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Forums - General Discussion - Worst customer service you've ever experienced

Another casual thread about customer service.

 

I don't expect companies to have flawless representatives, but sometimes it is insanely bad.

 

Xfinity probably has the worst customer service I have ever dealt with. Absolutely pitiful and frustrating. I once called to ask about purchasing a wifi router with 5ghz capabilities, and the person did not know what I was talking about. At first, I thought I was using incorrect terminology, but he told me he didn't know what I meant when I said 5ghz. 

 

I didn't say anything rude or go on a rampage (I really dislike doing that, regardless of quality of service), but I just felt ashamed to see how a 'tech guy' could be so useless.

 

I'd like to hear other stories. Chances are someone has a funnier (and less depressing) tale.



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Funny you mentioned Xfinity. I've heard bad things...and maybe I'll change my tune at some point, but I actually switched to them after moving into my new house. The main reason being was that my last internet provider, Centurylink, had the absolute worst customer service group I've ever spoken with. I could probably write a novel on all the terrible phone calls I've had with them, so I'll limit it to one story.

Centurylink does this thing that a lot of internet companies share, where they give you a special price for 12 months, before increasing it nearly double the special rate at the end. Well, I wasn't interested in doubling my internet expenses, and had other options for internet (though a bit inconvenient), so I called their Customer Retention Center to see if there was a way I could revert to my old price. The best they could do for me was offer me a bundled phone and internet package for a little bit more than what I was paying. My big worry was that I'd be paying for an extra phone bill on top of that, so I checked to clarify what the overall price would be. They clarified that the price was what they originally quoted, which reassured me. I had no need for a phone line, but if having it brought my price down, as they told me, I didn't see a reason why not.

Of course...when I got my first bill, my fears were confirmed. The new price was only for the internet, and now I had a phone bill on top of that. I called to complain, was redirected six times, before someone finally told me that they couldn't do anything. Frustrated, I asked them to cancel my phone service. They agreed to cancel it, and that point I just was ready to let it go.

Well...a few days later, I found I had no internet. They cancelled both my phone service and my internet service. Another phone call to figure out what happened. More redirects, a dropped call that forced me to call the next day because their service center closes at 6pm, more redirects, and finally someone tells me they made a mistake, and they would fix it for free. They reassured me it would be up and running the next day

As you can expect, still no internet the next day. Another call, more redirects. At this point I had made a routine of having my 3DS ready for when they began to redirect me, since these calls were consistently 2+ hours because no one would want to deal with my issue. When I finally got someone, they told me they would need to set up everything again...and that it would take a week to get it set up.

The things I said in response to that can never be repeated to anyone in any context, and I'm still shocked at how enraged I became at someone whose job was probably literally to redirect people as often as possible. Still, I was so pissed at the situation I didn't even care. They finally offered me a month refund, which was still too little, and I eventually caved and told them to get it set up. The best part was when the guy asked me to rate his service , and I literally just laughed at him.

Normally I'm not this much of a dick, but after the story above...I can't say I regret it. This is only one of my many horrible experiences with Centurylink, and I can't see any future where I'd ever want to have them as my internet provider. A company should never ever make people dread calling customer service to his level.



NNID: Zephyr25 / PSN: Zephyr--25 / Switch: SW-4450-3680-7334

Super_Boom said:
Funny you mentioned Xfinity. I've heard bad things...and maybe I'll change my tune at some point, but I actually switched to them after moving into my new house. The main reason being was that my last internet provider, Centurylink, had the absolute worst customer service group I've ever spoken with. I could probably write a novel on all the terrible phone calls I've had with them, so I'll limit it to one story.

Centurylink does this thing that a lot of internet companies share, where they give you a special price for 12 months, before increasing it nearly double the special rate at the end. Well, I wasn't interested in doubling my internet expenses, and had other options for internet (though a bit inconvenient), so I called their Customer Retention Center to see if there was a way I could revert to my old price. The best they could do for me was offer me a bundled phone and internet package for a little bit more than what I was paying. My big worry was that I'd be paying for an extra phone bill on top of that, so I checked to clarify what the overall price would be. They clarified that the price was what they originally quoted, which reassured me. I had no need for a phone line, but if having it brought my price down, as they told me, I didn't see a reason why not.

Of course...when I got my first bill, my fears were confirmed. The new price was only for the internet, and now I had a phone bill on top of that. I called to complain, was redirected six times, before someone finally told me that they couldn't do anything. Frustrated, I asked them to cancel my phone service. They agreed to cancel it, and that point I just was ready to let it go.

Well...a few days later, I found I had no internet. They cancelled both my phone service and my internet service. Another phone call to figure out what happened. More redirects, a dropped call that forced me to call the next day because their service center closes at 6pm, more redirects, and finally someone tells me they made a mistake, and they would fix it for free. They reassured me it would be up and running the next day

As you can expect, still no internet the next day. Another call, more redirects. At this point I had made a routine of having my 3DS ready for when they began to redirect me, since these calls were consistently 2+ hours because no one would want to deal with my issue. When I finally got someone, they told me they would need to set up everything again...and that it would take a week to get it set up.

The things I said in response to that can never be repeated to anyone in any context, and I'm still shocked at how enraged I became at someone whose job was probably literally to redirect people as often as possible. Still, I was so pissed at the situation I didn't even care. They finally offered me a month refund, which was still too little, and I eventually caved and told them to get it set up. The best part was when the guy asked me to rate his service , and I literally just laughed at him.

Normally I'm not this much of a dick, but after the story above...I can't say I regret it. This is only one of my many horrible experiences with Centurylink, and I can't see any future where I'd ever want to have them as my internet provider. A company should never ever make people dread calling customer service to his level.

