Your worst Retail experience

[draftermatt]

This seems to fit here...

Another forum I'm on was discussing their worst experience in retail. Not as a worker, but as a customer. You know, those times you went or almost went SC, but were justified. And I thought, hey, that seems like a great thread for this hear forum, we've all dealt with bad customer service before.

So I'll start with my two stories, and I hope others will post theirs.

I bought a dishwasher from Lowe's and got the "protection plan" since it was a "last of it's style' kind of thing, last one one the rack, on clearance.

The dial ends up malfunctioning a few months down the road (won't turn off, getting way too hot). I call and schedule an appointment, and the day before call and confirm that my time window is 12-5 PM.

Day of the appointment I go into work at 6 AM so I can get as many hours as I can get in. Around 9 AM there's a call for me, and it's the company doing the work. "You weren't there, so we have to reschedule"

I'm livid. I tell them they weren't supposed to be there till the afternoon, they tell me I was wrong. I tell them I called to confirm, so they tell the tech he has to come back later.

Then I call Lowe's again and yes, my time was 12-5 PM.

So I go home at 11, and then by 3 I start calling to see what the story is now. (We had a wedding rehearsal to be to at 7 PM). 3 times I get told that I'm "next on his route" but each time they tell me that he's in a different town than where he was the time before. And he's moving further away from me.

They try to tell me it's because he's doing his own thing, not following the route. Then he finally calls me and says he'll be there at 6:30. I tell him to forget it, and I reschedule it with the office, I also request to speak to someone in charge about all of this, and I'm told they'll call me back.

I wanted my money back (lost wages) and I wanted an explanation.

After a few days of no contact (rescheduled appt hasn't happened yet) I start calling again and I'm told again I have to wait for a manager. Then I'm told they should have called me already. One lady had the nerve to tell me that I was wrong, my appointment was for in the morning. She actually hung up on me. So I reported her ass for bad customer service.

In the end I got nothing out of it as no manager ever called me, and it was against company policy to pay me back for lost wages.

But the guy shows up next time, and says he'll order the part. Also, once the part comes in to call and schedule an appt and he'll be back out to fix it. This was a Tuesday.

On Monday the part shows up, so my wife figures she'll see what her next day off is and then reschedule.

Tuesday we get a call complaining that we aren't there! The idiot tech rescheduled himself to come out and do it a week later right after he told my wife to wait for the part and call!

My wife is livid this time, so she calls to complain. Why did he come after he told us what to do?

Then they finally come out and get it fixed.

Because of that I always ask "who does the service" when I look at appliances and they are trying to hock the protection plan on me.

[draftermatt]

My wife & I moved back in October. One of the first rooms in the house to get a makeover was our master bedroom. Part of the makeover was to replace the TV and get an HD and mount it on the wall.

We go to Sears because we want it installed with all of the wires hidden.

We pick a TV we like, and get a discount for buying the floor model. We tell them the type of install we want, and we pay.

A guy from the loading dock comes by to pick up the TV to "box it up" and tells us to drive around to the dock. So we go over there and they hand us the TV on a cart, no box, no instructions, just a TV, cord, remote control.

Ok, whatever.

A few days later the company doing the install calls. They are a little miffed at Sears because 1) They weren't supposed to let us take the TV, Sears was to store it until the company came to get it, and 2) Sears didn't sell us, or tell us to buy a 8' co-ax cable.

They tell me the soonest date they can be there is June 11, I tell them that date only works for me if it's after 3 PM. "No problem, we can work around that"

June 10 rolls around and my wife gets a phone call. "We will be there around noon does that work for you?" My wife explains to them that it does not, which is why I told them only after 3 or don't schedule it.

Next morning I get a call "We can be there at 11 AM, does that work for you?" Again I explain the above.

Then the tech calls at 10:30 saying he's a half hour away, so I tell him to forget it. He tries giving me the riot act about how they can't hold appointment times, I explain to him what I told his office, and he then agrees with me somewhat.

Office lady calls me back because she heard I told the tech to go elsewhere. She apologizes saying "they do their own thing, they don't stick to the schedule I give them"

We reschedule it for June 18 because my wife has off that day.

