showed me his testing software not picking up any more drops. He then left like his pants were on fire. No more than 5 minutes ago had he left or my own "test" (a game of hearthstone) proves him dead wrong.
Fueled by pure concentrated spite I then found and downloaded some testing software of my own and set the ping interval to 5 seconds. Boom! Suddenly the graph perfectly visualized the drops. So, back to the dreaded call center I went (got a much more friendly guy this time, turns out they exist) and along came another repairman. I had to stop myself from physically ramming his face into my laptop's screen displaying the ping graph and yell "Look! Look with your special eyes!" Based on what he saw he was then able to fix it in 20 minutes and this time I did have to pay because... Reasons. He was impressed with my technical prowess though! La-di-f******-da...
So in conclusion: look ISP's of the world, I heard plenty of stories from both sides of the divide. I'm well aware of the amount of absolute gobsmacks you have to deal with every day. So here's my proposition: introduce some kind of implicit or explicit test of a caller's technical know-how. If they pass, they get someone who actually knows what he's talking about on the line. Not some shmuck who got a three day crash course at your employee training centre, and definitely not some outsourced checklist reader. Thank you.
Within hours I received a fairly salty mail from the guy who handled my earlier complaint, demanding in no unclear terms I remove my review. After all, I got my money back and everything right? And almost every other review was positive!
Since this was my first time doing any business on amazon I figured a 2/5 must be a much bigger deal than I gave it credit for, plus I was somewhat intimidated and just wanted to be done with the ordeal before it tainted my enjoyment of the game it all started with. So I oblidged. In retrospect though I really shouldn't have. Because sure, I got my money back. But not until I came looking for it myself! Meanwhile, a single bad review got spotted and nuked within hours! Says a lot about where their priorities lie... Also, the more I thought about it the more the whole story about it being confiscated by the postal service started to stink. Why would that even happen? Did the postal service just destroy it? How come the other game did arrive? If it's happened before, why not do anything about it? Why didn't I get any kind of message from the postal service? And so on and so forth... The whole thing reeked of a shoddy operation run from two laptops in mom's basement. Exactly the kind of nonsense I feared from amazon so I haven't used it since.
EDIT: Oh yeah! I just remembered a much worse one. I had an issue where my internet would turn off for about 20 seconds several times an hour. After I made sure the issue wasn't on my end I made the dreaded call. The snobby thing I got on the line didn't even believe me, stating her records showed no interruptions of my service. "Of course not," I told her. "I'd be surprised if that record of yours pings every single one of your clients more than once an hour, how is it supposed to pick up a 20 second drop?" Poor thing didn't even understand the concept, and only after some insistence from my side was she willing to send someone over. Even then she tried her very best to dissuade me from it by repeating over and over that I would be charged for everything if it turned out to be my error or that nothing was broken at all. She then also made it extremely difficult to agree on a date and time: only when I made it absolutely clear that the date she stated as "the only possible spot in the next 2 weeks" was impossible for me, more spots in the same week would suddenly open up after all.
Then the day of prophecy arrived and the repairman came. After some tinkering he said he found an issue in the router, that I wouldn't have to pay anything and showed me his testing software not picking up any more drops. He then left like his pants were on fire. No more than 5 minutes ago had he left or my own "test" (a game of hearthstone) proves him dead wrong.
Fueled by pure concentrated spite I then found and downloaded some testing software of my own and set the ping interval to 5 seconds. Boom! Suddenly the graph perfectly visualized the drops. So, back to the dreaded call center I went (got a much more friendly guy this time, turns out they exist) and along came another repairman. I had to stop myself from physically ramming his face into my laptop's screen displaying the ping graph and yell "Look! Look with your special eyes!" Based on what he saw he was then able to fix it in 20 minutes and this time I did have to pay because... Reasons. He was impressed with my technical prowess though! La-di-f******-da...
So in conclusion: look ISP's of the world, I heard plenty of stories from both sides of the divide. I'm well aware of the amount of absolute gobsmacks you have to deal with every day. So here's my proposition: introduce some kind of implicit or explicit test of a caller's technical know-how. If they pass, they get someone who actually knows what he's talking about on the line. Not some shmuck who got a three day crash course at your employee training centre, and definitely not some outsourced checklist reader. Thank you.
as experienced in Ebay as i am (its not that different to Amazon) being confiscated by the postal service is a complete lie, being lost in the postal service is possible (depending on what type of tracking you put on) however it would never be confiscated unless the item was counterfeit (or any other illegal substance) or he just didn't have it in stock and tried to play it off as it being lost in the mailbliebblob said:
i can see however why you would receive a salty message, although you did receive 1 game and considering the problem was rectified it would be insulting to receive a low score of 2 stars, 4 stars would have been better if you wish to make a point but 2 seem more akin to damaged goods rather than just a lost item
of course as a professional business (i assume) he should never have sent you a salty message
of course this is my experience with the British postal service
why return it to the rack, i'd just dump it on the table and be like "it ain't my fault B**ch"Unia said:
then proceed to throw pies at her (serious)
The worst customer service I ever got was from Microsoft. A couple of months ago I got a call from a man who told me that he was from Windows, and that he had detected an internet virus in my computer. I told him that I already had Norton Security installed, but he told me that would only protect my computer from computer viruses, not internet viruses. I asked him what to do, so he told me to open my operating system's Event Viewer, look under the administrative events log, and sure enough, it was full of errors. The Windows man informed me that the errors were all caused by the internet virus. That was all well and good, but then he told me that Windows would have to charge me $200 to remove the internet virus. Who do they think they are? I already bought their operating system, why don't they fix it for free? So I told them that $200 is more than my mother would allow me to spend, and tried to negotiate for a better price, but they just hung up on me. Now my computer still has the internet virus and I don't know what to do.
