Bally’s Fitness Club does not allow members to cancel. Try to do it at the club and they refer you to the website. The website makes no provision for cancellation. They have three customer service numbers and only one offers a cancellation option – but if you pursue it they say the volume of calls is too great and hang up on you. They charge $10 for a customer service call. When I managed to cancel via my credit card, they billed me at home.
They also charge more than some other clubs and offer fewer classes and other services.
American Airlines. I’d post the details of my last trip, but frankly, just getting it this close to my conscious brain is making me exhausted and furious. Just never ever use them. Ever.
Back when AOL was popular, I had a friend who worked in the department where he was supposed to keep people who called from canceling their accounts (I believe in the real world, this is called the “cancellation dept.,” though at AOL it was called the “retention dept.” IIRC). First, he would offer a free month of AOL to dissuade people. Then, he told them, among other things, that:
These are just from memory of what he told me while he was there. He soon moved on to a less soul-crushing job and is a much happier person these days.
I was booking a domestic flight for three on American Airlines on the Travelocity webpage. The total for the three tickets was close to $1000. Anyway, I submitted the order and waited, and waited, and finally the website timed out.
Okay, no big deal. I logged back in, confirmed that I did not have any flight reserved, and re-booked the travel. After I was done, I checked my account to make sure I had only purchased the tickets once. There they were.
The next day, I get a call from a Travelocity customer service associate in India. He says he is calling me because there was a problem with the website and my ticket order didn’t go through. I said, “Are you sure? I got a confirmation and everything.” He said no, no tickets were issued, would I like him to arrange the tickets for me? So I said sure, and we made the reservations there on the phone.
You probably guess what happens next. I get an overdraft notice from my bank, because I have purchased six airline tickets for $2000. Checks are bouncing and everything.
So I call T-city. Get passed around. They keep saying I ordered tickets twice, and they are non-refundable. Ask for the supervisor. Ask for the manager. I am getting really, really pissed off. Finally the supreme leader of Travelocity customer service puts me on hold to call American Airlines. He comes back and says they’ve agreed to refund my tickets. When do I get my money back? One month! One fucking month to get my $1000 because the twit at Travelocity didn’t listen to me when I said I ALREADY HAD TICKETS.
I wrote a letter to Travelocity detailing my experience and vowing never to use their service again. Never heard back from them. Got my money back a month later (but not my bank fees).
That was at least three years ago and now I’m all pissed again just thinking about it. :mad:
Can we include companies that we were employed by?
A certain ‘Wild West Town’ (ie- theme park) in Illinois (I won’t name names, but it’s not like there’s a lot of them) hired me and a whole bunch of my friends a few years back. Let’s make a list…
Pay was awful, but we knew that going in. Minor nitpick.
Constant changing, at a whim, of our job descriptions, mainly as a power-play between the various members of the family who ran the place. (“Joe told you ‘x’? No. You should be doing ‘y’.”)
Impossibly conflicting orders (being in two places at once) that, when observed / noted upon, would be responded to with, “Well, that’s your problem. Find a way to do it!” (No, sir, I can’t be both in the projection booth and in the front of the theater doing a lecture -at the same time-. I know you think I can, and I’m flattered, but…)
Making the sales jobs intentionally harder, then blaming the staff for sales being lower (the specific instance: Hot weather? Put free cold water RIGHT OUTSIDE THE ONLY PLACE YOU CAN BUY DRINKS. And the woman who was my direct boss feigned surprise when the take was down on days they did that… Then summarilly blamed me for it, because I obviously wasn’t drawing in enough customers.)
Passively-agressively abuse the staff to see if you can get them to quit (mainly by cutting work hours, eventually assigning people they wanted rid of to ‘no hours’; not firing them, just not giving them any hours until they quit.)
The icing on the cake (and I’m so glad I got out before this); realizing that the people who will still stick it out after the ‘no hours’ incidents will do -whatever- you tell them, so make sure they stay late (unpaid) and do the maintenance work in the park after you got rid of half your maintenance staff.
Place made my blood boil, and on the few occasions I drive past it now, it’s become tradition for me and my friends to flip the place the bird.
