What's the worst company you ever had the misfortune to deal with?

In My Humble Opinion
21

too late for edit:

( I would like to point out that the above is exactly what used to happen when I first dealt with this company to try to get the service fixed. Right now I wish for two things - That this is in the pit (so that swearing is permitted), and that my ability to swear creatively is such that it can satisfy my desire to offend those responsible for the ineptitude of this company and that I can satisfy myself in the process. But I suspect that no such swear words exist that could accomplish that. And that my englishness* is not enough)

[sub]*The English are a nation of creative swearers[/sub]

22

Summitsoft Corporation, makers of macXware, third party makers of Mac software. Bought their cheapo version of Toast and couldn’t even get it to copy over to my hard drive. No phone number anywhere on the packaging or in the instruction book. Found their website and went to the help forums and resurrected an old zombie thread full of other people with the same problem and no response from the company to over a year’s worth of posts. $30 for a coaster.

23

When I decided to cut short my vacation in New Zealand, the folks at Air Canada agreed to rebook my return flight to an earlier date. Imagine my surprise when, after a trans-Pacific flight from Auckland to Vancouver, they informed me that they in fact did not rebook my connecting flight to Edmonton, and that I was stranded. See, the connecting flight was an Air Canada Jazz flight, and those can’t be rebooked, for some reason (“it’s policy”, no doubt). Apparently, those suffixes that Air Canada assigns to some of its flights-- Zip, Jazz, and Tango-- are codenames indicating progressively shittier service. I eventually persuaded them to give me a discount on a new flight to Edmonton, but they said that no seats were available for about two days. I decided to pay full price for a flight home on WestJet.

24

Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Company. HSBC. The worlds worst bank.

25

Sears for various reasons.

26

The worst thing I’m dealing with is Citibank.

Last July (2008) I sent them a payment of $70.00 they failed to credit me the payment. I paid via postal money order.

Citibank says “they never received payment.” I put a trace on it, and the post office sent me back a copy of the money order CASHED. It has the date, the deposit and Citibanks says “I don’t know what to tell you, the money isn’t in that account. We can’t help you.”

Citibanks wants a copy of the original money order sent to them. No one is going to give me that. The US Post Office sent me a copy of the M.O front and back. But Citibank says the copy isn’t good enough, they need the actual money order returned so they can verify it was cashed.

I said “Look it ought to be easy, there’s a stamp, an account number on it, the date it was deposited. Just look at your books on that day.”

Citibank comes back with “A copy of the money order cashed isn’t good enough, we need the original.”

So much for that huh?

LOL

27

I had a credit card with (I think) Citibank. I paid off all my debts when we sold my grandparents’ house, and that’s when I noticed the continuing deposits of over $200 each month into the credit card account. Now free money is hard to argue with, but I wasn’t going to assume that this was somehow really free money.

The customer service women and I got into literal screaming matches as I refused to accept their line. They told me over and over that there was no possible way in any-colored-sky world that they could even imagine how to to find out where this money was coming from. Despite their computers being contacted by another computer and swapping account information and agreeing to money exchanges, such information would never ever be on any retrievable record.

I finally figured out it was from one of those “we’ll help you get out of credit card debt” companies, that didn’t know I didn’t need their arrangements any more.

I’ll never do anything with Citi again.

28

Oh, I forgot about the principal at the HS I teach at. She’s notorious for making up rules straight out of her butt. She told a girl she needed a doctor’s note to use a crutch (who goes to the doctor for a mildly sprained ankle?) She enforces dress code rules on complete whims, with certain boys being able to wear black jackets with beards for months, while others get tagged repeatedly for just untucking their shirts (yes, it’s strict uniform school).

But the best one, that she would have gotten almost literally punched down at a normal school, one that didn’t have the kind of parents that we generally get, was telling parents who were standing right there at the door that it was “policy” (which it wasn’t) that they couldn’t have their own children back until after the dance officially closed. And people put up with it! She should have just been told to call the cops while the parents marched inside and told her to stuff it. I still get mad thinking about it.

29

I cracked the cover to my car’s tail light and ordered a replacement online. I gave them my credit card number and waited for shipment.

A few days later, I get a call from someone at the company saying they needed my credit card number. After determining that yes, this was the company I had ordered the tail light cover from, I asked why they needed it again, since I’d already given it and had a confirmation number of my order.

I was told the ordering and shipping computers were not connected, and they needed my cc number again. There was no way in hell I was giving it to such incompetent boobs, so I told them to stuff it and went to a local parts store, which I should have done in the first place.

30

Teva, the sandal company. Bought a pair of sport sandals from them back in the 90s and loved 'em. After I wore them out I ordered the exact same thing but when I got them, they were totally different. Key componenets failed immediately. Sent them back for “evaluation”. Took months and months, repeated emails got “check back later” responses. Finally got a replacement pair of a different style and they sucked. About one mile of wear resulted in the skin on my ankles wearing through to the bloody part. Threw them to the back of the closet and haven’t worn them since.

Maybe not the absolute worst (yeah, Dell, I’m lookin’ at you!) but the first thing I thought of. If I had the endurance I’d post the whole Dell story.

31

Well, I got pretty shitty service from Apple. I was trying to set up an iTunesU site. So I asked how do I set it up?

They said, “we don’t support a free product. Figure it out for yourself.” OK, is there a manual? “Sure.”

