Businesses you'll never patronize again -- and why

In My Humble Opinion
81

Optus, our mobile phone service provider. We used to have two mobile phone contracts with them, and one expired. My father notified them that we didn’t want to extend our contract (we were changing phone companies - nothing against Optus, but Telstra has better coverage). So we only had one contract ($30 a month) left with Optus.

They continued to bill us for our expired phone. For three months, my father rang Optus to let them know that they had billed us for a service that they weren’t providing, and that we had explicitly cancelled. After the complaint, they would send us the correct bill, but the next month, the same thing would happen again. Of course, this error is in their favour - I’m sure that if the tables were turned, they’d rectify the situation lightning-fast.

My contract expires in September. We were going to switch to Telstra anyway, but now we’ll be telling everyone how unhelpful and inefficient Optus is.

And Telstra really does have better coverage.

82

Applause! Video, on Commercial Drive in Vancouver.

Sad, really, because it’s actually the sort of place I’d have given a lot of business to-- an eclectic stock, close-to-home, and not an evil chain.

However…

I rented a copy of Withnail and I there a number of years ago, and was frustrated to find that it was beat-to-hell. The tape was strrreeeetcccheed so much that you had to keep adjusting the tracking every couple of minutes. I’d adjust it, start watching, and then five minutes later, half the screen is filled with noise. I fast-forwarded through it to see when it settled down, and it was still problematic 45 minutes into it.

So I took the thing back and explained what was happening, and the clerk popped it in their machine, which was equiipped with automatic tracking, which was a newish feature at the time. Instead of completely fuzzing out every 5 minutes and needing to be adjusted by hand, there’d be a little distortion at the bottom of the screen, and then the LED display on the machine would flash TRACKING, and it would correct itself. What, if you don’t have autotracking you should be satisfied to sit through the whole movie with your thumb on the tracking button?

Their take was that since it would play in their machine with minimal probs – no refund. The thing is, I didn’t just want a refund, I wanted the tape taken of the shelf, because it was too worn to watch. (I explained that I had tried it on all four of the decks in the house, 2 2-head decks & 2 4-heads hi-fi’s.)

I figured it might just be one thick-headed clerk, but surely a manager would understand that it’s bad business to keep a tape that has proven to be unwatchable on 4 out of 5 machines. Nope, and moreover the fella was rude, and said I should buy a new VCR. (Two of my machines were less than a year old.)

So I never went back, opting instead to trek across town to Videomatica, which is still a shrine to me-- And I’m confident that when I get the goods home, I’ll be able to watch them, and if a tape wears out, it’ll end up in the rubbish-bin.

Applause? What is the sound of one hand clapping… …your ignorant face? :mad:

[sup]I wonder if anything has changed in the last six years? They’re still in business… Feh. Even if it has… Mudd has a long memory.[/sup]

83

Alrighty-- I started a thread about the whole “Second-party” sales thingie, since it kept hijacking this thread. It can be found here .

Sorry about all those hijacks, yojimboguy.

LilShieste

84

U-Haul. MrWhatsit recently used their online reservation system to reserve a 14-foot truck for a 24-hour rental starting on Friday and ending on Saturday. They were supposed to call us to confirm within 24 hours of the online reservation. First of all, they never did call. After a few days had passed, we finally got around to calling them. Yeah, we probably should have called them beforehand, but we were in the middle of getting ready to move, and we stupidly assumed there would be no problems with the online reservation system. Ha, ha.

I tried to call the local U-Haul place for three days before finally getting through. The phone would ring and ring and ring and nobody ever picked up. Finally somebody did pick up, and they informed me that 1) our reservation had been routed to a U-Haul facility that was pretty far away from us and not the nearer, more convenient facility we thought we’d reserved a truck at. Why? No reason given, no apology proffered. And 2) our reserved truck could be picked up at 4 PM on Friday and returned at 9 AM on Saturday.

Um. I politely informed the U-Haul representative that to me, that seemed like significantly less than 24 hours. She said, “Yeah.” I said, “OK, but we made a reservation for 24 hours. We’re moving on Saturday. Those times are of absolutely no use to us.” To make a long story shorter, the rep said that this was not her problem, that it was our fault for using the online reservation system, and that “24 hour reservation” actually means “way less than 24 hour reservation” during peak summer times, because they have to rent every truck out two times per day and that’s not their fault, because they have to make money, right?

