Swee Q.

I called Historics Auctions to pay for the car I had bought at their 27/11/2021 auction. Disappointingly, the lady I spoke with could not even tell me if I could drive the car away from the auction site. In view of this, I decided to use their recommended transport firm (which was good). However, in Historics' very poorly (confusingly) drafted email, they set out the car transport cost as being £132+VAT. Upon calling the transporter, I was told that the cost would be £498. When I rang Historics to complain, I was (stroppily) informed that they had "clearly" stated (2 paragraphs before!) that the cost referred to transporting the car from the auction site to the transporter's - which was certainly not the case. (As every buyer would naturally be more interested in the cost of delivering to them, shouldn't this be set out clearly?) The lady was adamant that it was clear but, if I with numerous degrees including a higher doctorate could not link "their dots", it was simply a case of her adding insult to injury. When I requested that her manager call me, she very brusquely informed me that she was the manager - but whilst refusing to tell me who she would ask to call me, she advised me that someone would be in touch. I subsequently received an email from her colleague, to which I replied asking him to call me. He never did. This was a sadly disappointing experience and it certainly does not surprise me that Historics is not even listed in Trustpilot's list of car auctioneers. Historics seems to be staffed by poorly trained, customer unfriendly and arrogant folk who treat customers as annoying inconveniences rather than the long term assets they could be. Naturally, this is the last time I shall be buying anything through them, particularly as their (far superior) competitors provide much better customer service. And in this age of relevant differentiation, customer experience is almost always the critical deciding factor!

I have long been wearing Skechers. In the last 2 months I have bought another 2 pairs of their trainers (I now have 8 pairs). The 2nd pair was bought on 16/9 at their Reading store together with a tube of their Athletic Cleanser (£10) which supposedly "Brightens & Cleans". I used this on the 1st pair of Skechers (Skech-Air which I had only worn twice) but instead of removing any of the dirt, it coloured the white fabric blue (probably from the blue sole)! I rang the store and the manager told me to bring it down to them or the nearest Skechers store which is over 20 miles away. I explained that I would be happy to send them photos, but he refused. I have written to their Customer Services but they are indubitably disingenuously exploiting Covid19 (plain slothfulness & complete disinterest in customer care, much more likely) by auto-responding that a reply may not be forthcoming for weeks. By their pathetic & totally customer-insulting & inconveniencing policies, Skechers is clearly demonstrating that they are happy to take customers' money but, should any problems arise with their overpriced & shoddy products, we (the customers) can go & whistle in the wind. DO NOT BUY SKECHERS!

Fedex has pumped its ADVANCEMENT FEE to £12 (from £8)! If this is not price gouging, I really do not know what is! Additionally, their payment system has frozen and does not work at all. Try calling their "customer service" and you are made to wait for 30 mins listening to their inane messages until you give up & hang up! This is a pathetic business that acts like it hates its customers. A masterclass in how to screw customers whilst charging them more and more! USE ANY OTHER COURIER & let's hope that Karma hits this horrible business harder than any virus. I shall, of course, be instructing all my suppliers NOT to use this cretinous courier!

British Airways is amazingly backward and hugely customer unfriendly. Notwithstanding the Covid 19 debacle, I received an email from BA offering an earlier return flight from the Czech Republic. Bizarrely in today's tech-everything world, the instruction was to phone rather than to use the website. I did and was passed to the ticketing department. After a futile (& extremely frustrating) 35 minutes, I hung up. The ridiculous thing is that they don't tell you where you are in the queue or how long it is likely to be before the call is likely to be answered. Also they should have anticipated the number of calls - and thus should have upped the number of call attendants & phone lines! (All you hear is up-selling messages and brain numbing music.) It seems everyone else provides this courtesy to improve customer experience, except BA - which seems to be stuck in the stone age. I also tried to leave feedback on their website. Probably realising that any feedback is likely to be negative, they have made it virtually impossible to do so. Some airlines (like Delta) get better, whilst others (BA!), worse. BA does not deserve to survive the terrible times we are going through but they might just succeed in achieving carbon zero status!

I wanted to but a Kyoto Jacket (£105) and registered for Jack Wolfskin's newsletter, which promised a £10 discount (min order £100). When I added the discount code, the response was "Your coupon could not be applied. Please check if your order meets all requirements for the coupon redemption". When I tried calling their Customer Service, I was made to wait a few minutes & then advised by a robot to email because all their operators were so darn busy. Do NOT buy from this trashy outfit - absolutely disingenuous, time-wasting & fraudulent!

