Shitlist

[Lemonade]

Have you received really bad service? Banged heads with some amazingly unhelpful staff? Companies not coming through on their promises? Restaurants serving you frozen food straight from the microwave? Delivery companies claiming they tried to deliver your stuff when you were sitting at home waiting for them? Holiday company adding loads of hidden charges to your holiday? Hotel refusing to let you and your partner share a double room because you both have a dick? Name them and shame them and warn everybody else to steer clear...

My first name & shame goes to Aberdeen Property Leasing, based on Rosemount Viaduct. Admittedly this was nearly a year ago, but I'm still pissed off about it.

For this...

http://www.aberdeen-music.com/forums/general-discussion/51309-rant-thread.html#post683942

And this...

http://www.aberdeen-music.com/forums/general-discussion/51309-rant-thread.html#post684049

And this...

http://www.aberdeen-music.com/forums/general-discussion/52055-letting-agents.html#post693315

And this, even though it wasn't my issue!

http://www.aberdeen-music.com/forums/general-discussion/51309-rant-thread.html#post684134

AVOID, AVOID, AVOID, AVOID, AVOID. I want the entire world to know what a bunch of absolute shit-catchers this shower of villanous bastards truly are. They are possibly in league with the devil.

(Legal disclaimer - the views expressed above are solely the opinion of Lucky Rathen and do not represent the views of aberdeen-music.com or any of it's sponsors or affiliates )

[Paul_Victory]

Delivery companies claiming they tried to deliver your stuff when you were sitting at home waiting for them?

try DPD, they were meant to be delivering me a new tv around four months ago and was told it would be here on the friday morning (not this friday, a friday about four months ago) between 9 and 1 so i took a day off work, and . . .

nothing, not a thing so i phoned them up and the "tried to deliver it, but i wasnt in" nope i wasnt in! i was just sitting in my fucking living room twiddling my thumbs all day and then they called me a lier over the phone,

as you can imagine wasnt best pleased at this point . . .

so they said they would try and re-deliver the fallowing friday, which was cool because i had that day off anyway and . . .

once again nothing.

so i gets back on the phone, "Whats your parcel number? ok ill just have a look for it, no sorry i cant find it on our system"

"can you have another look please"

"ok iv found it, its got a damaged sticker on it, probably gona have to return to sender"

"fucksake ok"

10 minutes passes

*ring ring* *ring ring* (that was my phone by the way)

"hallo its DPD here, the damaged sticker was put on it by accident"

"so there nothing wrong with it then?"

"with what?"

"my parcel, theres nothing wrong with my parcel?"

"oh that, yeh its fine"

(what else would i be meaning)

"so when can you redeliver it"

"well we cant realy, weve tried twice and your policy is, if we try twice and you aint in, your fucked"

"but you didnt even try once"

"thats not what the system said, sir"

in the end i had to go collect i big fuck off tv on the bus and when i got there they wouldnt give the box coz it was one of those big security boxes that belonged to the company, so heres me walking around altans with this big tv tying to find my way back to a bus stop

anyway thats my rant, hope you enjoyed it, hope it made sence

[Le Stu]

Tradesmen*. They seem to think they have a monopoly on 'doing stuff' that means they can turn up when it suits them and eventually bill you out of the blue for it several months later.

Bunch of utterly useful bastards.

*I'm not naming names, some of them look a bit hard.

[Le Stu]

BUT, so I don't look to be vary vague on the idea of this thread, I would like to recommend you either avoid UPS (American courier) if you're looking to make a delivery or get on their shit if you're a recipient.

I was being mailed something from overseas that needed a signature. Not only did they stick a postcard through my front door asking that I confirm my address (???) but they then proceeded to mail it back to the sender before I could even call them! And THEN they blamed their American office. Bunch of complete and utter useless arsewipes.

[Alkaline]

try DPD, they were meant to be delivering me a new tv around four months ago and was told it would be here on the friday morning (not this friday, a friday about four months ago) between 9 and 1 so i took a day off work, and . . .

nothing, not a thing so i phoned them up and the "tried to deliver it, but i wasnt in" nope i wasnt in! i was just sitting in my fucking living room twiddling my thumbs all day and then they called me a lier over the phone,

as you can imagine wasnt best pleased at this point . . .

so they said they would try and re-deliver the fallowing friday, which was cool because i had that day off anyway and . . .

once again nothing.

so i gets back on the phone, "Whats your parcel number? ok ill just have a look for it, no sorry i cant find it on our system"

"can you have another look please"

"ok iv found it, its got a damaged sticker on it, probably gona have to return to sender"

"fucksake ok"

10 minutes passes

*ring ring* *ring ring* (that was my phone by the way)

"hallo its DPD here, the damaged sticker was put on it by accident"

"so there nothing wrong with it then?"

