Any company you refuse to use?

[Cletus Van Damme]

Sky - The crap my mother had to go through with these c***s to cancel the Sky services in her house, that were in my fathers name, whom is in a nursing home, with advanced alzheimer's disease, and vascular dementia was disgusting. She had been on the phone on several occasions and my brother once. They told my mother that they needed a copy of the original power of attorney document, in PDF form. My mother is a stress head at the best of times, but with my father recently going into a home, it made things worse. She was told if she stopped the direct debit she would be referred to a debt collection agency, for non payment.

My brother sent a long email with the incorrect document, and got a sh1tty reply off them. In the end my mother got the correct document from the social care worker, and I scanned the huge thing to PDF. Wrote a snotty email and eventually they cancelled it. How a company has to stick to its guns in this situation is beyond me, Why they would think that somebody would make this up. I guess you can't blame the staff, they have mortgages, debt, probably ruled by fear like so many large companies are nowadays.

A truly horrible company. Hopefully they'll lose customers, as they are over-priced, and a bit archaic, and keep hold of most customers due to the way they have the monopoly on sports, forcing people to sign up to hundreds of channels of crap just to watch it.

Ryanair - only flew with them once, seeing how rude people are when no seats are allocated, and proceed to form a stampede, was enough for me. On the return flight, I purchased a yellow ticket to get priority boarding, only to find out that they never even bothered calling them! This experience, plus what I've read about them, put me off for life. I had a holiday nearly booked through On The Beach this summer. I phoned them up to book it, when they told me the flight was with Ryanair, I just said I'm not interested. Despite the adviser insisting that they now allocate seats, I still wasn't doing that. I ended up going to a different Canary Island, same hotel chain, different departure date, but with Thomas Cook Airlines. It cost no more either.

 

[Joffey]

Rapha - they are everything wrong with modern day cycling

 

[Drago]

Ryanair. Customer racially abused a poor black woman, and instead of chucking the offender off the plane they make the victim move instead. Well, not with my money they won t.

 

[alicat]

Ryanair. Customer racially abused a poor black woman, and instead of chucking the offender off the plane they make the victim move instead. Well, not with my money they won t.

Sadly, I suspect most budget airlines would have done the same: time and logistic pressures and the situation not fitting in standard procedures. I hope that Ryanair will learn their lesson.

 

[Drago]

Well, that needs to change, and I will not use any carrier that places time and logistic pressures ahead of racial abuse.

 

[steverob]

Sky - The crap my mother had to go through with these c***s to cancel the Sky services in her house, that were in my fathers name, whom is in a nursing home, with advanced alzheimer's disease, and vascular dementia was disgusting. She had been on the phone on several occasions and my brother once. They told my mother that they needed a copy of the original power of attorney document, in PDF form. My mother is a stress head at the best of times, but with my father recently going into a home, it made things worse. She was told if she stopped the direct debit she would be referred to a debt collection agency, for non payment.

My brother sent a long email with the incorrect document, and got a sh1tty reply off them. In the end my mother got the correct document from the social care worker, and I scanned the huge thing to PDF. Wrote a snotty email and eventually they cancelled it. How a company has to stick to its guns in this situation is beyond me, Why they would think that somebody would make this up. I guess you can't blame the staff, they have mortgages, debt, probably ruled by fear like so many large companies are nowadays.

A truly horrible company. Hopefully they'll lose customers, as they are over-priced, and a bit archaic, and keep hold of most customers due to the way they have the monopoly on sports, forcing people to sign up to hundreds of channels of crap just to watch it.

Can I ask roughly when this happened with Sky? I only ask because my mother had the complete opposite experience with them a few years ago when her Dad (my Grandad) had to go into care - they were very helpful and incredibly understanding. When she questioned them about it - because she'd had bad customer service experiences with other companies, much like the one you describe Sky giving your Mum - and they said they'd only recently set up this specific team to deal with issues like this because they were becoming more common and needed a different approach. If your experiences were quite a while ago, maybe it was cases like that that prompted them to fix it. However if it was much more recent then it seems like they've abandoned that approach unfortunately.

TalkTalk were the worst offenders that my Mum had to deal with, insisting that she gives them the care home phone number so they can ring my Grandad (who at this point barely knew who he was) to confirm that my Mum had POA over his affairs! That case, plus the fact that they disconnected one of my best mates' broadband without any notice - despite the fact that he was with BT at the time (he'd left TalkTalk three months before because they kept screwing up his account) and didn't even apologise, means that they are a company I'd never consider going with.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

Holidayextras.co.uk
First of all it's cheaper in most cases to book the parts separate. But I also found that they send sod all info to hotels and parking companies, making their lives much more difficult. I was told last year that all they sent to one place was my car registration number and the date.

 

[Drago]

Any company owned by Phil 'wandering hands' Green.

 

[lane]

Any company owned by Phil 'wandering hands' Green.

I was thinking that - but he doesn't seem to own any companies I would be likely to want to use anyway.

Sports Direct - both because of the owner but also because its crap.

 

[NorthernDave]

Holidayextras.co.uk
First of all it's cheaper in most cases to book the parts separate. But I also found that they send sod all info to hotels and parking companies, making their lives much more difficult. I was told last year that all they sent to one place was my car registration number and the date.

That sounds familiar to Black Circles, the mobile tyre fitting company.
Firstly I booked an "AM" appointment, not spotting in the small print that "AM" in their world apparently extends to 1pm.
Then when the fitter turned up all he had was my postcode, reg number and mobile number - he showed me the work order and it was just LSxx xXX.

I would use them again though, primarily because of the attitude of the fitter who was absolutely spot on, but also because they're cheap. Cheaper even than Costco for the tyres.

 

[simonali]

M&S

Apple

Starbucks (not for the tax avoidance but because their coffee is foul and usually far too hot)

Aldi if I can possibly help it

Carphone Whirehouse, who replaced Phones4U as my most despised phone shop

Edited the final name, as it turns into a link if I use the proper one.

 

[ianrauk]

M&S

Apple

Starbucks (not for the tax avoidance but because their coffee is foul and usually far too hot)

Aldi if I can possibly help it

Carphone Whirehouse, who replaced Phones4U as my most despised phone shop

Edited the final name, as it turns into a link if I use the proper one.

Why Aldi?

 

[Gary E]

Hermes!

 

[screenman]

Toni & Guy.

 

[simonali]

Why Aldi?

Just find it cheap and nasty. I did my first ever shop in a Lidl the other day and probably won't be going back there either. I only went in to take advantage of a branded dog food offer and didn't buy anything else. I also don't like the scatter gun way everything is arranged in these two shops with that big jumble sale bit in the middle and no signs showing which aisle has what in it.