I can’t even count how many hours I’ve spent in the past year arguing about some BS charge, trying to get something repaired under warranty, or even trying to redeem an valid coupon that was sent to me. I’ve reached a point where I’m exhausted in trying to fight these kinds of things but I feel like I can’t just let any of it go. Sometimes I wish I could hire a Karen, it would be 100% worth it.
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So I work in QA. I know how to troubleshoot things, it’s literally my job.
Recently my game card for Zelda TOTK kicked the bucket, so I tried contacting Nintendo support.
Again, I work in QA. So I made sure my Switch software was up to date and reported in the beginning to Support that I had done this and told them the version number.
First they ask me to check for a software update. 😐 It gets worse from there.
After copying and pasting several different sets of troubleshooting steps to me (all of which unnecessarily started off with checking for a system update) the Support agent eventually finds out I’m using an SD Card for external memory on my switch.
So I turn off the Switch, take out the SD Card, reboot the switch, and still the game will not launch. I report this to Nintendo Support. Who then tell me that I need to reformat my SD Card.
My brother in Christ, if I am still hitting the issue, without the SD Card in use, then reformatting the SD Card will do literally nothing to help.
Complete waste of my time. I closed the chat and went to Target, who happily let me exchange for another copy of the game that functioned again.
PayPal. Oh god, PayPal. They shut down my account over a misunderstanding (from their end), and did nothing but spam me with pre-written corpospeak every time I begged to talk to a person. I would send a ticket explaining EXACTLY what happened and I would get the same copy-pasted response from the human representative that literally ignores everything I said and says now that my account is flagged, I should stop using Paypal and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I’m not kidding, that was the response they kept sending me. If your Paypal account gets tagged as suspicious they literally tell you to bugger off and stop bothering them. I’ve never seen anything like it.
After a few weeks of insulting and attacking them they finally decided I was more trouble than it’s worth, allowed me to close my account and make a new one. It only took like 10 tickets of getting the same pre-written “good luck trying another service” response. By far the worst company I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with, but unfortunately I need it for work.
This is also a good place to say, never store any money on your PP account. This isn’t an uncommon story, if you look on Google there are tons of cases of people getting locked out of their account for virtually no reason.
paypal’s business model is basically theft. They regularly “freeze” accounts of people that have money to be taken, refuse to unfreeze them, and then when it eventually turns into a class-action lawsuit they settle for pennies on the dollar (that mostly goes to attorneys anyway). When it happened to me over 10 years ago, I was doing remote tech support and getting paid via paypal. Had a business account that was like 10 years of use. Then one day they froze the account and told me there was “suspicious activity”.
When I appealed and asked what suspicious activity they found, they simply said that there was money in the account and there wasn’t before… Then they asked for, specifically, ebay transaction IDs and UPS or Fedex tracking numbers for the products sold on ebay. I explained to them again that I was not selling on ebay and was doing remote tech support. The person on the other end of the phone just said “ok, well, then your appeal is denied. Your account is staying frozen” and hung up.
I ended up just refunding all the transactions that were recent enough I could (because that was the only thing I could do with the account) and sent those customers a note explaining briefly what happened and that I would rather have done the work for free than have done it so paypal can steal the money…
Eventually got tacked onto a class action and got a low double digit payout almost a decade after losing a few thousand…
Oof, I had an awful experience with them as well. Well, the “credit division”, because you know companies like this just have to split the customer service between the normal PayPal and the credit PayPal.
It had to be the most frustrating conversation I’ve ever had, and it was in writing. Like someone not hearing you but in written form. I don’t know how that was possible, but they made it possible.
It was all because my phone number had changed and I couldn’t verify myself, even to change my number. The idiot on the other end kept telling me to log in. I’m like “yeah, I can’t log in to change my phone number because it’s asking me to verify with my old number.” The stupid thing is that I do have access to my old phone, as a Google Voice number, but companies like PayPal sometimes refuse to send a verification to it because they see it as a VOIP line…
I never got it settled. I just wanted to make a payment and I think I got around it by sending money to my PayPal and then transferring there, because that was still possible.
One thing I know is that I will never ever use PayPal credit ever again in my fucking life. They were about to report me for late payment even though it was 100% their fault I wouldn’t have been able to pay.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature, paypal.
Paypal is the worst.