Had this as well and steam were useless. They said its not their game and they cant help. Sent me to a link to disney, you had to chose the game you wanted help with and it didnt have Kotor1 and 2 as a choice. Its why i hate digital gaming to a point as when i buy a game from a shop, that shop is responsible for that sale - they dont tell you to go take it up with the developers.JohnZ117 said:
Anyway, i managed to fix it in the end by looking up videos on youtube. The issue i had is both Kotor games would crash as soon as they loaded up to the start menu.
It's a scam. Get calls a couple times every few months from them and have plenty of fun screwing around with them.veloper said:
Kinda like these guys.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/i-am-calling-you-from-windows-a-tech-support-scammer-dials-ars-technica/
Long story short, your computer is fine.
All right so it looks like my poor understanding of amazon rating conventions was indeed a factor, as I feared. Nevertheless I would then argue the amazon rating conventions are just as inflated as those for videogame reviews. 5 Stars I would only give if everything came exactly as promised, along with a free keychain or something. So a 4/5 after it was late, the (suspected) lies about the postal service and the fact they didn't even know until I contacted them? Sorry, no.Riotguards said:
Steam. Multiple times.
Most recently I contacted them because I had a TF2 item (Hale's Own Professional Killstreak Shortstop) that had over 22,000 kills recorded, as well as 3 strange parts (over 2500 snipers killed, over 1000 dominations and over 5000 buildings destroyed) and all of those counters spontaneously reset.
I know for a fact I did not do it because I couldn't even do it by accident, to reset all the counters you would need to do each one individually, I did not accidentally click every item in the scroll down menu followed by a confirmation screen each.
The item reset while in my backpack.
I sent in a ticket, it auto-replied with some BS about Steam not being able to alter items on the market place and some other stuff and to reply, so I sent in another reply explaining my situation in depth (it wasn't on the marketplace, it was in my backpack, etc) and this time I was treated with the same auto reply but this time it had a customer support name at the bottom.
As of today I have yet to receive any further correspondence despite replying to that ticket (which remains open) 3 times in 2 weeks.
Those kill counts were worth insane amounts of playtime and all of it is down the drain. While I do use a baby face blaster now (which I just got to hale's own), it's pretty sucky that something I'd worked on for quite a long time is now essentially gone.
Edit: Also, just to avoid any "but how do they know you had those counts", there are literally screenshots upon screenshots on my steam profile that show not only the weapon and it's counts, but screenshot after screenshot of my scores in games and 40+ killstreaks with the weapon in hand in the same screenshot.
I couldn't provide Steam more proof if I was Gaben himself.
Most recently I contacted them because I had a TF2 item (Hale's Own Professional Killstreak Shortstop) that had over 22,000 kills recorded, as well as 3 strange parts (over 2500 snipers killed, over 1000 dominations and over 5000 buildings destroyed) and all of those counters spontaneously reset.
I know for a fact I did not do it because I couldn't even do it by accident, to reset all the counters you would need to do each one individually, I did not accidentally click every item in the scroll down menu followed by a confirmation screen each.
The item reset while in my backpack.
I sent in a ticket, it auto-replied with some BS about Steam not being able to alter items on the market place and some other stuff and to reply, so I sent in another reply explaining my situation in depth (it wasn't on the marketplace, it was in my backpack, etc) and this time I was treated with the same auto reply but this time it had a customer support name at the bottom.
As of today I have yet to receive any further correspondence despite replying to that ticket (which remains open) 3 times in 2 weeks.
Those kill counts were worth insane amounts of playtime and all of it is down the drain. While I do use a baby face blaster now (which I just got to hale's own), it's pretty sucky that something I'd worked on for quite a long time is now essentially gone.
Edit: Also, just to avoid any "but how do they know you had those counts", there are literally screenshots upon screenshots on my steam profile that show not only the weapon and it's counts, but screenshot after screenshot of my scores in games and 40+ killstreaks with the weapon in hand in the same screenshot.
I couldn't provide Steam more proof if I was Gaben himself.
Nah it wasn't mate, it's businesses skewed idea of how ratings work, or at least the way it's all been set up to be.bliebblob said:
The place I work at have introduced this whole, "Scan your receipt and rate us" end of transaction thing to basically figure out if we're doing our job right. Not a bad idea, actually I think it's pretty good, but after them showing us a video on youtube (Which I will link as soon as I can remember the name of it) it turns out that anything below a 70% rating is considered a failure on our part. 10 and 9 is good, 8 and 7 are alright, anything below it is considered to be poor service, angry customers and loss of sales.
So yeah whilst you probably could've given them a 3/5 as a fair assessment, even that would not have been suffice for them.
OT: Worst service I can think of would be at a restaurant near the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. Went there with me old man before the Black Sabbath concert and ordered our food. Then a group of about 15 other people came in maybe 5 minutes after we ordered and the owner seemed to know them...and then our food arrived 15 minutes after theirs did. It took about 20 minutes after we had finished for someone to come round and collect our plates and offer dessert or more drinks and dad ordered some ice cream that they had right behind the counter, in clear view, showing that all they had to do was get a spoon and scoop that shit out. About 20 minutes later the owner brings out the ice cream (after spending probably 10-15 minutes chatting with his mates) and just says, "I promise we didn't forget about ya".
Yeah, fuck that restaurant, it was lucky we gave ourselves an hour and a half leeway.