"with what?"

"my parcel, theres nothing wrong with my parcel?"

"oh that, yeh its fine"

(what else would i be meaning)

"so when can you redeliver it"

"well we cant realy, weve tried twice and your policy is, if we try twice and you aint in, your fucked"

"but you didnt even try once"

"thats not what the system said, sir"

in the end i had to go collect i big fuck off tv on the bus and when i got there they wouldnt give the box coz it was one of those big security boxes that belonged to the company, so heres me walking around altans with this big tv tying to find my way back to a bus stop

anyway thats my rant, hope you enjoyed it, hope it made sence

Haha, nice. Buy local, avoid cunts.

[Bigsby]

Bruce Millers. A right shower of bastards, especially the clearly gay TV salesman.

[The Milner]

i had similar problems with james and george collie leasing agents, when we wanted to take a second year lease they tried to up the price by 200 for the flat per month, which they were told was never happening, ended up paying a bit extra but no where near that, we also only got 90 from a 800 deposite because believe it or not after two years of 3 smokers living in a flat all the white walls needed repainting, keeping in mind we told them we smoked before we moved in.

[Alkaline]

Bruce Millers. A right shower of bastards, especially the clearly gay TV salesman.

Nail. On. Head.

[Lemonade]

Oh an honourary mention to "Zoverstocks" who sell on Amazon marketplace, the same lot I was moaning about in the Pet Hates thread this morning. I emailed them to ask why the CDs I ordered last Wednesday (10 days ago) have not arrived yet, which is think is quite fair since I paid to have them sent first class and expected them last Friday or Saturday. The response I got was "We are sorry if you are experiencing this but we would be very grateful if you could wait until your order has not arrived for a minimum of 15 days after the date you placed your order. Please contact us again if your delivery is not received after this time has elapsed."

Beautiful. Guess who I won't be buying any CDs from in future?

[Monster Zero]

BT.

Sold me BT Vision whilst renewing my Broadband account, failed to mention that it was billed separately and is a totally separate entity to all the normal BT services. Sent my first bill to my old address, switched off the BT VIsion when it didn't get paid. Phonecall established what had happened, account reactivated, sent bill to correct address with charges for not paying by direct debit online. Tried to set up online account but account number couldn't be matched with postcode, passed around several departments trying to get that looked at, had to send a query via online site. After initial e mail discussion on that heard nothing for a month. Account switched off again as they didn't note the bill had been paid. Phonecall sorted that out but then received a bill with late payment charges and more non-direct debit charges. Cue irate phonecall after being passed around a million departments again, eventually had to set up direct debit via phone and managed to get additional charges cancelled.

But seriously, they are hopeless, no discernible connection between departments and services and hopeless call centre waiting times, it's like you've contacted some shitty little back street outfit rather than one of the biggest phone companies.

[Le Stu]

BT.

.

I was contracting for them for a while and discovered they are actually a small communist country, not a corporation. That's probably why.

[Lemonade]

BT.

Sold me BT Vision whilst renewing my Broadband account, failed to mention that it was billed separately and is a totally separate entity to all the normal BT services. Sent my first bill to my old address, switched off the BT VIsion when it didn't get paid. Phonecall established what had happened, account reactivated, sent bill to correct address with charges for not paying by direct debit online. Tried to set up online account but account number couldn't be matched with postcode, passed around several departments trying to get that looked at, had to send a query via online site. After initial e mail discussion on that heard nothing for a month. Account switched off again as they didn't note the bill had been paid. Phonecall sorted that out but then received a bill with late payment charges and more non-direct debit charges. Cue irate phonecall after being passed around a million departments again, eventually had to set up direct debit via phone and managed to get additional charges cancelled.

But seriously, they are hopeless, no discernible connection between departments and services and hopeless call centre waiting times, it's like you've contacted some shitty little back street outfit rather than one of the biggest phone companies.

I had similar problems with O2 a few years ago, who are a division of BT.

