Most businesses are, well... In the business of making their customers happy. People are much more likely to come back if they have a good experience, after all.
Not all businesses seem to understand this key concept, though, and many put customer satisfaction at a much lower priority level.
Wherher by having horrible customer service, policies designed to cheat people out of money, or terribly unsanitary premises, there are plenty of businesses that seem to do everything they can to drive customers away.
Reddit user u/radbrad7 asked:
"What is your 'never again' brand, store, restaurant, or company?"
*Content warning: mention of human trafficking, death of an animal*
20.
Cox cable/internet.
Called to cancel my account after I got legally separated from my ex-wife. She was able to cancel the cancellation (her name was on the account as well -- EDIT: I was the primary account holder. She was added for billing only when I was on deployments.) and use that account for like 8 years. I moved to England for a while, then to New Mexico, and eventually back to Oklahoma (where she still lived).
When I tried to activate new service, they told me I had a previous account with an unpaid balance of like $700. Granted, it was the ex-wife that really f***ed me over on that one, but the fact that they allowed her to "un-cancel" a service I asked to have canceled blew my mind.
19.
A hospital in my area. My brother and his wife just recently had a baby there. My first nephew and their first child. He was born two weeks premature by scheduled c-section, but you couldn't tell since he was more than 9 pounds when he came out. If he went full term he could have been more than 11 pounds.
Anyways, he arrives and everything is going well, his blood sugar was a little low, but the doctors claimed it got better. A day later and he begins twitching every once in a while. My sister in law asks the pediatrician and the nurse why and they said that it was fine. The day after that and the twitching increased and he began doing it every other minute. My brother and his wife panic and ask the doctor but the doctor checks his blood quickly and says nothing is wrong but if they're still worried about it they should wait to go to the pediatrician on Monday (3 days later).
As soon as they leave the hospital despite the baby still twitching they turn around and ask for the doctor to please look one more time. He refuses and tells them that they can't look anymore because they are discharged from the hospital.
Refusing to believe that their baby was okay, my brother and his wife took him to a different hospital's emergency room. The doctor there took one look at the baby's blood and immediately prepared a bottle of formula for him. His blood sugar was 36. If you aren't familiar with blood sugar then just know that sugar that low can be deadly. My sister in law's milk hasn't come in yet, she didn't know that, and the pediatrician at the first hospital only gave the baby 2 ounces of formula in 2 days. He baby was very close to going into shock. If they took the doctors advice and waited until Monday that baby would have been dead before reaching home.
18.
There is a "burger" joint here, relatively new (less than 5 years) that some people swear by. It's a weird kind of burger though, a kind of spicy gravy style burger. But not like your gran's gravy, it's rather...tangy? Vinegary? Whatever. It was odd.
So I tried it on my lunch break (recommended by a coworker), and thought...meh, I don't get the hype, but it's not terrible.
Then I went back to work, and shortly thereafter all hell broke loose.
I had the most volatile, violent, unsolicited and certainly nonconsensual colon cleanse of my life. I was so obviously tore up that not even my manager made a stink about me essentially doing zero work for the next 4 hours of the work day.
To this day when I pass by that place I say "Never again." My wife thinks I'm making a stupid Dad joke I won't give up on (she's aware of what it did to me), but for me it's more of a solemn prayer.
17.
Neiman Marcus. I went there to buy a Prada bag for my mother. She had a knock off she loved, so I figured she'd appreciate the real thing.
I wear t-shirts to work, but this day it was at least a fancy one. It didn't matter. The sales lady told me "It's very expensive," rolled her eyes and walked away.
So, I went next door to the actual Prada store and bought one.
I don't need to be judged by an angry middle aged woman working retail, thank you very much.
16.
Turbo Tax. Did my return, got a notice that my e-file needed to be corrected, logged back in to fix it and my return wasn't there anymore. 6 hours on the phone with 3 tiers of tech support, each one trying exactly the same thing. Finally they were just trying random things, so I tried random things in parallel, managed to get to my return with the invoice number from paying for the service WITHOUT logging in. Tried to get them to understand that this was a Very Bad Thing that they should report to someone... and they told me they had no access to anyone technical and no way to submit bugs.
This from the company that lobbied to make it illegal for the government to offer tax filing service.
15.
Lularoe. I only bought stuff to help out a friend that was trying to make ends meet. Luckily she quit after about a year. Bought 3 pairs of leggings over the course of the year and none of them made it the year without holes. $25 each. Never again.
Also, I felt gross buying from an MLM, but like I said, just supporting a friend.
14.
Frontier internet. They're one of the crappiest ISP's I've ever had, I will never go back, no matter how cheap it is.
I stopped paying them like 3 years ago, and they continue to give me service.
They are so disorganized that they have no idea.
13.
I bought an engine from AutoZone for a vehicle I owned. They had a vendor build the engine, and it was supposed to ship to my house. I waited three weeks for it to arrive, but it never did. I contacted their store, was told that it hadn't shipped yet and was coming via FedEx freight. I kept up with the tracking # but couldn't get anywhere with it. I kept calling back every couple of days to see what was going on, and no one could figure it out. I finally managed to find out that it had shipped via another company (RL freight), and had been delivered to somewhere else. It was like pulling teeth to get a refund on an engine I never received. It took another two weeks to get the refund.