It was our fault for using the online reservation system? The one that’s advertised on the SIDE OF EVERY U-HAUL TRUCK ON THE ROAD? It was our fault for assuming that “24 hour rental” meant 24 hours, and not 12 hours, or 8 hours, or even 22 hours? Uh-huh. Bye, U-Haul. I called up Penske and reserved a truck for three times as much as U-Haul would have charged us. They had the truck on time with no hassles. I paid with a smile and wrote a detailed letter to U-Haul corporate HQ informing them why I will never be patronizing their business again.

Car Toys and Office Max. Same problem at both places. At Office Max one day, I went and found some overpriced cardboard boxes and brought them to checkout, which was completely vacant. No registers were manned. There were a few employee-looking people huddled near the door on the far side, having what appeared to be a leisurely chat. I stood there giving them a meaningful look for about 30 seconds. One of them made eye contact and then looked away. 30 seconds after that, with no further signs of movement from the employees, I threw my boxes down on the counter and walked out. One of the guys, who turned out to be a manager, yelled out, “Ma’am, can I help you?” as I was stalking out the door, but I called, “Not anymore” over my shoulder and got my boxes from the local mini-storage rental place instead.

Car Toys was where I went first when I wanted to buy a new car stereo a year or so ago. All I wanted was the cheapest model that had AM/FM radio and a CD player. That’s it. I walk into Car Toys and all the (male) employees studiously ignore me. I browse for a few moments, thinking that maybe they’re giving me time to decide. Still nothing. Then I went to go track one down and ask him a couple of questions, and they’d all mysteriously disappeared. I finally found one in the manager’s office and told him my criteria. He visibly sighed. He showed me the model that met my criteria, and then spent the next several minutes trying to sell me a more expensive model. He told me I really didn’t want the cheaper model I’d told him I wanted, because it didn’t have a dust cover or good sound quality. I asked him why his company was selling a stereo that had poor sound quality. He had no answer. I told him I wanted the cheaper model. He condescendingly told me that really I wanted the more expensive model. I walked out and went to Magnolia Hi-Fi, who sold me what I wanted (at a cheaper price, no less) with no questions asked.

Burger King. This is actually MrWhatsit’s, not mine. It started when we went there a few years ago and he ordered a hamburger with no pickles, but with lettuce. They charged him a fee (20 cents, I think) for the lettuce. This pissed him off no end, because of their pervasive “Have It Your Way” ad campaign. He rightly pointed out that if they’re going to charge you extra to “have it your way”, they should say so in the ads. I think he may be onto something, but I cannot join him in his boycott, due to my love of the Whopper with cheese.

Blockbuster. Reasons stated previously, mostly the thing about how they edit videos for content without saying so on the box when you rent it.

85

The Avenue (yes, I’m overweight) had their denim stretch pants on sale. I love them – they’re not those clingy stretch pants most fatty places sell. They’re way overpriced for what they are – about $40 per pair – no zipper, no pockets, just elastic waist pants. But I like them.
But I buy them only when they’re on sale.
Sale time. Two pair for $50. Yay! Still overpriced, but I want them.
I’ll take these, and these. Ooh, I like the color of these, too.
So now I have three pair. I expect to pay 1.5 times the sale price for two pair, or $75. Oh, no.
They want the full $40 for the third pair. Unless I want a fourth pair. I don’t. (Sheesh, since I’m always planning on seriously starting my diet tomorrow, why would I invest in four pair? hee hee)
I ended up buying only two pair. Is that stupid (of them) or what? It’s not like the reduced-price-two-pair is packed as one unit – thus one SKU – I could understand that.

86

I actually got a refund from Ticketmaster once. I had tickets to a They Might Be Giants show, and a few days before the show, Ticketmaster called everyone to tell them the show was going to be starting an hour earlier than previously scheduled. There was no way I’d be able to get there at that time, so I’d have missed most of it, since they were only going to be onstage for something like 90 minutes. I told them that I never would have bought the tickets if I’d known, and as shocking as it was, they refunded me the money! All I had to do was send the tickets back to them, which I did. I was even more impressed by the fact that they refunded the money before they could have possibly received the tickets.

87

Sprint Long Distance- for slamming me from AT&T without ever the slightest bit of contact.

Best Buy- for their bait and switch tactics on sale items, new motto “always out of stock, then it must be on sale”. Heck add in the pushy attempts to sell the worthless extended warranties, the dirty, disorganzied stores, and the surly, clueless employees- and it’s a wonder anyone puts up with them.

:mad:

Walmart- I don’t know what’s creepier- the “greeters” at the door or the people who shop there (at least in my town- YMMV, of course). I fled in horror. I will go to Target, even if it costs a few more bucks.

88

I’ve been to this place… I too was appalled. What city is it in again?