I got a huge mobile bill one month, somewhere in the region of 250, and for one reason or another the direct debit didn't get paid, I think I didn't have enough money to cover it or something. So like 3 days later (once I'd been paid) I phoned up their automated system and paid it on my Switch card. It all went through fine, and I had forgotten all about it until I got a letter saying it still hadn't been paid. So I phoned up and explained that I had paid it, but they claimed they had no record of having received it. They didn't believe me that I'd paid it, and quite openly accused me of lying. I must have called them 7 or 8 times to explain that I had paid it, and it had come out of my account. Eventually at their request, I went and got my old bank statements, online switch statements marked where it obviously said "O2 Limited, payment 250" or whatever, a letter from my bank confirming it had been paid etc.,and faxed it off to them. (this had been going on for about a month at this point).

So eventually they called me back and said they had received the statements etc. but that they still didn't believe me and still had no record of receiving the money and were unwilling to write it off, and if I didn't pay it again they would take legal action to claim the money from me. I said "but it quite clearly says on my bank statements that I paid it." and they actually said "it doesn't matter if it says you paid it, if we didn't receive the money then it's unpaid". I was banging my head against a brick wall at this point, I was on the phone to them every day, speaking to managers, supervisors, etc. This went on for about another month.

Now this is when it starts to get REALLY ridiculous.

Eventually, after about two months, they found my payment. Apparently a computer glitch had meant when I paid it, it went into the wrong account, it went into something like O2 PLC instead of O2 Ltd, something like that. It was the same company, just different departments. So they called me and they said "We can't transfer money from department to department (?!?!?!), so what we will have to do is refund the money back into your bank account, and then you call up and make the payment with your Switch card again and it will go into the right account this time." So I agreed, and they called me and said they had sent the money back to my account. Only, of course, it never fucking arrived!

So then they were then calling me asking why I hadn't paid the bill, I repeatedly told them the money hadn't arrived, and once again we went through a month long cycle of them accusing me of blatantly lying, me faxing off bank statements, letters from bank managers, them demanding money etc.

At this point, I suddenly found I was unable to obtain credit.

So all I could do was keep protesting my innocence, and then I got a snotty letter from their legal department saying that if I didn't make the payment again, they were going to start taking legal action against me to recover the "debt". So I in turn had my solicitor look at the case and send a snotty letter back to them saying that they had no case, and that if they didn't stop harrasing me I was going to take legal action against THEM for the harrasment and for having me blacklisted for no reason.

At this point the letters and calls abruptly stopped.....

This was about 4 or 5 years, and there's still a part of me that believes that it isn't over yet...

[The Subtle Arts]

BT.

I think everyone has had a problem with BT at somepoint or another. Don't need to go into detail, it's obvious no one that works for that company has a clue, always passing the buck to the next moron.

[scottST]

pc world. i used to work there.

i didnt like how they forced that pc performance insurance bollocks on customers. when i was there i just tended to ignore it...but then the recession opened up a bit, and the company got very paranoid very quickly, and admitted they make fuck all money on most of the laptops, but make about 70 a day off of pc performance, so we had to concentrate on selling that instead of computers in a computer shop. unless we managed to fob off someone with pc performance, it was considered a "poor quality sale". same with them trying to add antivirus/ms office onto deals.

we were expected to get pcp added onto at least 60% of our daily sales, and

if we didnt sell it, we had to write down a reason why we didnt sell it, because often the managers would try to contact the customer to find out why they didnt want it, to try and pin the blame on the staff, as opposed to the customer realising that they didnt want to pay 15 a month on an overpriced, shitty, pointless service that they'd probably never use.

one customer they phoned up apparently told them "it was a fucking scam, and in future i will avoid your bollocks sales patter like the plague".

then they started on about their 'tech friends', where you take 80 from a customer and give them a fucking phone number and a stupid rubber toy. explains itself, really. we were expected to sell 5 of them a week.

then i got complained at by managers for not selling laptops they made any money on, so i had to concentrate on trying to sell the big name crap as opposed to maybe something that a customer would actually want.

naturally, i quit pretty sharpish. fuck that. there wasnt even any commission for that carry on.

edit: never ever ever work for any dixons company.

[Lemonade]

Wirelessly posted (SonyEricssonK770i/R8BC Browser/NetFront/3.3 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

I took out that insurance / tech support thing when i got my laptop from PC world. I didn't want it but i managed to get them to chuck in a bunch of free stuff, carry case, mouse, webcam etc, on the agreement that i take out the insurance. There was no obligation to keep it though, so i got all the free stuff then cancelled the insurance the next day. I did wonder why they were so desperate to push it, i guess that explains it.