I had an experience at a Kmart recently that made me decide to never go again. (Big whoop, I hadn’t been in years anyway).
I was getting desperate in a search for black pants, so I figured I’d give Kmart a try. And believe me, my expectations were low when I walked in. The only clothing department that seemed somewhat defined were children’s clothes. On the other side of the aisle, there were racks and racks and racks of women’s clothing in all shapes and sizes, blending seamlessly into racks and racks of men’s clothing. Well, hell, I was desperate…after a long hard search, I had a pair of pants to take to the dressing room. In the dressing room, there was the litter from someone’s fast food lunch. No big deal, that’s Kmart for ya, right?
The pants didn’t fit, but by then my son had found some little toy he wanted to buy, so we went to the registers, where we saw two loooooong-ass lines. After we had waited a while, there was an announcement that anyone with less than eight items could be rung up in the jewelry department. So we went on over…and hung around for a while with all the other people who had heeded the announcement. No cashier in sight. After a while, we gave it up and returned to the front…hey, there’s a short line! So we get in that line and see that there is no cashier there either. The other people waiting said she’d stepped away to get a code or some such thing. So we waited a while… Finally I decided to return to the jewelry department and see if anyone had ever showed up. As I walked away, I passed a tiny little old lady bent nearly double. I thought she’d dropped something and was examining the floor.
Hmm, no cashier in the jewelry department…time to tell the kid this place is some cruel joke and none of this crap’s for sale. I returned to where he was waiting in line, and lo and behold, a cashier. It’s the little old lady, who is still bent in half. Laboriously, she begins ringing up purchases, and telling us that she hates her job. I want nothing more at this point than to leave Kmart forever, so I tell my son we’re leaving in three minutes, with or without the toy. Five minutes later, our turn!!!, and I give Kmart the last few dollars they’ll ever get out of me.
I thought it was just me – I’ve tried for the past two summers to find another pair of “classic Tevas” – like the ones I had and loved for years. Everything I see now is cheap and…over-designed. The ones I had were wonderfully simple, just good rubber and (i guess) nylon straps, all adjustable, etc. Whats so hard about this?!
Christ. I was with Cox for 6 years (finally got fed up and cancelled last month) and far from giving me “anniversary gifts,” the service kept getting worse. They would progressively charge more and more for less and less while offering smokin’ deals to new customers in their commercials. It was like rubbing shit in a loyal customer’s face. By the time we left, our bill, for cable and basic high-speed internet, was $137 a month. And we had 0 premium channels, no sports package or anything like that, etc.
When they told me that they could only narrow it down to a full day, I think I would have responded. "Umm, No you can’t. It WAS narrowed down to Monday (for example) but from what you’re telling me it might get here as late as Wendesday. So, really, you can only narrow it down to a three day window.
From there, I would have gone back to BB and told them that the sales person PROMISED it would be delivered at 9am on Monday, but the shipping company said they’ll be there sometime between 8am Monday and 7pm Wedesday, and asked them what I’m supposed to do with that.
The problem is that cable companies have a monopoly. Once they are in a certain area, it’s nearly impossible to dislodge them. If you want cable service, you have to have the one company assigned to your area. Satellite companies, on the other hand, do have to compete. I can get DirecTV or Dish Network or anyone else. As it happens, my package at DirecTV is better than what is available now to new customers. Cox just would have raised my rates and or eliminated some of my channels without informing me. DirecTV grandfathered me in. When I called to check on what was available last year, the DirecTV rep told me that I shouldn’t change because I was getting a better deal now.
I went back to BB and complained to the manager about the specific salesman and lying to me about the shipping policy. He said there was nothing I could do, outside of a return of the TV to the store for a refund (of which the shipping fee was non-refundable, and a restocking charge would be deducted). So all I got was a shrug, and left even more pissed off.
When I moved out of my old apartment, I did due diligence and told them when I was moving with a service shut off date, my future address for my last bill etc.
Assuming everything was fine, I was surprised to see gas bills for 2 months after I had moved. Apparently on my “shut off day”, they could not access the gas lines, which were in my locked in a utility room or something (???). If they had told me when they were coming I could have waited for them or told the landlord. I did not even know they needed me to be there. They did not say when they were coming.