I wanted to link a card to Paypal but it just kept saying I couldn’t transfer money to it. Support said they could see there was a block on it which would resolve after 72 hours. Weeks later I finally get a response: adding a card is not supported in your country. Why do they let me add a card and then lie to me?
I get some side cash in a foreign currency but have no way to get the money out without being charged a crazy fee
did you open another account after all that?
I did. Sadly there aren’t many alternatives where I live. Most are US/EU only. I have definitely used it way less though.
I was rear ended a couple of months back on the freeway. 100% not at-fault and I have the dashcam video to prove it. Anyways, I submit a claim through my insurance and I specifically asked what I should do about a rental car while mine was in the shop. I was told over the phone that if I was able I could book a rental car on my own and just submit the receipt, they will reimburse me and recover damages from the other driver’s insurance.
So, that’s what I did. I booked the rental car and after I returned it I submitted the receipt. A few hours after uploading the receipt through the claims portal, They called to inform me they weren’t going to reimburse me for the rental, and that if I wanted it to be paid back I had to submit a claim directly through the other driver’s insurance. So, I gave them a call.
The other driver’s insurance told me they absolutely weren’t going to pay for my rental car since they were already way over the property damage minimums on the policy.
So… I guess now I have to file in court against the driver directly and probably wait years to get reimbursed from someone who probably has no money to pay me anyway, just racking up more and more in court fees compounding my losses. Any attempted conversation with my insurance about how they outright lied to me just goes to an echo chamber. Emails get no response, Voicemails go unanswered, I even let my agent know about this and he followed up on my behalf. Nothing, no communication or response at all. They’re just hoping I give up it seems.
State farm customer for 15 years, no claims, no tickets, always paid premiums on-time and in full. This was the first time I so much as called them. Right out the gate I get screwed over. Time to find another provider.
insurance is literally a scam. they’re entirely built on the business model of “provide the service you offer only when legally required”
This is why I always record calls with major corporations when I’m talking about money. I’ve never had to actually resort to sending them recordings, but I have used the “Well, every call made from this phone is recorded, so I can go back and pull the recording of what I’ve been told if you don’t have it in your system” line a couple times.
What do you use to do this?
I run those calls through my own phone system, which I host on a system in my basement. There are a couple main options out there, I used FreePBX for a while but now I’m using 3CX. They don’t require a ton of computing power-- mine runs on a virtual server inside a larger system, but you could run one off of an inexpensive thin client from eBay if you wanted to.
I get my phone number from VoIP.ms, which is pretty inexpensive and has worked well for me for years.
For a phone, you can either use a soft phone (an app on your computer or smartphone), or use an older IP phone off eBay (which is what I do since I also have a Plantronics wireless headset that connects to it).
It’s pretty easy to get started, but you do need to make sure you’re configuring everything correctly since selfhosted services can open up security holes in your network if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Switch to Geico. I got rear ended a couple years ago and they took care of everything. They even offered to book a rental for me. I thankfully didn’t need it at the time, but my every interaction with them has been utterly painless. One of the few businesses I will unapologetically shill for because they legit took care of me when I needed it.
State Farm, ugh.
Our rates had been going up, so we asked our agent why they were going up and what we could do to lower them. Our agent said, oh your rates haven’t increased at all.
Yeah, the numbers on the bills sitting in front of me are just figments of my imagination.
Sam’s Club. We cancelled our membership and they still charged us. I called the main customer service number and told them to reverse the charge, or I would reverse it for them. They got all pissy and claimed they could only speak to my wife, who wasn’t available, despite the fact that my card was the one charged. Then they started getting insulting, and claimed my bank wouldn’t reverse the charge. I ask to speak to someone higher up, and politely explain the situation again, complete with my cancellation email, and the supervisor is even ruder than the first person. I then called the local store, and thankfully the person there wasn’t an asshole. They pulled up the account, saw it was cancelled on the date I said, and quickly refunded the charge. I have no idea why Sam’s Club customer service is the way they are, but they can eat a bag of dicks.
Honestly, my guess the people working the call center get paid on retention numbers whereas the people that work in the warehouse just get paid a salary/wage. The call center probably had an incentive for you not to cancel, do the charge back, or the refund that sort of thing. That’s my guess I’m only like hypothesizing here.
Yup, this is how every call center is. Every person they refund/let cancel is a black mark on their numbers. They chew you out and use it as a reason to fire you, or deny bonuses.