I read it. The instructions are completely obtuse (doubly annoying since back when I had my Apple ][, I always admired how simply and well written their manuals are). Can I get advice? “We don’t support a free product.” I go to the Apple Boards* and they say, “yes, the manuals are hard to understand. Ask around.”

But they have some scripts. Maybe one will work. So I find the one that seems to apply to my case. No actual documentation, but there are comments. Written in the imperative case, not the indicative. Thus, every bit of instructions are telling me what I need to do, not what the program is doing – even when describing what the program was doing.

I had to get a Ph.D. professor in Computer Science to look at it. He couldn’t actually do it, but was able to find a script somewhere that gave us basic functionality. God help us when we need to get more granular.

Oh, and at about the same time, I was having a problem with Microsoft Silverlight – a free product. I was able to send in a trouble ticket listing my problem, and not only did they give me suggestions, they also kept contacting me to make sure that I had everything fixed. But, of course, Microsoft is an evil corporation that doesn’t care about its customers and Apple are nice guys. :rolleyes:

As for Travelocity, the only use I’ve found for those travel sites is to find names of hotels. Then you go to the hotel site and book the room directly with them. It always saves money.

*Computer help boards are OK for a basic problem, but I have never ever gotten any useful technical advice from them on anything I asked. I’m usually asking some technical stuff, but either no one replies to my post or someone replies without actually reading what I’m asking.

32

Cox Communications is a nightmare to deal with at any level, for any reason. They are a monopoly and don’t give a fuck about your issues.

Chase was horrible when they held our mortgage. Threatening phonecalls to my wife and family within days of our very first late payment after paying on time every month for over 3 years. They would call 50, 60, 70 times a day like a 7th grade boy who just got blown off by his girlfriend, and literally start hurling insults immediately if one of us tried to talk to them. The funny thing was, we delayed our payment because they wouldn’t talk to us because we’d never made a late payment. It was quite honestly a bizarre strategy on their part. I pondered very hard whether I should call police or whoever the proper authorities would be, file suit, etc.

Wal-Mart employees are notoriously incompetent and my experience jibes with the stereotype.

33

I’ve had customer reps for Yahoo DSL and D-Link tell me that they’ve never heard of iTunes. The D-Link guy almost insisted that my connection problems were because iTunes (a nasty Apple product) was incompatible with MS Windows. (It turned out to be a really bad Motorola router/gateway that couldn’t handle high traffic.)

HOW do you hire companies that have employees that don’t know of programs like iTunes? Buying the cheapest and FAR from the best, that’s how.

34

Huh? If it was a credit counselling service, I assume you were still making payments to that service and they were allocating the payments to your creditors as set forth in the agreement you entered. Didn’t they give you monthly statements to show where the money was going? And why wouldn’t you keep the credit counselling service updated on the status of your debts? I’m not sure Citibank is the one at fault here.

35

AmeriCorps*VISTA.

36

Also, Citibank likely wasn’t in direct contact with your counselling service in these electronic transactions: AFAIK everything like that goes through a central clearinghouse called NACHA. I’m not sure how “blind” the transactions are on the receiver’s side, but I could believe it may very well be that they have no info on who originated the transaction.
(Board timeouts caused me to miss edit window :rolleyes: )

37

In the early days of cable internet when I was still hanging onto AOL just for an email address that all my friends and family knew, I called my service provide for help with a technical issue and they told me - literally - “AOL is a virus. We can’t help anyone who has it installed on their computer. We recommend a full format of your hard drive.” And yes, they knew we were talking about America Online.

38

Sears.
We picked out the dishwasher we wanted and were told the delivery fee would be $192.00 and that a licensed electrician would be needed to hard wire the thing as it was no longer legal to use a plug connection on a dishwasher. I told the salesman he had no idea what he was talking about and went to Home Depot, where we got free delivery. When I told the Home Depot guy about the hard wiring expert at Sears, I thought he would laugh himself sick.
For years and years I always bought Sears appliances, tires, and batteries. I wouldn’t buy a $20.00 bill for a nickel from Sears now.

39

As a customer: A local garage-door company. Ended up in court over 2 stupid doors. I stomped his hide in! :wink:

Otherwise: Radio Shack. I had the misfortune and bad judgement to work for them. Read some of the stories at RadioShackSucks dot com. Pay close attention to the “Golden Shower” refrences! :smiley: Yeesh! What a nitemare that was!

40

They may be trained, for one reason or another, to not acknowledge another product. Several years ago if you were to call Time Warner about any problem that required them to ask you about how you have everything set up and the word TiVo popped up, they would start asking questions about what a TiVo is. After explaining it to them, they would decide that the TiVo was the problem* and that you must use their DVR or nothing will work. Now, they are much better and helping you integrate your TiVo.

*I have companies that do that. Yes, I know, a third party product in the mix may be the cause of the problem, but don’t flat out assume it is and refuse to talk to me until I remove it. AT&T used to do this with their high speed. The second you said the word router (or ALL the computers don’t work, etc…) The next line would be something that about how they don’t support routers and that the router is causing the problems and you have to plug the LAN cable directly from the computer to the modem. Now, again, I can appreciate them wanting you to remove the router because it may make troubleshooting easier, but I really don’t think it’s the first thing you have to do. Luckily, nowadays, they’ll save that for later in the troubleshooting and actually work with you to see if it might be part of the problem.