Today I tried to contact someone at British Gas, my energy billing company. I failed, utterly failed Started live chat 48th in queue, 25 minutes later 12th in queue and logged out from website restarted live chat 58th in queue, looked and gave up Phoned, went through menu system and spoke to someone, after the FBI interrogation where I had given every detail I had, I mean every detail, as the last piece of information was given, line went dead. I still had not even explained what it was about. Waited as they had asked for my phone numbers in case they would ring back to recover the line they dropped. I should have known better. 10m later I rang again, went through the menu system only to be told it was now a 16m wait, so gave up went through complaint procedure and web form, took 6 minutes All in all about an hour of my time, all I wanted was my 11+ year old smart meters to either be automatically read, or even replaced so that my energy monitor would work and to ask them how long this would take as I have been waiting 14 months. Complaints have a handling time of between 7 and 21 working days….so I am not holding my breath. You would think when they only have one job to do, they would excel at it…but they clearly couldn’t care less about the customer.

I am sure this wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last for all of us. It’s rare you get to hear sorry after a long wait. The bigger the company, the greater the probability they will lack the basic courtesy. I won’t blame the folks on the other-side of the phone though. They are also like us. It’s the company culture and policy, tbh. 😊 Edit: They can learn a lesson or two from the likes of Amazon and Apple

dfk41 Just move supplier! Who to, who is better and I fixed my rate with them s it’s £200 to move (£100 per fuel). Besides, I’d just like them to do their job properly.

DavecUK Ah, I must have missed the part where you mentioned the fix you had done! In that case, sympathies matey

Yeah any type of phone based customer service interaction is usually about as fun as plucking eyelashes. The thing that makes me go ‘grrr’ is drivers using their mobile phone. I’ll walk through town past a queue of cars at lights and at least 50% are on their phones. Mum’s in their Volvo XC90, car full of family, can’t even get off their Instagram… If I’m on the motorbike and I see it in a car next to me I’ll usually have a word. They usually put it away. Just no excuse. Zero. As a designer I’m always trying to think of a tech implementation to just stop it from happening but with navigation, passengers, the fact you might be on a train/bus etc it’s hard to lock features using the motion sensor as you need to determine who the driver is. I noticed Google are able to determine if you’re on a motorbike (presumably by lean-angles and speed in the gyroscope) so we must be close to a method. It just needs to recognise that you’re a driver and then restrict functionality to navigation and hands-free phone calls.

Ernie1 Have to agree, using mobiles while driving is personally scary, not to mention 100% illegal in Qld. Very grrr. Only did it once, decades ago and the loss of vehicle control scared the chicken soup out of me. Seriously glad I’m not on a motorcycle or pushbike these days, it’s an unacceptable extra risk.

DavecUK unbelievably frustrating and making a complaint within a systemically broken culture li,e that is pointless.

tompoland Lol, a bit like having to communicate by phone with a government department. Make sure your mobile battery is fully charged 😴

CafeNoir I also hate phone automated call handling that take what seems like a lifetime to navigate a massive set of menus, all with very specific seeming options. Eventually when you have disappeared down a blind alley, with no question seemingly covering your issue, it’s press star and wait. Or when such a system just automatically hangs up on you!!!

Things that make me go grrr! Graffiti (and we are not talking Banksie’s here). Went on a trip to brussels a few years back and virtually every building in the centre had awful graffiti including really nice old buildings but even worse…even white vans parked for any length of time had graffiti scrawled all over them. Any TV programme that spends five minutes telling you what’s ‘coming up’ then re-capping after the break as if we only have the memories of a fish and excessive packaging just to name three.

things that make you go grrr!

tompoland

What amazes me about Amazon is I can get a book delivered to pretty much anywhere in the USA in two to three days. And that includes printing on demand. The logistics of that is mind boggling.

drdre89

tompoland no conspiracy. Read the Pfizer docs Pfizer released themselves

InfamousTuba

One thing that annoys me would be people that aren’t data analysts interpreting data and getting the wrong conclusion or purposefully misrepresenting the data.

Also delivery drivers who ‘attempt’ delivery even though I have been sitting by the door for the last half an hour

Ernie1

InfamousTuba

Totally agree on the delivery thing.

And it’s one extreme or the other. Chucking it down with rain, no porch, oh this seems like a great time to leave a cardboard box on the doorstep.

Also why is it the only time anything is returned to the depot and not left with a neighbour or on the doorstep is a bag of coffee on Friday morning when you’ve ran out and now have no coffee for the weekend!

Cuprajake

Incompetent people. I find this at work parts people are 95% useless.

DavecUK

Cuprajake I’m fecked then…

Doram

Time wasters on eBay. Not as bad as the other things on this thread, but still. Especially, those with complete disregard to the fact that there are other humans involved on the other side, just like them.

Put up an auction. Got loads of interest and dozens of bids. One j*** uses a snipping tool to snatch the sale at the last second under everyone’s nose, then vanishes - doesn’t pay and ignores all messages. Due to eBay’s policy, there is no option to cancel the sale and offer the item to the next bidders until all the interest is gone and you have to start over. Happened to me a few times already.

dutchy101

I stopped selling on ebay years ago when I’d have offers for my phone that never paid, but ebay still charged me selling fees. You could never get hold of anyone to speak to.

I had a friend have the same happen to him but they were unable to get the money from his account. They tried passing it over to bailiffs and wouldn’t respond to his messages explaining what happened. Horrendous company.

Doram

dutchy101 I stopped selling on ebay years ago when I’d have offers for my phone that never paid, but ebay still charged me selling fees. You could never get hold of anyone to speak to.

