I’m with you all the way. The boxes get smaller and the prices get higher. Within a few years, they’ll be asking ten dollars for a box of nothing but crumbs.
I’ll echo others on McDonalds. Their damn “burgers” have always looked like somebody sat on them.
And Wal-Mart…I despise their labor practices. “Lower wages, every day!”
But I reserve most of my ire for Home Depot–mainly because I live behind one, and since they changed management about a year ago, they have deprived my entire neighborhood of sleep for weeks on end because they won’t stop working on stuff behind the building at all hours of the night and early morning. It got so bad last year that I wrote to them, got no response, called City Hall, wrote to the corporate headquarters, and finally the city police wound up slapping them down for disturbances. I wish their managers had to spend a week camping out in our backyards so they could listen to the endless “serenade” of forklifts, beeping, rumbling, shouting, loading, unloading, brackets and sheet metal and lumber being dragged across the parking lot, etc.
Actually, things have settled down and it’s much better now. But we never should have had to go through that siege.
Sprint. The telemarker lied to me (or was grossly mistaken) about the price of calls to England. I ended up with a bill over $1000. They eventally cut it to $500 and I paid to cut my losses. I couldn’t believe how awful they were about it.
Albertsons - when I used to smoke I went in and wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes, and they refused to accept my Ontario driver’s license, the checkout girl said that they had a new store policy that said they only accepted California ID or military ID. I explained to her that I wasn’t even American and how could I produce such ID. She said sorry I needed valid California ID so I left and went to 7-11. I think that policy was dumb.
Unless it’s particularly outrageous or I’m already in a bad mood, I’m usually quite oblivious to minor shittiness of service, such as long waits. I am very patient for the normal irritations of life.
That said:
Multimags. Mistreated Hamish when he worked there.
Radio Shack. Took advantage of Hamish’s technical ignorance and swindled him.
Copie 2000, a copy shop near my university. I asked them if they were able to take an image from a diskette and print it as a CD label. They said sure, but I’d have to come back tomorrow morning. I came back the next morning, explained it again, and turned in my diskette. They said to come back that afternoon. I did. They said to come back in a half hour. I did. After waiting for 20 minutes, they still hadn’t talked to me! I asked if there was a problem, and the guy said they hadn’t understood my instructions and that they couldn’t do what I was asking. Um, the time to tell me that is when I first come in – not after keeping me waiting for 24 hours and when my presentation is in an hour and a half!
McDonald’s. It’s shite.
Chapters. I much prefer to shop from independent bookstores. I order gay and lesbian titles online from Little Sisters in Vancouver, or from the publisher in the case of small presses.
When I was moving from NJ to FL with my boyfriend at the time, the U-Haul store in NJ told us they “might not have the right size truck for us” so that we could move all our stuff down. Luckily, we were able to get the size truck we needed (and reserved in advance, mind you), but that’s still not news you want to hear at the last minute. As far as I’m concerned, if it’s reserved, it should be there waiting for you.
Also, when my parents moved from NJ to FL a few months after I did, they needed a car transport in addition to a truck for an antique (undriveable) car of theirs. Well, the day of the move comes and U-Haul didn’t have a transport, even though my Dad reserved one. To make matters worse, the a/c died and a tire went flat on the truck they wound up with. So they had to leave the car in NJ (luckily my parents were friends with the people that bought the house from them) and pay for the expense themselves to go back up to NJ from FL at a later date and bring the car down. My mother battled with U-Haul for about a year trying to get them to reimburse for the cost of having to go back up to NJ again to get the car. I think the most my parents got out of them was about $50. Give me a f’ing break.
There’s a KCF near us that we haven’t been to in ages. It’s one of those KFC/Pizza Hut combo places that has the personal pizza meals with breadsticks.
They are almost always out of breadsticks, but they’ll try to charge you the full price for the combo meal, even if all you end up with is the pizza. When they do have breadsticks, they’re stale and hard as rocks. The frequently leave out the biscuit on the chicken meal, and only in about one out of every five tries will you get the side you asked for.
Qwest DSL is shit. It was literally non existant for the first 2 weeks I got it. Spent everyday on the phone with those hunyuks trying to get it to work. They finally said I would have to pay 80 bucks for a tech guy to come out and test the line. Told them forget it, I’ll just go cable.