[scottST]

a few people were a bit desperate to keep the managers happy that way. the retention rate across the country was below 10% if i remember right, and aberdeen was the lowest of the lot, apparently.

pretty funny, i thought

[JaseyBoi]

Talk Talk

A few months back my connection dropped and couldnt work out why.I phoned talktalk and i probably talktalked to atleast 15 departments before i was eventually put through toi this right english spoken posh lady...There seemed to be a party or something going on in the back ground whilst we spoke so i asked her to turn her stereo down...(to much to ask you htink?)...She replied "Excuse me mister?" i said i can hardly hear you is that a stereo on in the background,she replied "yeah one of the girls is leaving today" i said well i can hardly hear you can you turn down the music or put me through to another deptatment She replied "GET A LIFE YOU DICK" (seems she musta known me) and put the phone down on me...

I phoned the talktalk customer services number and again talktalked to about 15 bloody people so in the end i fucking hung up lol

TalkTalk min where they get a background report on there customers then insult them with it

[Stichman]

Grant Management

They're a letting agency. I don't think they operate in Aberdeen, but they're massive in Edinburgh, Glasgow and parts of England.

We moved into our new GM flat in September. It's a pretty massive 'flat'; there's seven bedrooms so it's kind of like still being in student halls. Unfortunatelty, on move-in day we had big piles of rubbish at both doors, broken curtain and shower rails, missing blinds, a rodent problem and lots of general mankiness.

The piece de resistance, however, was a hole in the floor of one of the bedrooms. When I say hole you're probably thinking somthing small. Oh no. I'm talking a big, blatant 3 x 2 foot GAPING hole in the floorboards. So we phoned them up there and then, and also went round to the office which was just round the corner. They claimed everything would be sorted out quickly, but it took two whole months for someone to come and even stick a bit of plywood over the hole, never mind fixing the rest of the place up. TWO MONTHS! Terrible.

Oh, and we didn't have any hot water for the first 2 weeks. Just for good measure. Oh, and there was dry rot. I think that's all...

So, we sent about a million letters requesting compensation and an apology. Eventually, they replied stating that fixing everything up was adequate compensation. WTF?! It was now at the minumum quality it should have been two months previously! So, we kept on at them and eventually they offered us something like 40 each. Piss. Off. Essentially, they were admitting their guilt but were only willing to offer pennies.

In the two months we'd each paid them about 600 to live in a total hovel. We're still chasing some money back through a lawyer, but they've refused to budge. There's a court case coming up, so hopefully JUSTICE will be done!

[ca_gere]

pc world. .

I was always suspicious of all that extras nonsense. I could easily imagine some old biddy walking out the shop with warranties, guarentees, insurance, tech support and a shitty laptop when all she was after was an ink cartridge.

[scottST]

I was always suspicious of all that extras nonsense. I could easily imagine some old biddy walking out the shop with warranties, guarentees, insurance, tech support and a shitty laptop when all she was after was an ink cartridge.

it was disgusting how often that happened.

i remember one old couple in wanting to buy a laptop for their granddaughter going to uni, and one of the fuckers tried to sell her a 2k vaio laptop with all the insurance and that, saying it was "mandatory". they were about to leave when i stopped them and asked what was wrong, they explained it to me, and i got them away with exactly what they needed. no insurance, no bollocks, i even gave them some goodies for the hassle.

i wasnt popular there, i actually helped people

[Guest Hobo]

Talk Talk

for that poor excuse of an ISP. Its like oh look Jims gone to the shitter perhaps we should turn the internet off, perhaps not. Lets have an anal-ogy.

Lets say Jim, who is a 45 year old ex milk demonstrator with a severe case of IBS gets a job at talk talk needs to plant one in the new forest yet his IBS decides to be a cunt and not provide any extra fertilizer in the form of say sweetcorn.

So Jim plants one without sweetcorn and his manager decides to flush the toilet because Jim is in severe pain during this flushing motion, Mr. N's internet works simply because there is no sweetcorn there to interfere with the path of the poop.... simple so far eh?

Well the same day about 17 hours later Jim(yes jim is a 45 year old, ex milk demonstrating workahollic with IBS) decides to plant another, this time hes hungry and decides to recycle his waste(because he is an eco-warrior too) he sees sweetcorn but Jims manager thinks its disgusting and flushes before the ravenous Jim gets a chance, Mr N.s internet magically cuts Until Jims workmate Jane who has crohns and lives in bombay has a ride on the gravy boat. This repeats until Mr N has enough and goes to sky....