Later on I call and ask to speak to a manager/owner. The lady (same I've been talking to the whole time) doesn't put me on hold so I can hear her telling him the whole story and acting like I'm going to be lying to her. The owner picks up the phone ready to fight, half yelling about how the tech is actually a trainer, very respected, lives across the state so he drives the furthest out and then comes back towards home.

After he shuts up I tell him that my problem is that his office pushed the date on me. I told them I would only accept June 11 if and only if they would hold to a 3 PM time. So don't call me and ask "Does 12 work for you" after I've already said it doesn't. So he calms down and says they'll be there on the 18th.

June 17 rolls around and I don't get a call from the company. So I call them and get their machine, I leave a message.

June 18:

I call, leave a message again. Their machine mentions another number you can call so I do. They tell me they have nothing to do with TV installs so to call the first number. I tell them I did and no one is answering. "Oh someone is there, they'll call you back if you leave a message"

I keep calling to no avail. Then I start calling the Sears store and getting disconnected every time. So I call Sears corporate who tries the store and gets disconnected. But they "left a message to have a manager call me". They also opened a ticket about the issue.

After no calls from anyplace I call again. This time I get the store manager. She calls around for me and says "They say you're on the schedule but if they don't call you by 1 PM call me back" and she gives me her personal cell #. No call, I call her. She gives me a number to call and it's Sears corporate again. wallbash.gif

Anyway, they try calling the company to do the install and they say that they talked to someone. The normal lady is out sick so someone else is handling it. This person knows I'm on the schedule, but they don't know who the tech is, or his cell phone number but are trying to find that out and someone will call me. Oh and that ticket they said to have opened earlier? Didn't exist.

In the meantime I call the install company back and leave a very nasty message (I didn't realize how upset I was until I started raising my voice and just talking, brain to mouth filter shut off completely). "No way to run a business" and "I can't believe Sears would deal with such an unprofessional company" were the worst that I said however.

It's now 4 PM and I'm home, my wife has wasted her whole day off because she didn't know when they might come. I call Sears Corp again as I haven't had any contact in hours. I even tried calling the install company a few times on the way home to no avail.

Sears Corp again cannot get anyone. They left a message though, and based on Sears Corp's last conversation, they are still convinced they'll be there, but call back in an hour (5PM) if not.

So 5 PM rolls around, I call Sears Corp. After the same song and dance they offer to give me a discount and send a "more reliable" installer.

I tell them no thanks. I'm returning the TV as soon as I hang up the phone, you've also lost my business if these are the kind of companies you deal with. And I buy a good many tools, power tools, etc for myself and my father. Not to mention I had every intention of buying patio furniture in the next month.

So I go to Sears, return TV. Lady in electronics remembers me, and remembers my calling a few times. She can understand though and says "we've had a lot of complaints about installers not showing up"...

But it doesn't end there my friends.

The next day my cell rings, and it's the install company. I send it to voicemail. Listen to the message and it's the "other" owner. He claims they were evacuated due to a gas leak, and if I had called the other number on the machine then they should have told me what was going on. If not he'll have to talk to them, etc.

So I call him back and get his voicemail. I leave him a message with all the events of June 17-18. That I called the day before, no tech ever called or showed up, Sears claimed to have talked to someone saying someone was sick. Never was a gas leak mentioned.

He never called me back.

A week later my wife & I went to Tweeter. There we got a better, bigger TV for about $200 more total! Not to mention they mentioned things about the install that Sears never did, and that if Sears wasn't prepared for I would have not been happy with the end product. TV was installed earlier this month, and we are in love with it.

[Jbball]

Horrible tv story. I can't say that I have anything to contribute, as in a story. I'm just lucky I can install my own home theatre system if I needed to.

[DeltaSierra]

I actually am guilty TODAY of being an "almost SC" (though I've probably been labeled being SC by the employees, it wasn't intentional!)

The local SEARS is having a huge warehouse sale, so my Mom and I went to check it out and look at what they had on clearance. I was in need of a few new tops and stuff, and there were no less than FOUR huge racks of clothing with a big yellow sign reading, "50% off original ticketed clearance"

To me (and my Mother who was with me,) that meant that we would get 50% off the clearance price.

