frustration

Attention Shoppers: We're interested in your opinions about the upcoming holiday shopping season. What drives you up the chimney? Is it the music? Black Friday? Rebates? Christmas Creep? Let us know!  More »

Reader Len recently found out that it's sort of impossible to order shampoo and a book from Amazon at the same time. They'll just keep sending you a shampoo-covered book until they eventually give up and refund your money. Trouble is, Len didn't want a refund. He wanted a shampoo-less book.  More »

Reader David's FiOS DVR really sucks. Since it's his 5th one — he's starting to suspect that they all suck.  More »

Can we tag a story "above and beyond" if the customer service cycle is so screwed up that it eventually works out in the customer's favor? When jpodbuild tried to get his Craftsman sander repaired or replaced, he couldn't get anyone on the phone who could actually help him—eventually he would end up back at the first number he'd called. He decided to show up in person and let the store manager handle the phone calls. New sander!  More »

Whose problem is it when your iPhone needs to be activated? Nobody seems to know. It is a mystery.  More »

Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but reader Robbie has done everything short of hire someone to wait for his package, and still FedEx will not deliver it. Instead, despite Robbie's best efforts, they keep leaving "Sorry you weren't here" notes outside his door.   More »

Reader Laurynn wants to warn Verizon customers to stay away from "OneBill," because according to several of the 7 different CSRs she talked to today, it's "not ready yet."  More »

The Austin Business Journal says that a new survey shows Americans are fed up with flying and have been avoiding it -- and hotels and restaurants are suffering.   More »

Reader Dave is not having a good day. Time Warner Cable is being spectacularly unhelpful. First they changed the name of his company to his wife's name. Then they double billed them. Then they sent a guy out to his house to physically disconnect his internet. Then another guy came to disconnect someone else's cable and disconnected Dave's instead. Finally, while he was trying to fix the double billing issue he got a TWC CSR that kept asking him why he "felt" like he was being double billed. What a mess!  More »

Forbes Traveler has put together a list of the top 10 most annoying airline fees, and it's a good one -- or is it a bad one? Airlines are feeling the effect of skyrocking oil prices and they're trying their best to pass the costs along to you, their customers, without driving down demand. The result? These delightful fees. Gotcha!  More »

A link to the following letter to T-Mobile's president just popped into our inbox. It seems that if you receive a T-Mobile Sidekick for Christmas and it's defective... your options are fairly limited. T-Mobile's best solution to your broken phone? Sell it on eBay.   More »

There's something deeply wrong with HP these days. It seems that instead of just fixing your laptop's overheating issue, they'd rather accuse Amazon.com of selling fake HP laptops and deny your warranty. Reader Floria says that even though she got a letter from Amazon stating that there's no possible way they sold her a fake or refurbished laptop, and then escalated her complaint to a "senior case manager" who approved the repair, HP still hasn't fixed her computer. Is anyone in charge over there?  More »

Evening, Consumerist Editors (and hopefully readers)!  More »

Ticketmaster is suing RMG Technologies for selling lecherous software that instantly sucks up tickets to everyone's favorite concerts and sporting events. Groups like RMG are the reason tickets sell out just minutes after going on sale, only to mysteriously reappear at outrageously marked up prices on ticket resale sites like StubHub.  More »

In August, my husband and I wanted to change phone carriers from Sprint to Helio. We first looked at the Sprint website to see if our contracts were up. It appeared that my contract was up in January 07 and my husbands was expired by July 07. We called Sprint to make sure. The person we talked to said there was some 1-year renewal that was given to us with a $50 rebate in 2006. We didn't remember doing this. The man we spoke to said he would get rid of the rebate and add it on to our last bill and not charge us the $150. Great! We thought.   More »