Nominations for the worst company you have dealt with

[Grayfox]

Any health insurance company.

 

[tlawler]

Another vote for Comcast
One Saturday morning at about 8, I get a phone call from Comcast saying my bill was 3 months late and they were going to turn off our phone service the following Thursday.
Impossible says I
My wife religiously pays our bills
I put my wife on the phone and she gets on the computer and gives the lady the dates she paid
The lady says that 3 months before hand they changed the address to send the bills to
OK, our bad, we mailed the payments, which they cashed, to the old address
My wife asked them to transfer the funds from wherever they put towards our account
Yes I can do that says the lady
The following Monday my wife gets a call back and the lady said she couldn’t do that, and they were refunding the money and we needed to send a new check. She said she had canceled the termination of our service
Thursday comes and my wife calls and tells me to call our home phone
I got a message saying our phone was out of service
I called Comcast from work and explained what all had transpired
The rep on the phone says they did not shut the phone off, there must be another issue
I said it seemed awfully coincidental that they were supposed to turn off the phone Thursday, then they weren’t, then they did
The said he guaranteed if was not them but he would check it out a call me back
A couple hours later he calls a said that the techs got the original termination notice, never received the cancellation of same. I went off asking him what was the name of his company to which he replied Comcast. I got snarky and said I assumed the Com in Comcast stood for communication, they can’t even communicate from department to department He apologized and said our phone service would be restored shortly
The next phone bill had a $150 reconnection charge
My wife was on the phone for 2 hrs getting bounced from department to department and by the time I got home she was nearly in tears, and had given up I called.
The first thing a recording asks is your name
Then are you authorized to call about the problem
Then switch you to a live rep
Same questions
Then I explained the problem and get told he/she can’t help me but they’d transfer me to someone who could
Another rep who is higher up the totem pole answers
Again the same questions
Again I explain the issue and again I am told I had to talk to someone else
I wait on hold for I don’t know how long, then I hear “click click” and get disconnected
I repeated this process 2 more times
The last rep I talked said that he was going off shift in 10 minutes but he would call me back
I replied I didn’t believe him but he assured me he would
He never did
The following morning I resumed battle
2 calls were wasted
The one rep said they had to charge me because I called after the phone was disconnected
I asked “Why would I call before it was disconnected when they assured me the would not disconnect?”
Finally I explained to another rep what had happened and how frustrated my wife and I were with them
He asked “What I just issue a $150 credit on your account to cancel out the reconnect fee?”
I thanked him and hung up

Wow, that is just amazing the run around you can get trying to straighten out a company’s error.

It would make a good script for a comedy routine showcasing Comcast’s ineptness.

It’s not only about the money we try and recoup when we receive subpar service, it’s the hours and hours we waste doing so. Luckily for me I’m pretty insulated from it because mrs tlawler is really tenacious at righting companies wrongs, and does it for all the kids as well. She says none of us handle confrontation well. But I think she secretly enjoys it sometimes

 

[Doug M.]

WellsFargo. Utterly abysmal. BLUF: We did a refi at a very low rate (lowest my agent ever saw). They sold the loan, gave us notice at the street address when all the paperwork showed the PO Box (we have not used a street address in decades), misplaced and did not credit/pass on an oversize payment (we like to pay down principal rapidly). It took 6 weeks to unfutz that. I am pretty sure Dale Carnegie was rolling over in his grave at the way I talked to the WF folks.

Kaiser, the health insure company. In a fit of poor timing, I had gotten a blowhard pat themselves on the back communication from then, then they messed up my dialysis coverage. That was not a good choice, and that doctor got lit on fire. My nephrologist keeps a copy of the email because he was so amused by it. He may have to be nice to people, but I don't. "If you ain't cryin', I ain't tryin'." They tried to send me to a clinic that was not part of the contract Multicare (my main providers) had with Fresenius and could not find my doctor in that city (his office is in Spokane and he travels to clinics for home care). I have been very impressed my clinic and Fresenius; they have treated me very well and I am better if for that.