Anyway, it looks like Sears is in the lead:

We were in Sears buying their top-of-the-line dehumidifier and the salesguy explained about the (obscenely priced) extended warranty, which included a technician actually coming to our house to vacuum out the coils once a year. Ooh.

When I declined, he got all snippy with me, said that if I opened the the cover myself and voided the warranty, well, sniff, it was my money.

I wish I’d had more gumption at the time to point out to him AND his manager that the owner’s manual clearly states that it’s opening the sealed refrigerant system that would void the warranty, not taking the freakin’ cover off.

Oh, and the manual also gives simple directions on how to take said cover off and vacuum the coils.

In other words, he was either suffering a profound lack of knowledge of his own department, or he was lying through his freakin’ teeth.

Jerk. Guess pulling that bullshit snares enough suckers for them to keep doing it. I only do catalog orders these days.

89

Century 21.

Ivylad and I were ready to move out of the apt into a home. We were PRE-APPROVED* (not just pre-qualified) but not able to move for about four months. (Lease on the apt)

So Agent one tells us that the length of time is not a problem, since it will probably take that long to find what we wanted and get the paperwork completed. She showed us a few houses on Sat. Nothing what we wanted, most of them out of our price range.

I call to make another appt for Sunday, and her tune has completely changed. There’s no point in looking for houses this soon, blah blah blah. I was shocked, then she said if we still wanted to look to come in the next Sat.

The next Sat, agent one is not there. She has sloughed us off to Agent two, who shows us three houses. Again, horribly overpriced and not what we’re looking for. We tell her we are disappointed in the selection, and she says she will find some listings in the next town over and give us a call. We never hear from her again.

We eventually ended up building a house, and I wrote a very nasty letter to Century 21. I apologized for obviously wasting their time, and to keep from doing it again, no Century 21 agents would be allowed to show our property if and when we decided to move. No reply from them.

This particular office has since gone through a managment change. I don’t know if I had anything to do with it or not.

*For those who don’t know, pre-approved means the bank has approved the loan. All you’re waiting for is to find the house and for the house to pass inspection. The money is there, ready and waiting. So once you bid on a house and the bid is accepted, it’s all over but the shouting.

90

Huggard-Ewing Auto Sales, in Stoughton MA

I bought my first car from there, my cavalier. The sticker price said $9000, I liked it, decided to finance it. When I went to finalize with my mom (I was 17 at the time), the loan manager kept saying $10000. We finally fought it back down t the original asking price.

Got the loan approved on Monday, was told I could pick up the car on Wednesday. Showed up, and was told it would be a few more days…there was some sort of problem. After a week, we still didnt have the car. Apparently they had just gotten it in, and didnt have the title yet. The woman who had previously owned it was battling with her bank and/or insurance company over something, and the bank was holding the title. Until the bank released the title, Huggard and Ewing couldnt finalize my purchase. It was over a month before they got the title. My mom convinced them to cover my first car payment, but it was still ridiculous.

Fast forward a year and a half. The car has been totalled by my sister. According to the contract, the extended warranty I had prchased could be refunded upon the loss of the car. But the dealership had to submit all the paperwork. The car was totalled in January 2001, I just got the check last week. It was made out to my mom, since the car was in her name. Grossly mispelled. Her first name is Jayne, they put John. And the last name, which is german and a bitch to spell anyways, was the worst screwup I’ve ever seen. In order to cash it, I had to forge the misspelling, and deposit it through the ATM. I’m still waiting for this shit to clear.

I will never, never buy another car from Huggard And Ewing, and anyone I know who might hears this story. They’ve already lost 3 potential sales…my new car, my mom’s, and my sister’s. Madness.

91

Hell yes! It’s been drilled into me time and time again by Dr. Brett, whose father actually worked for the UFC at one point.

If you want, I’ll ask him if UFC is still in business.

You can also read about it in Walter LeFeber’s Inevitable Revolutions?

United Fruit controlled most of Central America for the latter part of the 19th, majority of the 20th. Well, along with Cumayel of course.

That’s why I’m always complaining about the School of the Americas and all that. Because it’s to protect big business-not democracy.

:mad:

92

Major League Baseball

93

**CompUSA **in Woodbridge, VA.

A few months back, one of my graphics guy’s monitors suddenly died. We didn’t have any spares lying around, so he and I went to buy a new pair, since the other was flaky and was set to be replaced anyway. After surveying their offerings, we ended up with a pair of 17" monitors from Envision, I think (partly because MacWorld gave them 5 mice). Back at the office, he gets them set up and finds that one has a fuzzy spot in it about the size of a softball in pretty much the center of the upper half. Not good. We tried it on another computer and got the same thing. Called tech support and was told it was defective, take it back and exchange it.