Now, around the store there were some signs that said "35% off original price" or "50% off original price" - that's clear as a bell. But these signs said off original clearance - which I take to mean, the first CLEARANCE price they've put on the item, NOT the original price.

However, the salesclerks insisted it meant 50% off the original price, not off the clearance price. I had originally meant to purchase 5 tops, and my Mom had 8, I put back 3, she put back 5 and we made our purchases, but weren't happy.

My Mom called the store head office to express her frustration, and how the signage was misleading. She was told the store manager would call her back the next day. So this afternoon she gets a call from the store manager, and my Mom explains the issue. The manager as well said its 50% off the original ticketed price "And it clearly states that on all the signs" she says.

Mom asks her if she will stay on the phone and walk over to the clearance racks and READ what the sign says. Reluctantly she does, and ends up reading it back 4-5 times on the phone like SHE'S trying to understand what it means, as well.

In the end, she agreed with my Mom, and we took our items back, got 50% returned, and were able to make any other purchases we desired (as long as there was a red clearance tag on the items) and get 50% off the clearance prices.

We also noticed that ALL the signs had been redone stating a certain percentage off ORIGINAL prices.

So we might be sucky, but in the end, the Manager agreed with us, and on our way out, one of the sales ladies who we had spoken to yesterday was leaving as well and told us we were in the right but she wasn't "Allowed to say anything." So at least there's somebody who worked there who wasn't upset with us.

[powerboy]

My father had bought a shirt the day before. They didn't have changing rooms. SO he bought it and tried it on at home. Well it was the wrong size (same size he wears, but it was smaller).

So we took it back. And when we got up to the counter, we got called thieves. All because it was not in the system. Yet it still had the tags on it and we had the receipt. We had them call a manager. The manager started in about how we shouldn't be trying to scam them.

We told them that we had prove that we did buy the shirt. We showed it to them. Then the manager was still pissed (probably because she had to get off her fat ass) and gave us our cash back. We wrote to the SM, and let him know what happened. We were not SC's about it. And they gave my dad $100 gift card for what had happened.

[Anakah]

Currently we are battling Aaron's rent-a-center (more like rip off) because they are basically ignoring us. Our couch fell apart like the first year we got it and we're still making payments and should still be covered until the payments are done.

Well, I finally got pissed and very calmly asked them for the seventh time to please come out and fix it. They sent this old, extremely creepy guy to my apartment. He made a comment about me being fat and causing the sofa to completely fall apart on the bottom. We have wood pieces hanging on the floor. I was WTFing cuz I'm not that chubby and how rude!

Futhermore, he promised he'd be back and fix the damn thing.

Two months later. Not one word. I am getting very frustrated at this point.

I made hubbie call, figuring they're sexist or something. Nope. They wouldn't listen to him either! Everytime we call, they say the guy is out on a job, day off or they'll "call us back."

We have about three months left of payment on the couch. Should we just make them take the damn thing back or keep trying to get it fixed? We've spent almost two grand on the damn thing too! We always pay on time and aren't rude even though we are at our final straw.

I know I can't get a refund but this is getting ridiculous!

[Anakah]

I don't know if this is really "retail" but I was a customer.

My man and I were newly starting out and didn't have a lot of money. We lived in a shitty trailer in a trailer park. Which is nothing to be ashamed of and I was actually proud to have owned my own place.

Anyway, we didn't have a car yet and yelled Domino's for a pizza. It was a treat for us because like I said we were low on money.

Anyway, the wait was like over two hours and when the guy got to our space, we paid, tipped and got inside. Well, the pizza was burnt to a crisp. It was disgusting.

We walked back to the pay phone (Yeah, didn't even have a phone nor did we have a shower or a toilet in our place, had to walk to the public everything) and call the place back. They said they'd be sending out a new pizza.

I admit it, we did a stupid thing. We tried to eat some of the burnt pizza. We were starving and when you don't get to see pizza a lot, its damn tempting.

So, the driver comes back out and we show him the burnt pizza.