But the fact that they just shrugged and went “oh well” without even telling me really pissed me off. I was responsible for 2 months of gas bills for a place I didn’t live at, and I certainly didn’t want make the next tenant miserable by dragging them into the mess.
All of our accounts are there because they are everywhere and it would be a nightmare to transfer everything somewhere else. The Paperwork !
But, every farking time I go into a Chase bank they try to upgrade my account to something else and hard sell me on shit I don’t need.
One of the last times I was in there the bank nazi told me I was being charged X amount a month for our main account when I could be getting it for free. I forget all the details as a cloud of red anger floated down over my eyes to discover that the account we’ve had for oooooh …since we’ve been married ( 15 years at that point) should have been an automatically free checking and why wasn’t it automatically converted over instead of PESTERING people with SALES!!!111!!! I should mention for the jury, that it was the SAME ACCOUNT NUMBER AND NO DETAILS HAD CHANGED AT ALL. fuckers
I had some polite words for her that were pretty controlled and through gritted teeth and I think I scared the Bank Nazi with the fact that despite my knitting needles and kids ( whom I could release like flying monkeys in their hermetically sealed world with just a look) , I can think for myself and I said I wanted a full refund for all the service fees for X amount of years for not having this done sooner. ( It didn’t happen, because they are ASSholes.) but boy did that assistance manager to the assistant manager to the assistant manager’s butt pucker.
Another reason they suck donkey balls is some of our BFF were buying a used car off a private seller. The husband works about 35 miles from where we live and had scoped out the cars by his work on his lunch hour. They got their loan from Chase in the town we live in, took the day off of work for both of them to drive down to take care of the loan/transfer/stuff down there at the chase right around the corner from his office. Turns out with CHASE, the loans are not transferrable between offices.
**
WTF.**
So, not only do they and the car seller lose a day of work for this nonsense, they have to do it all over again the next day, but after work. I was recruited to be a part of the driving for reason as they were each coming from work and needed a third driver to drive a car back home.
OMG Circuit City - I’ve already vented my experience against them but I think it’s been lost in the mists of time.
I bought a laptop and had the foresight (I thought) to buy the extended service plan (because I’d heard laptop screens were troublesome - this was in the wayback of laptops, when they were “new” and “quirky.”) So about a month before the plan runs out part of the two-section power cord dies. I take it back to the store. They tell me they’ll have to send it back and wait for a replacement. I say “what about the jillion cords you have laying around the store.” They say “what cords laying around the store?” I say “how about a loaner cord while I wait?” They say “what with the who now?” I say “grrrr!” I come back a couple weeks later - they come out with a cord that looks just like mine - in fact it IS mine…they forgot to send it in. OOPS! Come back in another two weeks. No, we can’t replace it with one we have in the store, we can’t loan you one either. I come back two weeks later and they say “no, it’s not here yet, come back in two weeks.” No and no. I come back in two weeks and they have the cord. Wait…they have A cord. It’s THE WRONG CORD. It’s been six weeks now (this might have gone on even longer, I forget) and I start to hyperventilate. “THAT. IS. THE. WRONG. CORD.” The counter person scurries off to find a manger. The manager opens up a laptop box and WHAT DO YOU KNOW??? A power cord MAGICALLY APPEARS!!! He says let’s go plug it in and make sure it works ok. We go hook it up to my laptop and make sure it boots up alright. As soon as everything fires up ok I start to calm down and am dying to get out and no shit the guy has the balls to say: “You know, this has a {blah blah} screen…you should think about upgrading to a {blah blah blah…}” I slammed the laptop closed and yanked the cord out of the wall and gave him the world’s biggest stinkeye and said “Thanks for the tip, I sure as HELL won’t be buying it here!” He seemed SERIOUSLY surprised! Seriously!!! SERIOUSLY!!! :rolleyes:
Swearing is perfectly permissable outside of the Pit. I don’t know where people get the idea that it’s not.
When I get told “can’t be done,” this is my cue to ask for the next person up in the chain of command. Usually, you eventually get to someone who’s been given the power to fix things. You just have to be really, really pushy about it. (In the firm, insistent, and maybe slightly angry sense–no yelling, no verbal abuse.)