Could be. Call center employees are overworked and underpaid for sure and it’s very possible those particular folks get transferred cancellation requests and get bonuses based on talking people out of cancelling. Still super bad for them to leave a customer with a bad taste. You could be cancelling because you’re moving and after that you’re probably never going to subscribe again…
It’s possible, but by the time you get to the supervisor, it’s time to cut the shit.
I had a $200 gift card to Google Play that came with a Samsung TV. I redeemed the card and wasn’t spending the balance very quickly. Next time I checked, the balance was gone. I contacted Google support and they tried to tell me there was never any credit on the account to begin with. They tried to get me to contact Samsung. I asked them why Samsung would have information on my Google Play balance after putting a Google Play-branded giftcard on my Google Play account (never got an answer to that). After multiple escalations, they finally told the balance was either zeroed for inactivity or expired (it had been a year-ish). I received no warnings, no notices in change of terms (this info wasn’t on the gift card), nothing. All the credit was just gone one day.
I requested clarification/explanation (including a copy of their gift card expiration policy) but they simply stopped responding to emails. The whole process took over a month.
It’s become worse dealing with Google over these play cards since covid. They shut down all phone support. I made 13 attempts to get a $100 card deemed with them and I got all kinds of reasons why I couldn’t redeem the card by email despite providing the receipt, card and codes and my utility bills. I even called other departments within google to try to get it fixed. Nothing.
I wasted way more of my time on principle. It happens quite often I read online for many people.
I think Google should be barred from selling these cards. There’s no recourse and they keep the money. It’s a racket and there’s no way to recover the money unless you pay by credit card with a charge back. Those that used cash or debit are out the money as there are no refunds from the store.
Discord Support.
May god have mercy on your soul if your account ever gets wrongfully banned. They just kept bot-replying me to say that the decision was permanent and would not be reversed, then closed my tickets.
I eventually got a human to look at it by harassing them on social media, as a last ditch effort. They realized it was an error and restored my account.
That’s pretty much every social platform now. I got first suspended from reddit for “harassment” for telling someone trying to scam me out of money to “fuck off” and then permanently banned when I appealed the suspension. 13 year old reddit account, gone. Meanwhile, the scammer’s account is still active and scamming people.
I now run my own personal Lemmy instance.
i got suspended for 3 days for telling automoderator to eat my ass
Yeah, I’m always afraid of this happening. Too much of my social life is connected to Discord - all my friends and family are on there.
The fact that I have to use BetterDiscord (soley so I can use my patch for a four-year-old Wayland bug) doesn’t help my paranoia.
Tesla. Literally everything involving Tesla. Customer support, vehicle service, sales. And it’s gotten worse over the years, so I’m a one-and-done customer.
I honestly really love my model Y. I’ve fortunately never had to call or deal with Tesla but im not looking forward to that day if it ever comes.
The day always comes, or you trade it before and someone else picks up the pieces. I’m sure whoever has my Model 3 is happy I replaced t he blown drive unit, but they’ll have to replace the next one out of pocket.
As close to verbatim as possible, calling to the former eletric supplier we used.
“Good morning, ny name is XYZ and I need a clarification for the invoice you just sent. My account number is 123 and the address is ABC.”
“Thank you. Please wait a moment.”
5 minutes later, without notice I’m transfered to another department.
“What seems to be the problem with the invoice?”
“After reading it, I have found it was issued based on calculated numbers. My meter is already online.”
“I am afraid you are mistaken; we have no readings from your meter for the last 6 months.”
“I have just disconnected from the power distributor service line and was informed my meter has been online and registering the energy used for the last year.”
“I apologize but that is incorrect.”
“I am checking my customer area at the distributor as we speak and I have information the online date for this location is XPTO; the company has not been issuing invoices based on real numbers for some reason I do not know and I would appreciate an explanation.”
p.s. I am not confrontational with call center workers; I worked at one for a short time and it was a rotten work environment for the most. I was miffed but making my best to be polite.
“I must insist that information is incorrect. Our invoices are firm and issued according to an algorithm calculation for expected consumion based on client history.”
“Right. Would it be possible to have a complaint issued to have this matter evaluated?”
“Considering the information provided, there is no basis to present a complaint. I also notice the next invoice is due in 8 days. I remind you that the late payment will incur in penalties. Can I be of any further assistance?”
I thanked and ended the call, after which I started the transfer of my contract to another vendor, while submitting a complaint by the public complaint book, that is supervised by a regulatory organism.