DR: (Driver) I see that you've eaten some of it.

My guy: Well, yeah we were starving but look at it...

They talked for awhile and it ended up the DR insulted us for living in a trailer park and in a trailer. Basically thought we were trying to scam him. In all honestly we were not. We just wanted what we paid for.

It was uncalled for to have him insult us because of our living situation. I never judge people for that kind of stuff.

So, DR left and bascially told us we were money grubbing, trailer trash. He gave us the other pizza but by that time we were upset. We were kids. Okay, so eighteen isn't exactly that young but we were newly introduced to the concept of living on our own.

Anyway, so, my man was really upset and ended up calling the manager and explained things to him. The manager sided with the driver. We told him that we'd never do business there again. Like that meant much but it was really sucky.

We weren't SCs right?

[allegrasparkle]

I have no where near the bad experiences with electronics that some of you guys have, my pet geek is very handy But here is my worst one.

I had just had my daughter she was about 2 months old at the time and I stopped to the pharmacy to pick up my BC pills and "latex supplies" (one of my brothers was taking and FX course so he could make films and he used them to fill with blood." Teenage checker with no brain to mouth filter looks at my purchases and goes " A little late for these Ehhh?" Le sigh.

[Rappunzill]

We had to get a car part (don't remember what, doesn't really come into the story). While my husband was looking for it, I looked around at cleaning supplies. See, when we got married, my new bro-in-law decided you could decorate a car with silly string, in June. It melted, then hardened on the metal surfaces and soaked into the fabric. So, I walk up to the counter and ask the guy behind it if he knew of anything that could take Silly String off of cars. He gave me the most condescending look, then said, "Have you tried...washing it?" Utterly in shock. I reported him to management for that crap.

[draftermatt]

I don't know if this is really "retail" but I was a customer.

...We weren't SCs right?

I don't think so.

I've never understood the whole "you ate some of it therefore you have to eat it"

So if I cut into a steak and find it's blood rare I can't send it back because I cut it. If I pull a slice of pizza out, take a bite and it's disgusting I can't get a refund because I ate some of it?

I would have looked at the driver and said "Sir, you take a bite out of that, if you can eat it without coughing I'll let you go"

I mean you weren't asking to keep the burnt one and the new one, just to get a new pizza. If you had eaten all of it ok, but really?

[Rapscallion]

For me, that would depend on just how much had been eaten. I've seen many tales on here where someone had eaten an entire meal and complained it wasn't satisfactory to try and get their money back. A bite out is reasonable - you'd have to chomp to find out that something isn't right. Eating most of something and then complaining isn't. Depends where it falls, and other circumstances.

Had I been the manager in that situation where the edible pieces of the pizza had been eaten, I'd have considered making an estimation of how much was ruined. Over half and I'd have refunded the lot. Below that and a partial refund. That the pizza was burnt was indisputable, and it shouldn't have happened.

Rapscallion

[smileyeagle1021]

For the people who are surprised about Sears poor quality... let me say, I'm not...

the only time I've truly come close to being an SC was with Home Depot (I think I may have posted this story before)... I had to order 2 separate stoves (we didn't know whether or not when my kitchen was redone whether it would be plumbed for gas or electric... if Questar signed off on it then it would be plumbed for gas, if not it would be wired for electric)... they said that come time for delivery just tell which driver which one we needed and he'd take the other stove back and we'd only be charged for one... guess what I saw on my next credit card statement... yup charges for 2 separate stoves. After 2 weeks of trying to get Home Depot to refund the stove that was sent back and yeah I was ready to go SC on them (as it was they didn't take me seriously until I showed them the letter I was preparing to send to one of the local news stations consumer advocates and realized that they had no footing to stand on for not doing the chargeback).