I won't buy a soda from AutoZone now.
12.
Lyft. They recently charged me a damage fee for damages I could not have plausibly caused. I sent statements explaining how it couldn't have been me. They sent back a standardized statement and didn't give me any additional information. There is no phone line to talk to a representative. I sent them multiple follow up emails, which they never responded to.
Now I have to write a statement for my credit card company to dispute the charge.
11.
Comcast. A door-to-door salesman straight up lied to my dad, saying they had a four-DVR setup that would cost less than what we were paying AT&T. When the installation guy got there, he said that no, they didn't have a four-DVR setup, he was told to give us the standard two-DVR setup. Which was absolutely not something that would work in a house with six people with wildly different tastes in TV shows.
So my dad tells him never mind, we're sticking with AT&T then, but because the Comcast guy had already installed our new cable box, he couldn't take it back with him, so we had to mail it back to Comcast ourselves.
The kicker is, five years later Comcast tried to bill my parents for the cable box, saying we never sent it back. My parents insisted they did, and Comcast wanted the UPS receipt, which obviously we no longer had because it was five years ago and we hadn't heard anything from them before this. So my parents refused to pay, Comcast sent a collections company after us, and when my parents explained the situation to the collection company, they were like "those f***ers, we'll take care of this." That was, thankfully, the end of it.
10.
I run the front desk at a hotel and Expedia are an absolute nightmare. They also straight up lie to the guests and to the hotels constantly. Truly one of the most shady companies I've ever dealt with.
They purposely try and deceive people who don't know any better into thinking that they are dealing with the hotel directly. They create adds in such a way that when people google the hotel's phone number, a number to Expedia comes up, and if the customer asks if the are speaking directly with the hotel front desk they will say yes.
There have been countless times where guests have called to cancel their reservation that was booked through Expedia. I inform them that they will have to contact Expedia directly, since they pre-paid through them, but that it will be no issue because the hotel does not charge a penalty fee for cancellation. An expedia representative will call the hotel with the guest on hold and ask about getting it cancelled. I tell them it's no problem. They ask if we will be charging a penalty fee, and I tell them no. All is right and good, right? NOPE.
I then get a call back from the guest who is upset, saying that the Expedia representative told them they could not be refunded because of the fee charged by the hotels cancellation policy. Taking the guests money and blaming it on the hotel, and keeping all of the profit. This has happened countless times.
I once had a guest while at the front desk call about cancelling 3 days out of a multiple day reservation, as she had to leave earlier than expected. They pulled the same bullsh*t with her, not knowing that she was at the front desk.
After me telling the representative that the cancellation is fine and we will not be charging any penalties, they get back on the phone with her and blatantly lie.
I asked her to hand her phone to me and that was quite a surprise for the representative. Who said that "there must have been a misunderstanding".
9.
We bought a flea medicine to use on our cat and she became lethargic and didn't eat anything. We took her to the vet and they told us that they have been trying to get that medicine off the shelves because of how it affects animals. I was in a theater watching Despicable Me when my cat finally passed away. It sucked knowing that my cat is dead because of some money-hungry brand who doesn't care about the safety of the animals it gives its products to.
Pyrethrins are toxic to cats. I nearly killed my cat with Hartz ear mite solution fifteen years ago, and it's still on the market. Why Hartz hasn't been sued out of existence I will never understand.
8.
If I see something is being shipped by OnTrac, I'll cancel. The three times they were the delivery company from Amazon, they lost one package completely and tried to say it wasn't their fault. The second package was also deemed lost but then showed up on my door step something like six weeks later. The third time it sat on "shipping label created" for a week and I just contacted Amazon and canceled the package. You don't find a lot of positive reviews out there and any positive ones you do find seem like they were written by the company via a fake account.
Every package I've ever had stolen was shipped via OnTrac. They claimed it was delivered and I never find it. One time I looked with MINUTES of it's supposed delivery. Yeah, sure maybe the residents of my apartment complex are shady but UPS, FEDEX, and USPS never seem to have this issue
OnTrac regularly marks my packages as delivered without coming anywhere near my house. I always have to call and complain, and they have to come back the next day. I've had them pretend to find the package in my front yard, after I watched them leave the car with it.
7.
Jiffy Lube.
Those idiots told me my car has no filter! I'm pretty sure they just didn't want to take it out. They also said my car takes a "special European oil" and charged a lot extra for it. It's not a special oil at all. It's an uncommon oil but a gallon of it costs the same as typical oil. I'm going to stick with the dealership to get oil changed because it's cheaper and they know what they're doing.
EDIT : I forgot to add the ending to this story! Not long after I got my oil changed, Jiffy Lube sent me a text message with a link asking to leave a review of their service on Google. So I obliged and left the most brutally honest one star review you'd ever read! The next day, the manager called me and left a voicemail. She was VERY adamant that Jiffy Lube had to charge a high price for my oil because it "only can run on special European oil". In regards to the air filter, she offered an investigation to look at video footage to see if the technicians looked for the air filter. I know they didn't, because I would've seen them take it out! It's inside the engine cover, which they never took off.