Back we go to CompUseless and tell them we need to exchange it, it’s bad, etc. The guy says they’ll have to check it out first. So, we wait while this guy unpacks it, plugs it into a PC and then the “customer service manager” tells us that they won’t take it back, since it’s not defective. Huh?? What about the blurry spot? Oh, that’s within “industry standards” and not a defect. Really? Manufacturer’s tech support just told us it was. Oh no, that monitor meets “industry standards” and is not defective. What “industry standards”? You know, “industry standards” and since he’s such a nice guy, he’ll allow us to return it for a 15% restocking fee, but he’s not going to exchange it. If we’d wanted a better picture, we should have “bought a more expensive monitor.” Yeah, right, so I’d be out more $$$ on a defective monitor. Admittedly, these weren’t the most expensive monitors they had, but they weren’t the cheapest either.

So, frustrated and pissed off, we come back with the bad monitor and I start ranting at my business partner about the &^&**&^&(^ down the road. He takes the monitor down there and is able to exchange it. One of the cashiers overrode the CSM and exchanged it after he told them it was defective. The prick that refused to exchange it for me won’t come out from his office and talk to my partner. He gives up after a bit and returns to the office to spend the rest of the afternoon on the phone with everyone he can get ahold of over at CompUSA’s upper management about this jerk. Everyone assures him that something will be done about it, but nothing ever is, so I instituted a new company policy that no one is to shop at CompUSA. I don’t care where else people go to get equipment, but if they spend my company funds at that place, I Will Kill Them.

grrrrrrrr. It’s been, I dunno, three months and it still pisses me off.

94

Quest…I think they are a long distance service of some kind? I’d never heard of them until I got a snotty phone call asking WHEN did I plan to pay my long overdue, $80 bill?
I questioned the caller closely: Who are you exactly? What kind of service? What bill? …and finally told her that nope, I had never signed up for their service, at all, and how was it that they were charging me for service I never signed up for? And who did I need to talk to about this problem?
VERY fast backpedaling ensued. She explained how it was all a mistake, sometimes these things happen, heh, they would just cancel my bill immediately.
A year later, I’m STILL getting a bill from them, every month like clockwork. I think it’s for under $10 now, but I am NOT paying that bill, nowaynohow. They can just keep spending money billing me, as far as I’m concerned.
~k

95

There’s a Denny’s north of Pittsburgh which my best friend, her husband, and I will never go to because of an incident which happened about 7 years ago. The three of us were spending an evening together and wanted to grab a quick bite before a store we needed to go to closed at 10:00. This Denny’s was close and convenient. We arrived at about 9:00. After 20 minutes, they still hadn’t even taken our order, even though we were about the only people in the restaurant. By 9:45, they’d taken our order, but there was no food in sight, so I got up and found a waitress and asked if we could please get our dinners. I don’t remember if we left a tip, but if we did, it was a nominal one to show we didn’t forget.

The ironic thing is, this was when Denny’s was being accused of being racist for not seating or serving black people, and this particular Denny’s got sued because of an incident which happened around the same time. Since I’m English, my best friend is Swiss, and her husband (boyfriend back then) is Irish-American, we’re about as white bread as you can get. I suspect with that particular restaurant, the problem was incompetence, but either way, I’ll go hungry rather than go back there.

CJ

96

Please tell me that you were 12 years old when this happened! [sub]an adult wouldn’t do this, right???[/sub]

97

Heh. Mine’s Telstra for exactly the same reason. Lotta choice in this country, what? :slight_smile:

98

This is a actual law in la county ca and the state of ca I beleive

If two people are standing in the line together and they look like there going ot be sharing the booze you card every one in the party

Althouhg I guess this sometimes left up to the cahsiers discresion

Keeps people from buying booze for minors supposedly

… seems the local convience store started enforcing this policy after a sting operation cost them a hefty bit of change and 3 people were fired

99

I was unaware of such laws when I posted. If Harris Teeter had explained this half as well as all of you, I would still be shopping there. I loved the one in Chesapeake, VA when I lived there.

Keep in mind Mrs. Moto and I are in our mid thirties, and look it for the most part. I think interpretation should have favored us.

Thanks.

100

Also I have received a refund from ticketmaster

The infamous guns n roses/metacilla tour I Wanted to see both and about 3 weeks before they were to go to sand diego axls voice gave out and the tour was put on hold andn o one knew when it was going to be rescheduled

I returned the ticket …

Whats worse it when they did finally have the concert they had my favorite rapper Ice-t opening

I should of just seen if i could of gotten a rain check