The Justice mill

If you sell a side salad advertised as lettuce, tomatoes and onions with a dressing do not leave out the tomatoes and onions.....

please cook your chicken properly, ditto archibalds - I don't appreciate having an epileptic seizure in my stomach, If i want to shit i'll shit on my own terms

Nightclubs

Proper drainage in the toilets

[The Milner]

I had similar problems with O2 a few years ago, who are a division of BT.

i dont think it is anymore to be honest.

[Guest Bob Double Jack]

3 mobile. bunch of useless cunts.

i've not been able to get a signal downstairs in my house for 15 months, and sometimes the signal disappears totally. i was concerned when my wife was pregnant that she would try and call me to say "here comes the sprog" and she wouldn't be able to get me

Phoned their useless customer service team who were blatantly reading off a script - "i'm sorry to hear of your situation" to which i said "i'm looking forward to becoming a parent, its your network that's the problem", and ended up hanging up.

Then, the 3 shop on union street. the woman that worked in the shop really could not have gven a fuck even less. i asked her to bring up her own company site instore to look at the area my house was is to see the signal quality but i'd have been better asking a 2 month old kid.

wrote them a nasty letter, and heard fuck all back.

contract getting cancelled shortly, would have done it earlier, but would have cost me 400.

bunch of cunts.

[RossP]

pc world. i used to work there.

i didnt like how they forced that pc performance insurance bollocks on customers. when i was there i just tended to ignore it...but then the recession opened up a bit, and the company got very paranoid very quickly, and admitted they make fuck all money on most of the laptops, but make about 70 a day off of pc performance, so we had to concentrate on selling that instead of computers in a computer shop. unless we managed to fob off someone with pc performance, it was considered a "poor quality sale". same with them trying to add antivirus/ms office onto deals.

we were expected to get pcp added onto at least 60% of our daily sales, and

if we didnt sell it, we had to write down a reason why we didnt sell it, because often the managers would try to contact the customer to find out why they didnt want it, to try and pin the blame on the staff, as opposed to the customer realising that they didnt want to pay 15 a month on an overpriced, shitty, pointless service that they'd probably never use.

one customer they phoned up apparently told them "it was a fucking scam, and in future i will avoid your bollocks sales patter like the plague".

then they started on about their 'tech friends', where you take 80 from a customer and give them a fucking phone number and a stupid rubber toy. explains itself, really. we were expected to sell 5 of them a week.

then i got complained at by managers for not selling laptops they made any money on, so i had to concentrate on trying to sell the big name crap as opposed to maybe something that a customer would actually want.

naturally, i quit pretty sharpish. fuck that. there wasnt even any commission for that carry on.

edit: never ever ever work for any dixons company.

Aye, that whole PC Performance nonsense is a shocking attempt at squeezing money out of the weak and stupid. The guy who sold me my laptop last year basically said to cancel it as soon as I got home...

In a similar vein, I worked for Clarks Shoes about 6 years ago and they were ridiculous at trying to push 'shoecare' products on customers. We were expected to sell at least one item for every 2 or 3 shoes sales.

I got bollocked at my our Area Manager for not 'pushing' the products enough. I simply said to the customer at the till, that if they ever needed to clean the product, *this* product would be the best one to use... then I sold the shoes. The Area Manager wanted me to ring through the shoecare product saying 'you'll need this'. During the bollocking I printed of the sales figures for the year, showing that I had the best shoecare selling ratio in the North of Scotland; I guess people tend to buy more when you are not a cunt

[Skubbs]

BUT, so I don't look to be vary vague on the idea of this thread, I would like to recommend you either avoid UPS (American courier) if you're looking to make a delivery or get on their shit if you're a recipient.

I ended up screaming at the owner of the Dundee depot, their idiot of a driver for this area was meant to deliver an item on a Friday, he instead tried to deliver it on the Monday and my boss had just missed his call. She called him right back and he was already on his way back to Aberdeen - he'd called her later on enough to make sure that he wouldn't have to drop it off. He said he'd call her back as he was driving and didn't.

We needed this item for Tuesday morning at the latest, turns out he had dropped it off at the Dundee depot and put on the system "tried to deliver at 8.28am" that morning

I bitched that much to the UPS customer helpline that they gave the owner so much hassle he drove up with it in his own car.

The guy's excuse for not calling back was that he "lost his phone"...

I despise UPS - they are utter shite.

And if you live in the countryside, DHL and UPS have already admitted that if you are outside Aberdeen then there is a "get out clause" that means they don't have to deliver on a Friday or Saturday, even if you have paid extra