It hasn’t even been a month since our last dead Bank of America customer story, but here the bank is at it again, refusing to let a woman’s son close her checking account no matter what he does. Although she lived and banked in Tennessee and he lives in Pennsylvania, the latest nonsense has the bank demanding that he visit Texas in person to get a document notarized. [More]
runaround
Luxottica Customer Service Is Just As Broken As Your Sunglasses
By 7.20.10
As we noted last week, Luxottica is the company behind pretty much all eyewear on the market these days, and you know what that means when it comes to customer service: if you don’t have to compete to keep your customers happy, why bother? That’s why Patricia is facing a ridiculously high repair fee, but can’t get through on the provided phone number to tell Luxottica to cancel the repair. In fact, every time she calls she’s put on hold and then disconnected. [More]
Family Heirloom Wedding Bands Enter Kay Jeweler, Are Never Seen Again
By 2.9.10
Mistakes happen, and apparently there was a hole in the UPS box and all the rings fell out. No really, that’s what this customer’s wife was told when she asked for an explanation of where their rings were. Now the customer says Kay Jewelers won’t give him any other information, or even show him photos of the rings after they were sent to the warehouse. They’ll replace them with jewelry up to $500, but nothing higher, and if he wants to find out anything else he’ll have to lawyer up. Here’s his story. [More]
Why Won't Time Warner Fix The "Old, Overtaxed" Wiring In This Neighborhood?
By 2.1.10
Alex from Rochester, NY, says every year around this time his Road Runner high speed access slows to a crawl, and stays that way until April. It occasionally happens at other times throughout the year, too. Unfortunately, Time Warner won’t fix the problem. Alex says one technician who came out to look at the issue told him, “The wires were installed when Adelphia provided service, and they haven’t been upgraded since.” Another one told him, “The problem has been going on for years, and management knows about it, but enough people don’t complain.” [More]
Bank Of America Took Customer's Name Off CD, Won't Give Her Access Now
By 2.1.10
V. and her parents are having a heck of a time cashing in the certificate of deposit they opened jointly. She says it just matured, but she’s in Canada (she doesn’t say where her parents are) and they gave power of attorney to another party. BofA won’t deal at all with this other person, but what’s worse, V. says they’ve taken her name off the account entirely. [More]
Wells Fargo Will Let You Refinance For No Closing Costs Online
By 5.20.09
If you’re saddled with a Wells Fargo mortgage, now would be a good time to slash your rate and payment through little effort by hitting up the bank’s streamlined refinancing program, which under certain circumstances lets you refi without being gouged for closing costs.
Why Is It So Hard To Cancel Your EFax Account?
By 5.4.09
In Slate today, Timothy Noah describes his hour-long ordeal to cancel the eFax account he never uses anymore. If you’ve ever tried to cancel an online service, you probably already know how this story goes: it was impossible to find a “cancel my account” link anywhere on the site, support numbers were no help, and a scripted service rep tried to shove an extension on him instead of simply providing customer support.
Dell Breaks Customer's New Laptop Remotely, Won't Send Him Replacement
By 4.20.09
Anthony has been a long-time Dell customer and has shared his positive experiences with friends and family, but that’s come to an end thanks to Dell’s abysmal customer service. It’s been one month since he first received his new Studio 15 Laptop, which worked correctly for 4 days. Since then, he’s been on the phone with Dell for a total of 14 hours, he’s watched a Dell CSR remotely break his laptop by interrupting the BIOS flash, he’s been locked out of the data on his hard drive, and there’s still no replacement laptop on the way to him. When he copied us on this email, he added, “All I wanted was the computer that I paid for long ago.”
Why Is Nokia Charging Customers More Than The Invoice Amount?
By 3.31.09
Nokia has already had a few problems rolling out its new touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic phone, including earpieces that go bad in humid weather and firmmware that wouldn’t work on certain big-city 3G networks on the US model, but now they’re screwing around with something serious: customers’ money.
Xbox Live Cancels Year-Long Prepaid Account, Demands Another Year's Subscription To Reactivate
By 3.25.09
Xbox Live has struck again, this time by screwing up the auto-renewal on a customer’s account and ruining the prepaid annual membership he activated just three months ago.
"TicketsNow Hangs Up When I Say 'Refund'"
By 3.12.09
TicketsNow has a pretty explicit guarantee that if the tickets you buy aren’t good, they’ll refund the money. In Sean’s case, they seem to have found a way to avoid delivering on that promise: they just disconnect whenever he mentions the word “refund.”
Outside Magazine Will Send Your Free 2009 Calendar When It's In The Discount Bin
By 3.3.09
Outside Magazine offered Tracey two free 2009 Calendars if she signed up for an annual subscription early last December. She thought her dad would enjoy the magazine and the calendar, so she accepted. Now it’s March and there’s still no calendar, and Tracey says every time she calls to complain, they tell her they’ll send it. In the meantime, her dad still has no idea what day it is.
Turbo Tax Tells You To Print An "Extra Form" But Won't Say Which One
By 2.22.09
Turbo Tax told reader I’m A Super that he needed to fill out an extra form to complete his state tax return, but wouldn’t tell him which form. Just to be safe, I’m A Super re-downloaded Turbo Tax only to get the same error message. When he called Intuit to ask about the mysterious form, he was that it was solely his responsibility to call the State Tax commission and to review his tax forms to make sure nothing was missing.
Circuit City's "Free Shipping Day" Promise Turns Out To Be Worthless
By 1.7.09
Circuit City promised that if you ordered from them on December 18th, you’d get free shipping and a guarantee that your order would arrive before Christmas. It turns out that promise was worthless, at least for Brandon—or rather, it’s worth exactly $5 in company scrip from Circuit City. (We love apologies that force you to shop at the company that screwed up.) Circuit City’s CSR even says that the December 18th offer doesn’t exist, despite the fact that their logo is still up on the freeshippingday.com website as of today.
14 Weeks And Counting, But Limited Edition Zune Still Not Fixed
By 1.5.09
The 30-gig Zunes may have temporarily revolted last week, but Brooke’s limited edition 80-gig Zune has been MIA for over three months now, apparently lost in that magical ever-transitioning Zune world from the commercials. (It just keeps falling through floors and walls and swimming pools.) Maybe someone at Microsoft can take a look at what Brooke’s had to go through so far, and get back to her with a real answer?
Discover Won't Let Man Opt Out Of Arbitration, Even Though Their Terms Allow It
By 9.3.08
When John signed up for a Discover card a few months ago, he noticed an interesting item in the fine print—he could opt out of binding arbitration if he sent in a written request that contained a few lines of necessary info and his signature. John followed the instructions, but Discover rejected it. Since then they’ve rejected his request a second time, failed to call him back when promised, and transferred him to CSRs who don’t know what the word means. The latest news: now that 30 days have passed, he’s no longer eligible to opt out. John’s thinking about canceling the card.
