Consumerist
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we're working on it
Why Can't Microsoft Help Get This Guy's Stolen Xbox Live Account Back?
Erik has been patiently trying to get his stolen Xbox Live account back for a month and a half now, but all Microsoft has done to help is lie and fail to follow up on phone calls or emails. Oh, and there was that one point where they sent "how to get your account back" instructions to the person who had stolen the account, which sort of defeated the point. More » -
installations
Comcast Guarantees You Will Have Your Entire Day Wasted
We're happy for Comcast that it's a giant company and all, but is it really that impossible to have someone in Connecticut talk on the phone with a Connecticut-based customer about a no-show installation tech who we presume should also be in Connecticut? Maybe that's the problem—maybe the technician was accidentally outsourced and is presently driving around Mexico or the Antarctic looking for Karah's address. More » -
sears cares
Sears Finally Delivers Air Conditioner, Follows With Barrage Of Phone Calls
Remember Eric, Fleur, and their epic air conditioner ordeal? When we last spoke to them, they were AC-less, hot, cranky, and reaching out to the Internets for help. Now they have their air conditioners, but only after a stunning show of disorganized solicitousness on the part of Sears. More » -
movers
Awful Movers Move Woman To Tears
Moving is never easy, but San Francisco resident Carleigh thought her transplant from a one-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom condo wouldn't be so tough. Ron, a customer service rep from Starving Students movers, talked a good game, convincing Carleigh the company could pull off the move in the three-hour time window the HOA demanded. More » -
DSL disasters
AT&T Reserves Its Best Neglect For Elite DSL
A Consumerist reader has pretty much reached the limit of poor AT&T customer and technical service over his shoddy Elite DSL account, which for two years now drops to speeds of around 10k every four months. Check out this letter and included chat log for some stunning examples of all the ways AT&T fails at providing a service it charges lots of money for. More » -
incompetence
Mow-It-Right Mows Down Vegetable Garden, Won't Replace It
Jason hired a lawn company in Memphis, Tennessee, and then recommended them to a friend. He regrets that now, because they mowed down the friend's vegetable garden, and seven weeks later they still haven't replaced it and have stopped communicating with the garden's owner. More » -
big mistakes
Emailfinder.com Sells Wrong Info, Now Woman Has To Show Up In Small Claims Court
Some guy in London fell for an online iPhone scam in January, so he paid $150 to emailfinder.com to track down the identity behind the Hotmail account of the person who scammed him. Now he's suing Kim, who is completely unrelated to this story (or was, at least), for $4,368 to cover the $1200 he lost on the iPhone scam plus travel expenses for him to show up in small claims court here in the U.S. More » -
bureaucracy
Everyone Knows How To Handle A Stolen Checkbook Except For Verizon
Yesterday I was musing that Time Warner Cable was passing the cost of customer care off to other businesses, by requiring customers to take half-days or full days off of work just to wait for a cable repairman. Today I think I stumbled upon another hidden economic impact of bad customer service: it's responsible for generating a lot of the "free" content online. The next time you're reading an IMDB entry about "Damages" or "Big Love" for example, you can thank Verizon's collection of angry, confused, and possibly insane employees, and all the idle time they create for a customer who has to deal with them. More » -
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moving
Rent A Truck From U-Haul If You Want To Stay Put
Chris and his wife moved recently. To do so, they rented a truck from U-Haul. They planned ahead, booked their truck in advance, and did everything correctly. They just had the audacity to request a truck that wasn't located an hour away from their new home. This was apparently too much for the U-Haul infrastructure to handle. More » -
A cancer unit at the V.A Medical Center in Philadelphia "operated with virtually no outside scrutiny and botched 92 of 116 cancer treatments over a span of more than six years." The team even continued to perform surgeries for a year after a key piece of equipment broke. [New York Times] (Photo: OakleyOriginals)
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continental airlines