I never had a problem with eBay charging fees for non-paid items. It’s all automated, so if a sale fails for non-payment the fees are not paid. As you say, it is very hard to get the attention of a human when something is out of the ordinary, but unfortunately wasting other people’s time is a very ordinary thing on eBay, as there are no consequences to it (they get a strike, and when they have enough strikes to disqualify them - they open a new account and start over). It’s a shame, because there are mostly decent people, but some j**** spoil the experience for the rest.

dfk41

A few years ago, I sold an old Macbook as spares or repair, not working. The guy who bought it thought he new the fix and when he could not fix it, put a claim in saying it was faulty. Ebay paid out despite my protests. I had 1100 feedback and closed my account immediately. I only use them today through gritted teeth!

Doram

dfk41 A few years ago, I sold an old Macbook as spares or repair, not working. The guy who bought it thought he new the fix and when he could not fix it, put a claim in saying it was faulty. Ebay paid out despite my protests. I had 1100 feedback and closed my account immediately. I only use them today through gritted teeth!

I once bought a monitor and it arrived with a smashed screen. Posted a photo on receipt but the seller insisted I send the broken monitor back on my expense (!) for a refund. eBay didn’t want to know and I had no choice but to pay for return shipping. Fortunately this was the exception for me, and mostly my experience was fine. Non-payers, on the other hand, is very common. eBay could do more to fight this, but they don’t.

dutchy101

I’m going back probably almost 20 years and was selling a mobile phone at the time. I had someone from Nigeria ‘buy it now’ and offered me money via a Western Union transfer that they would send me when they received the phone. OK mate, I’ll send you the phone on those terms, lol. Ebay still charged me.

Exact same thing happened to my mate. I found out afterwards that you could make your listings UK Paypal buyers only, which would have prevented ebay taking their fees but they did not respond to myself or my friend when we tried to explain. I gave up and decided never to sell on their shitty platform again

Rob666

I’ve never sold on Ebay for all of the above reasons. I do buy there but with extreme caution. The one time I got burned Paypal eventually made the seller do a full refund.

DavecUK

Things that make me go grrr…..

People who rip other people off, especially those in trouble or vulnerable in some way…then along come the opportunists.

I remember one story about someone who went to “help” a victim of an accident or medical emergency, but what they were really doing was rifling their pockets for their wallet.

https://www.itv.com/news/2018-09-05/mans-wallet-stolen-as-he-suffers-heart-attack

Doram

DavecUK People who rip other people off, especially those in trouble or vulnerable in some way…then along come the opportunists.

I remember one story about someone who went to “help” a victim of an accident or medical emergency, but what they were really doing was rifling their pockets for their wallet.

Makes time wasters on eBay seem like angels.

LMSC

Some buyers are as notorious as sellers. Recently, sold a pair of hardly used suit. It was out of fashion. Some one nagged us with endless questions and finally bought the suit. No sooner the buyer received it than he/she complained it wasn’t as described, which was not correct. Demanded a return, despite a no-return policy on used items. It wasn’t worth a hassle to start a futile time-wasting argument. Ebay advised it’s not worth it either. It was expensive to pay for the return postage. We refunded the buyer and advised the person to give the suit to a local charity.

dutchy101

LMSC It was expensive to pay for the return postage. We refunded the buyer and advised to give the suit to a local charity.

Think sometimes making a point like this is the best way. There’s just no pleasing some people.

We had a rug that we were giving away for free that my wife put up on a local Facebook group. Someone said they wanted it and expected us to drop it to them. Lol

LMSC

dutchy101

Giphy - Cant Make It GIF by Leroy Patterson

Cuprajake

Had a guy come in for a quote at work, 2009 Saab.

Conversation starts with, “I’d use a mate normally but you know what they’re like, they want favours back, don’t mind paying cash”

Proceeds to show me round his car, “there’s a crack in the bumper but you can just glass that” (wrong way) then walks round the car to the point we’re painting everything bar 2 panels.

So I email his quote, which is broken down as labour, paint and materials and polishing,

Following day, he replies. “happy with the labour but why is the paint and materials so high? Is it primer, paint, sanding discs? ”

I simply replied - this is what we charge.

Fast forward to the end of the day and he’s left us a negative Google review 🤷 wtf.

LMSC

Touch the rental market — landlords. Jeez! Very rare you find a Gem,
based on our experience. Between 2001 and 2014, we stayed in 4 places.

The first landlord was a thorough gentleman. He gave us a brand new flat. A year and a half later, he sold. Except a general wear and tear, he was surprised how immaculate the house was, despite the 7-years old lived with her parents at the properly. He returned the full deposit.
Second landlord was ok and not too bad. She did take 25% off the deposit, despite the flat was professionally cleaned by her own appointed cleaning services. The inventory check out was all ok.
Third was a nightmare. Cleaned professionally and we got a clean chit from the inventory check out. He refused to pay. The issue dragged for more than a year and half. There was nothing we could do. Finally, we gave up and he offered 50% deposit.
Fourth was similar to the third case. He started harassing and nit-picking us, despite the estate agent told him formally that the house was kept in a great shape. The agency advised us to move as they were also sick of dealing with the landlord and closing the relationship with him. He refused to return the deposit; he had no reason to hold the deposit. Finally paid after keeping 25%. The funny part was he could not find a tenant for almost a year! 😁

Glad, we have a roof of our own since 2015. We keep telling our daughter to get even a single bed as her own roof as soon as she starts her core training and scale up as she grows with NHS. With the NHS salary, she keeps asking how ? 😔

prezes

LMSC in situations like this it is worth pursuing through tenancy deposit schemes. If the property was left clean condition with no damage above reasonable wear and tear you’d have your deposits back in full.

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