After 4 weeks, I was returned a good chunk of change and was bombarded with calls to evaluate my satisfaction with the conpany and inquire my interest in moving back to them.
Nah, I’m good.
Hold on hold on…by electric supplier you mean the power company…and you could CHOOSE to have a different one? As an American this boggles my mind. We have one company and you either have electricity or don’t.
Idk about where the original poster is, but here in Australia, yeah there are different energy providers. They all take advantage of the same infrastructure (which is run by a singular company, by and large- Energex), but different companies will offer different rates or deals for your energy needs and your service area. It’s supposed to provide some competition for the consumers, although I don’t know how that works out on the vendors side of things.
Is there a different rate between providers or like different quality or something? Funny how the USA is supposed to be capitalist but other countries have this and we don’t. There are different single carriers for different areas (per county or per city) but you have one choice and it is what it is.
Could you imagine the fighting during a storm while they tried sorting out who needed to pay for repairs while people didn’t have power?
We have one distributor (technically two) that runs everything regarding power supply and distribution (lines, substations, transformers, etc, and the meters) and I think nearly 30 different energy retailers, from which you can contract your power.
The market is open and lately has seen a lot of competition, with a number of small companies entering.
We recently changed retailer, again, to a small company where you have to buy a quota to be able to buy energy from them (60€ is the minimum). This means you own a part of the company and can take active part in its governance.
They sell me energy with a one cent markup over the market index, which is well below the usual fixed rates.
Crazy…I’m guessing in the United States this would never happen because thanks to our genius lawmakers corporations are people. From what I understand utility companies are not allowed to donate to politicians, but they still do either by funneling money through charities or their CEO’s do it directly, etc.
I’m confused. What does it imply a company being a person that makes it so incompatible to what happens in my market?
A company is a collective entity here (translating it directly, a company is a “collective person”), bound by general law and even more activity specific legislation.
I was wondering if this was Australia. I’ve heard of issues with smart meters and the issue is annoyingly complex as the information they get from the AEMO isn’t always correct.
Source: Have worked in the energy utilities sector in the past…
Europe.
The meters run fine and there has been a push from the distributor to make the entire network digital as they have been eating huge fines for not guaranteeing timely readings. The last one was more than €20 millions, to be returned to the consumers.
This particular situation was due to laziness and a sense of dominance the company has, because it is the oldest and most well known in the market. They can treat people in the worst fashion that their customer base won’t leave them; it’s a mix of Stockholm syndrome and a well put together slander campaign of every other energy retailer in the market.
Nomad Internet.
I had three months in an airbnb while I was apartment searching. There was no wifi, so I ordered an LTE hotspot. I had used that kind of thing in Japan in 2011, and I figured by 2020 that sort of thing should exist in America too.
Googled it, found Nomad Internet, and I probably chose it because it was the cheapest option.
They charge me immediately and no box has arrived. Box was supposed to arrive in like 2-3 days. It took about 3 weeks.
When the thing came it was a little device that produced a wifi network sometimes, for about two minutes at a time. I was never able to connect to its network. The manual included was for a different device.
I repeatedly tried to contact them and never had any success. It took me six months to cancel it, during which I got charged every month. I never had a single moment of utility from their service and I paid for six months of it. I didn’t consent to pay any at all.
I researched the company and their Better Business Bureau profile has an endless stream of comments from customers, 100% of which say “This is a total scam and this business should be shut down”. Of course it has some acceptable BBB rating, can’t remember what. BBB’s scoring system marks it as a perfectly normal company, despite all the comments complaining about experiences like mine.
The company is still sending me emails, which I mark as spam and cannot unsubscribe from. It’s crazy.
I wish there was a way for me to more effectively spread this info… THE BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU IS A SCAM. It was yelp for boomers. You pay them to give you a good rating. Complaining to them is basically a waste of time. They just charge businesses for their logo to look respectable. Think about all the horrible practices you’ve heard of yelp implementing, that’s the BBB.
Sennheiser. 500 euro headphones broken after only 3 years. It was the fanciest one in the store, but I really needed it.
I tried to get it fixed at various repair shops. No one dared to touch it, I suppose due to some legal reasons. So I ended up sending it to Sennheiser themselves. Got a letter back that it was unrepairable. IIRC I had to pay around 150 euro just for that.