Hung up and called the customer service line and tried to cancel the DSL. The lady on the other end was making a very simple request into a long drawn out battle I tell yas. After I wouldn’t budge on my request, she stated that Qwest would credit me one month and send a tech out. Sounds resonable, so I continue on with the service.
The tech comes out, sez nuthin’s wrong with the line and its a problem with DSL. Ensue one department blaming the other. So after a month of not having DSL, but not paying for it, I cancelled and got cable.
Hasn’t been much better than DSL customer servicewise, but at least its not Qwest. Just to spite them, I cancelled my telephone service with them as well.
Another is Earthlink. I joined up with them about a year back just to get a free Webcam. Yes, I am that cheap. Right before the trial was up I called to cancel my account. Would you believe the pre-recorded message said the wait was 2 HOURS long to cancel the account?! Gaining a brief insight, I decided to call the number to sign up. Got right thru to a person. Hung up again, and called the number to cancel and waited for 2 HOURS. The hottest parts of hell are reserved for businesses like these.
IHOP - A bunch of us went there the morning after grad night. It wasn’t opened when we arrived, we had spent the whole night at the beach and when we arrived, it was something around 5:30AM, and they opened at 6, so we waited in their small parking lot chatting with each other although not everyone there were friends with each other. A few early risers joined us waiting for it to open. When it opened, we started heading in, and one of my friends started to tell the waitress how many people were our table and he got a curt “It doesn’t matter, you’re ALL sitting together” and hussled us into a small corner of the place. We sat for around fifteen minutes before anyone acknowledged us. We had to ask for the menu maybe around four times before the waitress hastily plopped them down in front of us and rushed off. We explored the menu and decided what we wanted to get. We signaled that we wanted to order a lot of times but either we got ignored or got a “I’ll be right with you” and we’d never see her again. So then my friends and I got frustrated and one of my friends went up to see how the other kids were doing. Two out of maybe twenty tables had their orders taken and the early risers already had food in front of them. So, not to take the slighting in stride, we stood up and left, even the two tables who had already placed their orders. They lost a lot of business because of that. Imagine it, twenty tables with at least four kids at each table. My table had six of us, and some even managed to cram eight. And some of us (like me) have never been back.
Burger King - I love their chicken sandwiches, but haven’t been there in almost 6 months and probably won’t go back. When we moved to our new house, we’d drop by Burger King pretty often. Probably 70% percent of the time, the order was wrong, but since it was usually something along the lines of ketchup instead of mayo or something, I’d just scrape it off and add mayo. Once it was really screwed up and I called and they replaced the meal. That was nice. The last time we went, I ordered a chicken sandwich (I’d given up on ever getting a burger the way I wanted it and switched to chicken.) and my husband ordered some kind of burger. We got home and opened the bags to find 2 fries, and one burger, which wasn’t even the one he ordered.
I called them and told them that we’d ordered two sandwiches and one was missing and they told us to bring it back, along with the receipt, and they’d give us the correct food. I drove back up and asked if they’d replace the fries as well as the sandwiches, since they were cold by now. I was harassed by the window girl first, for not bringing back two sandwiches. I told her that I’d only received one and she rolled her eyes, sighed and called the manager over.
Manager: “You have to bring back both sandwiches if you want us to replace your meal.”
Me: “I only received one sandwich, and it’s not even the one we ordered.”
Manager: “You can’t eat part of the meal and expect a refund!”
Me: “WE ONLY RECEIVED ONE SANDWICH.”
Manager: “Well, your receipt says that you ordered two, where is the other one?”
Me: “You tell me. I drove away with one sandwich, that is why I called and came back.”
Meanwhile in the background, the original cashier is making rude comments. I finally told them that I just wanted my money back, and that we’d wouldn’t be back since we never could seem to get a meal that was 100% correct anyhow. I’m sure that really hurt them, but it makes me feel better when I drive by.
I wrote in on their “comments/complaints” section, but never heard a thing.
A couple of years ago I got to go on one of the tankers when they came to fill up. It was called the “S.R. Mediterranean”(sp?). Turns out it is the rebadged Exxon Valdez. Big frikkin’ boat! And it is considered only a mid-sized tanker.
I’ll never again purchase a book published by Powerman Press International. I picked up their besteseller entitled “Success Through Self-Hypnosis”, and it had absolutely no eff BKAWK! BOK BOk BKAWK! ect whatsoever.