Baxter/Vantive. They are a complete dumpster fire of dishonesty to compound their incompetence. If I did not have to deal with them because they make one unique solution, I would send them a trespass notice. They screwed up a delivery of this solution, canceling it for reasons using internal buzzwords that never explained, and did not tell me. I got a little excited, and the poor staff on the phone could not get info without a lot of work because the system did not tell them, which is crap design. I got a run around for about 10 days. I did not like them and made damned sure they did not like me. This was on top of stuff I had been complaining about monthly for a year (using UPS whose delivery paradigm does not work); I transitioned to their dialysis machine for a month and it was a steaming heap of excrement (worse draining, the point of the process), and a serious pain in the sphincter to set up and tear down. I was not put on this planet to tolerate idiots. I am confident (and told them this) that average 17 year old at McDonalds is better trained in a better system and does better with customers. .... them, the horse they rode in on, and anyone that looks like them, but not with my equipment. I have standards.

 

[djohns6]

Met Life Dental Insurance .

 

[Grimjaws]

Carnival Cruise Lines. Back in 2005, the wife and I took our first cruise. We bought a massive American Tourister suitcase and packed it full of nice clothes to wear on the cruise and the ports of call. They accidentally put it on the sister ship, the Victory, instead of the Valor which we were on. They gave us a $250 per person credit to buy clothes in the gift shop and said they couldn’t retrieve the case until we returned to port in Miami. I was lucky because my dive bag made it onboard and I had several pairs of shorts, a couple of swim trunks, and several t-shirts that wouldn’t fit in the big case. Mrs tlawler was not so lucky. Literally everything she packed for a memorable first cruise was AWOL. The ships stores all had CC Lines branded stuff that was for for the Lido deck and not much else. They comped us formal wear for the formal dinner night, which for me was a tux…so I looked like all the waiters!

When we returned from the 7-day cruise, our suitcase was waiting for us in the back corner of the terminal, which took them quite some time to locate. It had broken open, or been forced open and was held shut with several wraps of duct tape with clothes spilling out everywhere. Everything in the case was damp and mildewed…a total loss, case and contents. Carnival was absolutely no help, blaming it on the stevedores at the port and accepted no responsibility, despite mrs tlawler writing several letters to Carnival and even one to the president of CCLines. Best we got was “we are really sorry, but you should have purchased the cruise insurance”. Yep…mrs tlawler was trying to do it on the cheap. We’ve been on several cruises since, all on Royal Caribbean, one on Norwegian (never do that one again either), and we always get the extra insurance. Lesson learned.

What’s the issue with Norwegian? I have a cruise this Fall with them

 

[greenwellg]

Local cable company, been around 50 years. Honestly I don't think they have any good connections left to blame. Last house I built, I told the electrician to run dedicated (no friggin splices) wires to every receptacle. I was playing a video game. They came in my house and started to splice wires, told them NO WAY. They eventually found a 2000 ping defect in the box on the street but by then I was finished with the video game after years of BS. Like trying to keep a 60 year old car running (which I CAN do but not anymore with Chinese parts).
I had the IRS try to fine me $1000 a day for failure to have an administrator for a 3 person retirement plan that the law specifically stated was individually managed. I know not a "business" but 6 pounds of paperwork and a years stress and they finally admitted their mistake. They did't get a dime but the emotional cost was a fortune. Now you can sue them, which means you are sueing yourself.

 

[bower]

Two recent incidents come to mind. First is Tracfone in which I paid for 1 yr. of cell phone service and it never got activated. After 5 months of e mailing and talking to people who couldn't speak English, I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the matter was quickly resolved.
The second matter involved Tracfone's owner company, Verizon. Some scammer stole my ID and opened a wireless acct. in my name. Of course the burden of proof is on me to provide police report and several ID's to prove residence. The claim was filed with Verizon's fraud dept. and it was resolved that I was not responsible. In the meantime Verizon keeps billing me and threatening my credit. After several months of non-communication within that co. the matter was once again resolved with the help of the BBB.

 

[Golddollar]

Trans World Airlines, popularly known as TWA. Years ago I was going from Philadelphia to Cincinnati to visit my brother. Somewhere in there was a connecting flight. I landed at the airport where I was to the connecting flight and checked the board for my connecting flight. There wasn't anything about my connecting flight on the board. Things when downhill from there. I went to the TWA desk to found out what was going on. The response was essentially, "Oh, that flight was cancelled 3 weeks ago." Of course, back in those pre-historical times, email didn't exist, but the telephone and US Mail did. Nobody bothered to let me know until I showed up at the airport looking for a connecting flight that didn't exist. The rest of this debacle is too long set out, and I don't need to aggravate my blood pressure. The free market took care of TWA.