When a worker at Century Link started the call with me talking about a special promotion, I immediately hung up.

 

Not willing to deal with their garbage. A shame you had to



I mentioned here a while back, I ordered the regular Star Wars Battlefront instead of the Deluxe version. Called Sony to fix it. After a long hold, I told the guy my problem. He said "Oh, really?" and hung up.



I used to work at a customer service hotline XD. And I'll tell you we don't need to know our stuff to get hired just how the company system works :P



 

Bet with gooch_destroyer, he wins if FFX and FFX-2 will be at $40 each for the vita. I win if it dont

Sign up if you want to see God Eater 2 get localized!! https://www.change.org/petitions/shift-inc-bring-god-eater-2-to-north-america-2#share

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Vita hunting 2015!

That Christmas, the Vita was on sale across Canada. I brought a friend to Best Buy to look for it. When I asked the guy if we could get a Vita, he told us they stopped making them years ago. We insisted that wasn't the case, but he gave us that "you're an idiot" look you give people sometimes, and said "it was discontinued by Sony ages ago" and Best Buy didn't sell them. When we showed him the flyer, he was still adamant he was right. So we left.

Went to a Toys R' Us in the mall that sold Vita games. They had them on the shelf. We asked the clerk if he had any Vitas behind the counter (where consoles were kept), to which he snickered and replied "What's a Vita?" We pointed to the Vita section, and he had NO IDEA what a Vita even looked like. He didn't even try to look for it for us. So we left.

Finally landed in GameStop (same mall) who had a bunch of the blue Vitas behind the counter. They even had a demo Vita still available next to their demo PS4. And irony of ironies? While we were in line, in comes the dill-hole Toys R' Us employee on break with his buddies playing the PS4 demo RIGHT BESIDE THE VITA!!



Cable One customer service is the worst that I can think of. We had them for a long time with no real issues but it got to a point to where it the Internet speed would get very slow for a few hours almost every night so I called them about it and they said it was probably because of my router (I had my own router and modem) so I wired a connection straight to the modem and had the same issue so they said my modem was bad so I told them I would like to rent one of their modems to see if it solved the issue but I still had the same problem. Then they said it was probably the cable outlet on the wall so we tried numerous different ones and had the same issue. After that they said it must be something wrong with the cable entrance to our home they just could not accept that the issue could possibly be on their end and at that point we just switched to AT&T.

 

For the record I have a degree in computer networking and tried everything they had suggested before they had even mentioned it. I kept figuring if I just played along with them that eventually they would accept it was on their end and do something about it but I know people who have issues with them to this day. 


Since then Cable One has actually become notorious for selling more bandwidth than they can deliver in our area.



Off the top of my head, AOL. My mom had an account with them on dial up for years before I was able to move up to big-boy internet.

Anyway, I had an argument with a scary AOL 'hax0r' who was bullying people in a chat-room. The guy sent me a message and said he was going to take my account, which he did. So, of course, I call AOL--my mom might have paid for it but she knew nothing about it. They keep redirecting me and I have to explain EACH AND EVERY TIME what happened. Mr. hax0r even told me that he had a friend who worked at AOL and that's how he took people's accounts.

Finally talked to a guy who said, yeah, he could see that the information on the account had been changed repeatedly in a very short time, which was obviously suspicious. Since only a few changes are kept, you can make the original information disappear that way. Because of that, he said he was transferring me to a security specialist. Awesome. If this regular op could spot the problem then certainly a specialist would see it right away.

Except this dumb-ass was like, "no, that's impossible," when I explained (again). I even told him what the other guy had said but this "specialist" was in full denial mode.

I admit that I vented at that point.

Finally, he said something like, "there is nothing I can do, none of your information is in the system at all, if you want to sign up for an account I can transfer you to someone else," and it dawned on me what that meant. So, I lost an old account but I got a new account with a "three month free trial" because I was, according to AOL, a new customer. That made me feel a lot better.



d21lewis said:
I mentioned here a while back, I ordered the regular Star Wars Battlefront instead of the Deluxe version. Called Sony to fix it. After a long hold, I told the guy my problem. He said "Oh, really?" and hung up.

I had a Sony guy hang up on me as well. On Vita launch day.



- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

Last year when I got my wife an iPhone at Best Buy they entered my name wrong on the account. Actually not wrong, correctly hyphenated while on my existing Rogers account it's not hyphenated. Result instead of adding the phone to all my other services I suddenly had a new account without any of the discounts, even though I specifically asked them to add it to my existing account.

After finding out online I now had 2 accounts I called Rogers. They said to go back to the store. I went back to the store (same day) They couldn't help me, told me to go to Rogers. I went to the Rogers service desk, they wouldn't help me either. They said they could only enter a transfer of service request after at least a month has passed. I said I didn't want a transfer of service, I'm the same person, it's the same address, the error was made 4 hours ago, fix it. They wouldn't, said I signed a contract, new account was opened, will take a while to progress through the system and that's it. Can't close it either until after a month with heavy penalties.

Back home I checked my rights, which include returning the phone and cancelling the contract within the first couple days with full money back guarantee. I called Rogers again to do just that. They said they couldn't help me with that and advised me against it, I should just wait a month...

Next day I went back to the store, told them I came to return the phone and annul the contract for a full refund, then buy a new phone and make a new contract without the hyphen. They couldn't say no to that, so they got on the phone and 10 minutes later it was all fixed. New phone added to my existing account, alternate account closed.

Or so I thought. A month later I got an overdue notice and late fee for payment for the closed account... 'Luckily' that only took one phone call to get rid of. Yay automation, not. A hyphenated name is a pita in today's automated society. Added to living in a postal code that most websites don't acknowledge exists...