Continental Puts 10-Year-Old Child On The Wrong Plane
UPDATE: Continental Offers Free Flights, Frequent-Flyer Status To Misrouted Child's Family
Sure, airlines misroute luggage all the time. But how about misrouting a ten-year-old girl to the wrong state?Yesterday, Jonathan's ten-year-old daughter boarded a plane from Boston to Cleveland to visit her grandparents. She flew as an unaccompanied minor, meaning that her family paid an extra fee for airline staff to keep an eye on her and make sure she was taken care of and ended up where she needed to be. They didn't. She ended up on a plane bound for Newark, NJ. More »
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incompetence
Hank Paulson Admits He Never Really Understood How Mortgage-Backed Securities Worked
Here's more proof that the people who probably should have known how they were making all that housing bubble money never did—even those who personally made tens of millions off of it. The Business blog at The Atlantic notes a quote Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO and Treasury Secretary, gave Newsweek: "I didn't understand the retail market; I just wasn't close to it." More » -
amex
Don't Move House If You Have An Amex Card
Here's a cautionary tale from a Consumerist reader whose credit card companycontacted his out-of-date phone number and got authorization for a $4000 spending spree.withdrew thousands of dollars from his bank account for a payment he had supposedly scheduled and then OK'd over the phone. The problem? He hadn't scheduled it, that wasn't him on the phone, and that wasn't his phone number. More » -
orbitz
Orbitz Can't Deliver On Tickets It Sold, But Can't Deliver The Refund Either
Austin bought two tickets to Aruba last December. By the end of February, Orbitz had changed his itinerary so many times that now they were only flying him as far as Atlanta, and 11 days later were flying him back from Aruba—it was apparently up to him to get from Atlanta to Aruba in the first place. At this point, the only option was to request a refund, which Orbitz said would take 60 days. Two months later, Orbitz told Austin that they'll give him his money back in 60 days. We're pretty sure that's 120 days total, and there's still no guarantee Austin will see his money. More » -
florists
This Florist Has A Loose Grasp Of Geometry, Flower Arranging
Erik ordered an unusual flower arrangement for his wife earlier this week. The clear vase had four sides and flared slightly, and the bottom quarter was filled with rocks, with water rising a few inches above them; 12 long-stemmed orange roses stood up straight from the rocks—the stems perpendicular to the water—and formed a flat, solid bed of rose blooms at exactly the height of the vase's mouth. If that's hard to picture, remember the florist had an image to work with. Then take a look at what Erik's wife actually received. More » -
target
Target Employee Incompetence Freezes Nearly $800 Of Customer's Money
Erica, who writes Philadelphia Weekly's Style blog, went to Target this past Saturday to purchase some new tank tops. She and her boyfriend filled their cart with a lot of other stuff too—"Ready to stimulate the economy?" she joked to him on their way to the register—and they agreed to split the cost equally. Now when I worked retail, that was an infrequent but not impossible task. When you ask a Target cashier to do that, get ready to have your debit card debited twice for the full amount of the bill, and then told two days later that the voided transactions will take 72 hours to clear. More » -
follow ups
Comcast Fixes Customer's Modem Problem After Stinky Installer Man Disappears
Earlier today, Jessica wrote to us about her Comcast horror story: there was something that smelled terrible, and the smell was coming from inside her apartment! He also hooked up her replacement modem incorrectly, so it still didn't work, then said he'd be right back and drove off forever. Luckily, she was able to steal enough wifi to send an email to Comcast, and as of now the problem has been resolved. More » -
reservations
US Airways And Delta Duel Over The Phone For Most Incompetent Airline Ever Award
Want a great example of the broken state of airline customer service in this country? Try a four-way conference call between yourself, Amex Travel, US Airways, and Delta. You'll see firsthand how CSRs from the two airlines can play the "it's not our responsibility" so well that even a devoted Amex Travel rep can't get them to solve your problem. More »
incompetence
New York, 4:07 AM
Tue Nov 10
22 posts in the last 24 hours
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