What is Your Customer Service Horror Story?

Okay I've got a horror story from the other side.. I'm the tech support on the phone trying to help some guy who is having trouble sending email.

To give a little side info, our handle time is supposed to be 12 minutes.. that is we have 12 minutes to solve the problem and get the customer off the phone.

so in this case the customer is using Windows 98 and Outlook Express (this was about 9 years ago). He is trying to send emails, but OE is returning the error "The message could not be sent because the server rejected the sender's e-mail address." No I did not remember the specific error, I had to look it up. It was 9 years ago, okay? And I'm no longer in tech support. Anyway, it's an easy one to solve, the customer obviously typed his email incorrectly in his account settings. So I take the customer to tools -> accounts -> etc. He reads the correct email address to me. I get him to spell it out to me.. He spells it correctly. I get him to retype it and say each character aloud as he types. Okay, send the test message... same error.

Repeat... again... again.. What the hell is going on here?At least 25 minutes have gone by and I ask the customer to hold. I mute the mic and take off my head set. The dude next to me can see that I'm getting very frustrated and puts his customer on hold. "what's going on?" he asks.. I tell him the error that I've been unable to solve.

"Well he just typed in his email address wrong"

"I KNOW that!" I retort. wait a minute...wait a minute.. hold on... I say this aloud, and the dude next to me goes back to his customer.

I go back to my customer as well. "Sir.. could you read that address to me again, please?" He does. "Now sir," I begin calmly "When you are reading me the 'at' symbol, is it an @ symbol or the number 2?" The dude next to me is staring wide-eyed.

"It's the number 2" He says. I mute the mic and let out a looong sigh. 'Thank GOD' I'm saying to myself. "okay.. I want you to delete the number 2 and everything after it... now with your left hand hold the shift key, you'll find it on the lower left-hand side of your keyboard..." The dude next to me has put his customer on hold again and is doing his best, unsuccessfully, to stifle his laughter. "hold the shift key...man you opened up a whole new world for that guy!" and he laughed and laughed..

The call finished and I broke for lunch, which by that time was very, very late.

The call lasted close to 50 minutes.

And that's my customer service horror story.

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Anything related to Sprint customer service would be a horror story. In my experience anyways, my list of "Worst customer experiences" ... basically everything is Sprint related.

Needless to say, my most fluffy daydreams of customer service were Apple related :)

T-Mobile. Trying to get a credit applied from an old (disconnected) account to a new account must take an act of congress. Their billing dept. continues to kick out bills on the old account. I have since kicked T-Mobile to the curb.

I suspect you have run into a cell of bad support. I've had some very good experiences with Toshiba support in the past. Escalate the issue and keep on doing so until you talk to someone who will address your problems. OTH, I recently had a small (very small) squabble with Asus support. My son's gaming notebook had a broken "D" keycap. Big stinking deal. Asus would ONLY address the issue by having him ship the thing in for a complete keyboard replacement. Because ONE of the clips on the keycap was broken. sheesh One to two weeks (ship it in, get it in the queue for a five minute repair, ship it back--probably a couple of weeks actual downtime.) I bought a replacement keycap elsewhere, popped it on and bob's your uncle.

If it were indeed the power connector, that's probably a $20 part if bought third party. A five (or ten, if your soldering skills were lacking) minute repair job. If it came to making the repair yourself, it's certainly doable.

But really, escalate the thing until you're talking to someone who can address the issue directly.

I had Time Warner Road Runner until about a month ago. My parents switched everything to Verizon about a month ago because the TV picture kept cutting out. It never affected our Internet connection though.

We have been having problems with our Internet since we switched to Verizon.

When they did the initial hookup they said that they just need to change some configuration in the office and our Internet should work by the end of the day. It took them 9 days with several daily calls for them to finally send out a tech. Every day they said someone would be there by 8pm but they never showed up. On day 8 we talked to the technician scheduling manager for southern CA and he made sure that someone got there and fixed the problem first thing the next day.

When the tech arrived he said it was the same problem that the tech that did the hookup said it was. But he personally went into the sub office and made the necessary changes.

7 days later we started periodically loosing DSL signal several times a day for about 1 minute at a time. We are still waiting for it to get fixed. If they don't do it soon were going to switch service providers again.

This one is happening right now. Something very fishy about the way the CEO of Wahoo's Fish Tacos handles customer service issues. Rathe shocking!

http://www.ripoffreport.com/wahoo-s-fish-tacos/fast-food-restaurants/wahoo-s-fish-tacos-catering-n-81681.htm

About two years ago, I bought two identical Acer Windows 7 laptops, one for me and one for my wife. Since my previous Acer laptop is still running on Ubuntu and running well, I figured Acer served me well. Boy, I was wrong!

I installed my laptop and it took forever. While mine was still installing, I started installing my wife's 30 minutes into my install and hers was ready within an hour, while mine was still hammering away. That should've been the first sign, but I didn't pay any attention to it. After three weeks, my laptop wouldn't boot up anymore. So I contacted Acer and had my laptop picked up at home, so they could take a look at it... After multiple phonecalls and almost 4 weeks later, my laptop returned, only to find out they replaced the HDD with one of theirs, without formatting the damn thing. All kinds of weird networks and user accounts on my system. That should've been my second warning!

Oh well, never mind, I just formatted the HDD, re-installed everything and I was a happy camper for about two weeks before the BSOD's started to appear. Another call to Acer and they just told me they worked on my laptop for weeks and it was probably my own fault it presented me with BSOD's. After multiple phone calls and several pissed off emails, they picked up my laptop again and it was gone for another 3 weeks.

Once I got it back, it just took 3 weeks before the laptop completely died on me. Was watching some TV, when I started smelling smoke. Turns out smoke was appearing from the laptops keyboard. I was just in time disconnecting the power supply before the laptop shorted out.

Till this day, I'm in a legal fight with Acer, yes even after two years, to get a refund or replacement. I don't care about the laptop anymore, it became a matter of principle! Their laptop was clearly flawed, but they simply don't care and are still trying to pin it on me... Acer, never ever again!

The only bad experience I've had is with Sky. The last house I was in was 3 storey house. They were unsucessfully able to install the satellite dish on two occasions - one due to the wind and the second due to the fact they only sent one person out and the wrong sized ladder.. The first team that came out had the right sized ladder and there were two of them.

So, after the disappointment of the second failed installation, I rang up to book a third... This is part of the conversation I swore alot and got really annoyed, but here's the main idea:

SKY: None of our teams have a ladder big enough to reach the roof ME: But the first guys that came out did and they were willing to do the work if it wasn't windy SKY: The only thing I can suggest is getting an independent installer to do the job ME: Yes but I've already payed you to do the job. SKY: We will partially refund you I PUT THE PHONE DOWN AT THIS POINT IN FRUSTRATION.

After putting the phone down I had to go outside to calm down with a cigarette in hand. I then rang back up and got through to another customer service agent who was helpful, booked the right team and all sorted.

Moral of the story, put the phone down and ring back up, hopefully you'll get someone helpful the second time round.

ive seen this new company posting on facebook Alley Cat studio's westville nova scotia, i suggested hey make a buisness page for the buisness and the owner as well as 3 employees sent me harassing messages, creeped my posts and got on this page that has 25000 likes and accrding to the admin were slandering me for no reason at all that bad he had to bad 3 people and a page, got a crooke town cop to call me and try to say i didnt have the right of free speech, as for the employees i thought i blocked them all, but one is still harassing me its been 6 months since this started i hope other Pictou County people see this and go to better places then that!!