[Javarod]

Well, I have the Dominos story I alluded to on another thread. This was back in January, just after they started the whole 'pizza tracker' thing. 'bout 1940 I placed an order, and watched the pizza tracker. About 2000 as one would expect it was ready to be delivered... And stayed that way. At 2110 or so my partner turned the driver away, his explanation was that they were short on drivers. Ummm, it took 70 minutes to deliver a pizza 4 miles away? Even better, filled out the complaint form on the website, and got... Nothing. Haven't ordered from them since, and don't plan on it. How much was I spending? Well, this was before my repeated hospitalization when I had more money to spend, I ordered pizza twice weekly, usually from Dominos, and my orders were typically $25 on average. -=chuckles=- Yes, $50/week on pizza, or in other words, $2600/yr

[MoxisPilot]

This is going to be long, and is still ongoing. My phone service is through Telecom Italia, with my internet going through what I can only assume is a subsidiary called Alice.

When we first were hooked up in February, a number of things went wrong:

1. Our internet didn't work, though they insisted it did. We had technicians come out five times, before they finally figured out that the line had been "struck by lightning" and would need replacement, which they finally did.

2. We were told to access our account and bills through Telecom's website. All our account information would be sent to an e-mail address assigned to us by Telecom...which could not be accessed unless we first accessed our account. We couldn't access the account without signing into the e-mail system which we couldn't do without accessing the account. Does your brain hurt yet?

3. Because we couldn't access our account, we couldn't access our bills. The Italian postal service can't find our house (we didn't know that until last week, though), so we weren't receiving anything by mail. We weren't able to pay an installation bill we didn't know we had because we couldn't access our account online.

So, we're up to speed. The bill had not been paid, so they turned everything off.

It has now been a month and a half. The bill for the installation has been paid, along with any other money we owe them. They turned on our telephone line again on July 8th. No internet, though.

July 8th: We call. The service rep answer and tells us the internet should be back on. It isn't? They'll have a technician come out by Friday (the 11th).

July 14th: No internet. We call again. We are informed that they will have the internet on by Friday (the 18th.)

July 18th: A friend of ours, fluent in Italian, calls them back. The rep tells him there's nothing he can do about it until Tuesday.

July 22nd: We call. They say that accounting says we haven't paid our bill (we have). We call accounting. Accounting says we *HAVE* paid, but they need to dig deeper to find out the real reason why we haven't been connected to the internet. Call back tomorrow.

July 23rd: We call. Again, we are given the run-around. Internet will be hooked up by Friday.

July 30th: The friend who was originally handling the situation (back in June) comes back from vacation and calls them. They tell her we haven't paid the new bill (we have), and they can't give us internet until we do. She gets the real story from us, and calls them back again. They say, "Oh, you need to fax the bill payment confirmation to us." We do. They say someone will call us by 8:00 P.M. We jump the gun and call them, and they tell us there's a problem getting us connected because of some problem down in town that has no logic. NO LOGIC. They say they'll fix it by Friday.

It's now Thursday; I'm sitting in the base library, leeching internet.

We call, and we always wind up talking to someone new who doesn't know or care about the problem.

I can't really blame the Telecom employees, though. They get paid maybe 400 Euro a month for 48 hour weeks. The company can't fire people who do a shitty job because of the unions.

Telecom is poorly run, there's no communication between departments (or employees), as one department may be all the way up in Milan, while another may be in southern Italy, and they obviously don't have a good record-keeping process. It's the only company available for internet service right now, unfortunately.

It's gotten better, though. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, it used to take two years to arrange to have a telephone line. Up until 2001, it used to take two months. Now, at least we have telephone after a week or so, if not internet.

I have to admit, though - I was pretty humiliated yesterday. Our friend is Italian (hence the wonderful help she gives us- she knows the system); when she got on the phone with the service rep, she told them we were Americans, and Telecom was embarassing Italy by giving us bad service. Way to make us sound like total SCs.

[draftermatt]

2. We were told to access our account and bills through Telecom's website. All our account information would be sent to an e-mail address assigned to us by Telecom...which could not be accessed unless we first accessed our account. We couldn't access the account without signing into the e-mail system which we couldn't do without accessing the account. Does your brain hurt yet?

Comcast did the same type of thing. I kept calling to find out what to do to get my e-mail and all that set up (thankfully I was doing paper billing) and they're like "well you have to log in to do that" Really? How do I log in when your installation tech ran out the door before giving my wife any instructions or passwords, or usernames, etc?