I seriously don't know how Jiffy Lube is still in business. I hear nothing but bad things about them. In my own experience, you never get the advertised special; there's always something about your car that makes it need more oil or more expensive oil or whatever. I guess we're both just lucky that they remembered to put the drain plug back in.
6.
FTD. For Mother's Day one year, I ordered flowers through them for both of my grandmothers and my mom. I ordered cards, a teddy bear, all of it, right? So my mom sends me a thank you and a picture of what she got. I notice there's no cards, no bear, and it's not the bouquet I ordered for her. I called the company, they gave me a refund, whatever. My mom got flowers and I got a refund--it worked out.
I call grandma #1 to wish her a happy mother's day--she got her flowers, but no card or bear. I contact FTD AGAIN. Refund, again. I call grandma #2. I thought "there's no way in hell they'll screw this up again."Yeah, they screwed it up again. At least grandma 2 got her teddy bear, but no card. She didn't even know the flowers were from me. I was so angry with FTD by that point that I didn't even both calling them again. They've lost my business for life.
Companies like FTD or 1800 flowers are just intermediaries. They will feed your order to the cheapest shop near you. Cut out the middle man and go find a decent local florist instead. Costs less and you'll get better flowers.
5.
Wayfair. Purchased a $1000 sectional couch that was delivered with damaged upholstery. They refused to let me return it and instead offered me 10% off my next purchase. Yeah..... Never using that discount code.
Refused to let you return it? F**k that, dispute the charge
This is my job, disputing these charges. Had a customer call me a few weeks back, had gotten damaged merchandise from Wayfair, company offered her a store credit. Said if she wanted a refund shed have to disassemble it and ship it back. She was disabled, and that's why she paid them to deliver and set up in the first place! I called Wayfair with her, and got them to agree to come out and take the damn thing back. So many businesses will jerk the customer around until the bank calls and suddenly then its "oh of course we can fix that right away!".
Left the claim open just in case they didnt follow through, but yeah. Point being, if you dont get it, if it arrives damaged, if it's not what you ordered, if its branded stuff that turns out counterfeit, etc - these are all things we can fight. The biggest thing we ask is that you've at least tried to fix it with the business first. If you've done that, and gotten nowhere, we can fight it.
4.
JDMRacingMotors... Gave me a damaged motor and claimed a compression test was the only way to test the engine and said it passed. Barely held on in one cylinder. To make matters worse, if you put coolant in where it ought to go, it would come out of the oil pan. Made a few calls and had email exchanges with their "mechanics" and was informed coolant and oil touch regularly and that is how it cools the oil. Wrong on so many levels. Never got my money back either so I ended up using the good parts from the exterior to rebuild my old engine.
3.
Macy's. Got a credit card through them to buy a suit. My parents offered to pay the card off as a birthday present. Cue months of them calling me 5+ times a day, asking where the payment, that had already been made, was. Harassing me to make more and larger payments. When it was finally payed off, they then tacked on a "completed payment fee" and never sent a bill, so the whole damn thing started all over. I was genuinely about to file a lawsuit over harassment or something.
It was unbelievable, because I would tell one person the payment was made, and then get 4 more calls the same day asking the same thing. Then rinse and repeat tomorrow.
2.
Spirit airlines. Never again. F**k them. Flight from Vegas got canceled. They don't even bother trying to put you on another flight, not only that you have to pay extra for the next flight available. I told them they can go f--- themselves and I want a refund, the customer service person told me he can refund me spirit credit, that's when I lost it. After enough bitching, he gave me my money back to my credit card and I bought a flight on delta.
After my experience I made it a point to go on several review sites and made a PSA to never fly spirit again. This was one of many incidents I have had to deal with them, this one just broke me because I was flying back from Vegas, I can only handle Vegas for 2 nights, after that I want the f**k outta there, having to stay there another night was not something I wanted to do. Also it was not weather related as they told me, No other flights into detroit that day were cancelled, I checked, I even told that to the customer service agent, he shrugged it off.
1.
When I canceled my AT&T internet (Hooray for local fiber-to-the-premises!) I prepared myself due to all the horror stories I read on reddit. When I sent my equipment back, I video'd myself packing it up, took pictures of everything, even documented the post office transaction. When I canceled my service, I did it through online chat, so I could have transcripts. (The online service people were wonderful, and I have no beef with them at all. In fact, I always gave them the highest ratings in the surveys afterward.)
Well, of course they said they never got the equipment back.
It took me SIX months of constant back-and-forth, going to collections, and just every manner of bad service imaginable. One day, I spent what felt like hours on the phone and finally got transferred to a woman in Nashville named Deborah, to whom I poured out my story. Well, Deborah wasn't going to let bad sh!T go down on her watch, so she went through every computer system she could access until she figured out what went wrong, and then she fixed it for me.
tl;dr I hate AT&T, but I love Deborah.
What business will you never patronize again because they are just that bad?
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