When I asked them to send it back so I could have a look on my own, they said they couldn’t because what would be the point. Finally they did after reminding them that it was still my property to do with as I please. Keep in mind that I even offered 500 euro to get it fixed. No need to waste resources if you ask me, and it has some sentimental value.
I didn’t know anything about electric circuits and I managed to fix it on my own. It just needed a new wire from one side to the other for the battery. I’ve been using it for years now and it works fine again. Apparently the wire they used wasn’t particularly strong.
And I’ve always bought all my headphones from them.
Fuck Sennheiser.
They also like to use proprietary cable-jacks which is annoying and unnecessary.
Even the 560s which uses a standard 2.5mm jack also requires a proprietary locking mechanism
Oh yes I remember I lost the cable and had to buy a new one. It was quite tricky to find.
If not Sennheiser, who?
For hifi gear, I like my Hifiman and Focal stuff
For wireless mainstream stuff, Sony’s solid and has good customer service from my personal experience
I was working as a phone tech at a phone provider and decided to get a plan with them.
2 months go by and I don’t recieve a bill so I go on to my own account and see that for some reason they have made my account into a corporate account that is billed every 3 months.
So obviously I call in because I’m not allowed to tinker with my own account.
First rep I speak to I introduce myself and ask how come I haven’t gotten my bill yet. He said “Some times it can take a few months but I can see here that your bill is due to arrive next month”.
So I ask him “So I’m not on a 3month plan by any chance?”
And he denied it so hard even though I’m looking straight at the column that says “billed every 3 months”. So I told him “Thank you but I don’t think I’ll get anywhere else with you”
Called a second time. Got abother rep. Asked him “Hey. I’m not billed every three months by any chance?”
And he actually looked at my account saw that I am an employee and decided to look and lo and behold I was indeed billed every 3 months.
Same company sent me to collections for not paying a bill that they wrongfully put on me after I cancelled but I didn’t even receive the bill and I didn’t receive the vill from collections either so it went straight to the debt collectors agency and when I called them up about it they acknowledged that they’ve been wrong, sent back part of the money and then refused to take back the late payment notice.
AirAsia. This airline is basically scam. If anything goes wrong, there are no humans to talk to anymore. Only chatbots. No hotline and not even email support. They just keep your money, even if it’s 100% their fault. The chatbot is as unhelpful as it gets.
I wired rent to my landlord who has a name that sounds Islamic. The government stole my money with no explanation. I can’t remember the name of the department, but BofA couldn’t tell me what was going on for days (whether because they were obfuscating the situation I’ll never know). Eventually, I learned what had happened. I printed a PDF and mailed in a form requesting my money back. The government wrote back that they had no record of the case number that I put on the form. They could have made me homeless in the process and I just gave up fighting the bureaucracy on the assumption that I’d have to invest more time, effort, and frustration than one-month’s-rent was worth.
Both BofA and the US government failed me hard. That’s when I truly appreciated how easily I could be crushed by the state.
AT&T
We had a bad lightning storm happen in the area where I was working every day and it damaged the cellular tower so you couldn’t get service anymore in that area. After a week of waiting for them to repair it I called to see what was going on and they told me they weren’t going to repair it as that area was going to be upgraded to the latest cellular technology at the time, but it wasn’t expected to be done for another four months. They offered me a single $25 credit if I’d keep paying them $80 a month to provide nothing. I don’t think my phone would have even supported their new network even if they did make their changes in a reasonable time. My favorite part was when I got transferred to cancellations department they asked if there was anything they could do, “Yes provide cellular service.” “Sorry, we can’t do that.” 😂
This is the kind of bullshit you get when employees are forced to follow procedures like they’re one size fits all and are punished if they don’t. They probably offered you the max credit and then did everything they’re told they have to do or they get punished. Just like every time your offered a credit card somewhere, it’s because the employees are punished if they don’t ask fucking everyone.
The HBO MAX PS5 app has been freezing since December 2022 whenever you play any video. That’s 8 months. I’ve exchanged plenty of e-mails with the support, told them where the problem was, sent them videos showing how it happens and how to work around it and it’s still not fixed.
It used to work fine before, but one of the updates caused the app to freeze while the audio format is set to DTS or Dolby. It only works when I change it to Linear PCM. But then the audio has much lower quality and I think it gets mono.
My suspicion is that they are waiting till the new Max app is released and they don’t bother to investigate issues in an app that might soon get retired