When you own a business, especially one that sells supposedly sassy socks and other items with humorous quips on them, you have to expect the occasional complaint when an attempt at humor goes over like a lead balloon. And even though you disagree with a person’s gripe, it’s best if you don’t accidentally forward her an internal e-mail calling her a “crazy bitch” and then follow it up with a message telling her to un-bunch her panties to “get some air up there.” [More]
bad customer service
Nail Salon Apologizes For Insulting, Racially Charged Tweets About Upset Customer
By 5.3.13
When a Texas woman felt she’d been slighted by a local nail salon, she took to Twitter to vent, not expecting that the salon’s owner would fire back with a handful of offensive Tweets that she now regrets writing. [More]
FedEx Kinko’s Employees Tell You Printing One Page Will Take An Hour, Shrug
By 12.21.12
Richard had to print out a few pages stored on an SD card. Fortunately, the printers at FedEx Kinko’s let you insert a flash drive, SD card, or even your phone and zap them right to the printer. How advanced! Unfortunately, not advanced enough that it could cope with the fifth page of his document. He had to ask the employees behind the counter to help instead. Their definition of “help,” unfortunately, was “make the customer wait an hour to print out one page.” [More]
Price Chopper Supermarket Emails Customer's Employer, Demands Disciplinary Action For Negative Tweet
By 9.21.10
Last week, a customer at Price Chopper in upstate New York tweeted a relatively mild insult about the store: “Every time I go to @PriceChopperNY I realize why they r not @wegmans. Tonight -bare produce areas & this sign 4 ex http://yfrog.com/2tfj9sj.” In return, Price Chopper contacted the man’s employer and complained about him. [More]
Samsung Not Sure Where Its Samsung Apps Will Work
By 9.15.10
James wanted to buy a new Samsung Blu-ray player that could download and run Samsung Apps, which are widgets that can connect to the Internet or–in the case of the Hulu Plus app–stream video content. He tried to make sure he knew what he was doing before making a purchase, because his whole point for upgrading was to access Hulu, but he still chose the wrong player. Or did he? No, he did. Right? [More]
CitiFinancial Auto Keeps Deducting Payment On Zero Balance Loan, Triggers Overdraft Fees
By 8.18.10
Marc’s monthly budget just exploded into a mess of overdraft fees thanks to CitiFinancial Auto’s negligence, and now he’s not sure how to get them to actually do anything to fix it. [More]
Don't Fall For Green Millionaire's 'Free Trial' Offer
By 8.12.10
If you watch enough TV, there’s a good chance you’ve seen ads for The Green Millionaire, which purports to be a free book that will teach you how to take advantage of government programs to do things like “keep your gas tank full for free” and “get big dollars to ‘green’ your home, even if you rent.” But some complain they’re getting more than the free book — they’re getting a pricey magazine subscription they can’t get out of. [More]
Delta Plays Airport Roulette When Flying Into D.C.
By 6.15.10
On Sunday, Andy emailed us from his seat on Delta Flight 2744 from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C., to let us know that he had no idea where his flight was going to land. The ticket he purchased said he was flying to Ronald Reagan National Airport, but Delta said it would all depend on whether they could beat their scheduled 10:19 arrival time and get there before the ten o’clock airport curfew–otherwise they’d have to land at Dulles. Strangely, they didn’t mention this 10 p.m. curfew to Andy before he bought the ticket. [More]
Do Not Market Your $8 Cupcakes By Insulting Fat People
By 6.3.10
There are a lot of things to keep in mind when launching a small business. One of them: try not to build your marketing around an insult a substantial portion of the American population. A small bakery in North Carolina forgot this important truth, and launched with the tagline “So Good It Makes Fat People Cry.” The slogan didn’t make anyone cry–it just pissed people off. [More]
Why Can't Macy's Reverse This Charge On Their Customer's Debit Card?
By 12.16.09
Amanda has been having a hard time getting Macy’s to reverse an incorrect charge on her credit card–a charge that was canceled less than five minutes after it was made last week. Her story includes almost all of the things that can go wrong with customer support, including random transfers, rude employees, and broken promises. If she’d just been made to hold for 45 minutes before one of the disconnections, she’d have collected the set! [More]
DragonCon Kicks "Looking For Group" Booth Because DragonCon Was Rude To Them
By 12.11.09
The staff of the annual DragonCon fantasy gaming convention seem to have decided to roleplay as Level 55 Lesser Jerks. Popular RPG parody webcomic “Looking For Group” says they’re not invited back this year because last year DragonCon staff moved their booth to a crappy part of the hall without notice, and then the staff were rude about it. Here’s the story of The Quest For The Steaming Brown Pile Of Subhuman Customer Service Goo Epic Fail: [More]
Funai Knows TV Broke Under Warranty, Hopes You Go Away
By 8.12.09
Back in February, Funai put a Consumerist reader on hold for two and a half hours before telling him that there was nothing they could do about selling him the entirely wrong DTV converter box. Now Funai has decided to head those long hold times off at the pass, and their warranty division has stopped answering the phone entirely.
Three Reasons Why Customer Service Stinks
By 8.7.09
Jay Goltz, a small business owner in Chicago, thinks there are three reasons why customer service is so terrible at so many companies.
Apple Sells Old Laptop, Wants Customer To Pay To Fix Problem
By 7.30.09
Will thought he was buying the newest MacBook Pro model—that’s what it said on the box and on the receipt. After he’d set it up, he discovered it was a previous model, so he took it back to the glass box Apple Store on Fifth Ave in NYC to get the version he paid for. Now Apple wants him to pay $100 to transfer his data over to the new laptop. But hey, he shouldn’t complain, because they’re “waiving” the restocking fee!
Urban Expressions Craft Store Calls Customer A Whore
By 7.17.09
The only thing crazier than people involved with wedding planning are people in the scrapbooking supply industry, it seems. Weddingbee reports that an online craft supply store called Urban Expressions (not to be confused with the handbag company) completely lost it when an angry customer wrote in asking why they had neither shipped the item she’d bought nor specified otherwise as promised. Their response makes us understand why they chose the name “Urban Expressions” for their store.
AT&T Reserves Its Best Neglect For Elite DSL
By 7.17.09
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.
HP Ruins Yet Another Laptop Repair—Three Times And Counting
By 6.23.09
Tyler needs his laptop repaired, but he’s got the bad luck to own an HP product. If you read Consumerist regularly you know that Hewlett-Packard has one of the worst track records for taking care of its customers. The last time we posted a complaint, the person who reached out to us from the corporate side was a third party at a PR firm hired by HP, if that tells you anything about how little they care about doing a good job. Read Tyler’s recap below and remember it the next time you’re in the market for a computer.
You Can't Bend Your Knee? Here, We're Bumping You To Coach
By 6.18.09
What does it take for an airline to retain customers these days? Here’s a tip: given the graying of America, try not treating elderly people with medical emergencies like crap. Livejournal user urzepatriz details how American Airlines added insult to his or her grandfather’s injury. Literally. By bumping him to coach on a cross-country flight after an injury sustained during the trip required major surgery and left him unable to bend his knee.