Phone service does NOT exist! After entering my details, I waited for over 20 minutes listening to their really stupidly annoying music and their disingenuous message thanking me for my patience and promising that one of their advisors would be with me ASAP - which never happened. I tried twice and the same results - no one answered. Pathetic non-service clearly indicative of a business that puts profits far above customer care - and which ignores the importance of good customer experience. I really hope this dinosaur gets taken out by more customer focused, nimble and visionary competitors.

AliExpress is PATHETICALLY BAD to the extreme! I ordered an item £31.61 incl shipping) on 31st of January 2022. The crooked seller (shop******* Store - which should be avoided at all cost!) has provided NO proof of dispatch or tracking information, and yet AliExpress keeps on extending the deadline and today they have made their ludicrous decision: WAIT PATIENTLY. They must be really desperate to earn the fees from non-existent sales, no doubt, hoping that buyers will get so frustrated that they give up trying to chase for delivery. AliExpress has evidently no respect for their own (pathetic) reputation or customer service as it is virtually impossible (they do an amazing job at hiding this!) to access their non-existent customer service. If buyers want decent service and protection, use eBay (which is not great for sellers but very good for buyers). AliExpress is truly disgusting! If I could give it a ZERO star rating, I most certainly would is as that is the most they deserve

I have bought numerous high end watches from Chrono24 sellers. Yesterday, I bought (and paid IMMEDIATELY) - at full price without asking for any discount - a Rolex ******* full set from Just In Time Watches di Claudio Tassinari, a dealer on Chrono24. As usual, I asked for a few pictures of the certificate and lug ends revealing the serial number and another identifier for my record. Other dealers happily provide these. This seller, however, brusquely replied clearly signalling his displeasure with my request and ended his message with "... If you are not satisfied I ask you to cancel the order because I have other interested customers". When I replied that I did not appreciate his aggressive tone, he cancelled the order. This is obviously an arrogant seller who has no idea (or interest in) what customer service is about. No doubt to him, the world would be great if not for customers. In today's increasingly competitive world where differentiation by products (e.g. Watches which are commodities) is not sustainable, service is always key. I hope that the market show him to his peril the truth of this. PS: Just in Time Watches is accredited as a Chrono24 Trusted Seller - which proves that all it takes to qualify is to sell watches - with no consideration of service quality. I, of course, lodged a complaint with Chrono24 but it remains to be seen whether anything will come of it..

Fedex is a RIP-OFF artist that needs to be made to account for its insidious practices. I received a parcel from the US valued at a TOTAL of US$105 - but received a Fedex import charge invoice for £35.76. According to my FX converter, $105 = £83.*******. VAT at 20% thus comes to £16.64 (rounded up). Fedex charges an egregiously exorbitant £12 for its robot to issue the invoice. Even with this RIP-OFF charge, this should result in a charge of no more than £28.64. Whilst the extra £7.12 is not going to bankrupt me, it is just plain piracy. Imaging them doing the same to thousands of victims every day - knowing that most will not be bothered to check/argue. Additionally, contacting them in anyway is deliberately made difficult by their system (if that is not the case, then their programmers must be pretty pathetic!) - no doubt to dissuade contacts and complaints. A true pirate operation if I ever saw one! Avoid using Fedex like the plague and don't invest in this crooked company...

If I could give zero stars to HSBC Premier, I most certainly would. My recent experience has been a catalogue of disasters. They initially claimed to have sent my credit cards at the end of last month but it still hadn't arrived after 3 weeks. I then contacted HSBC "Premier" service and was dealt with by an associate who obviously is pretty ignorant & poorly trained. She declared that they could not courier the cards to me, but subsequently another associate told me that that would be no problem. In any event, the original cards arrived after 3 1/2 weeks and I had them validated over the phone. Surprise, surprise, they were declined for ALL payment transactions because they had been cancelled by HSBC. How the associate managed to validate cancelled card is still beyond my comprehension. Many, many calls and long long waits later, my new credit cards finally arrived. However, I have just received HSBC SMSs to say that there have been fraud alerts and that the transactions on my cards have been declined. All these transactions were legitimate and there seemed no reason to suspect otherwise. It seems that HSBC is hellbent on giving as much grief as possible to their (even "Premier") customers. A more pathetic, Incompetent and unprofessional bank I have yet to come across. Absolutely appalling!

TWO HUGELY FRUSTRATING ISSUES: (A) It would seem that Amazon does a fabulous job IN confounding customers & stopping them from getting any customer service. For anything but the most mundance, it seems impossible to get through to customer service! We ordered a grocery delivery several days ago which NEVER arrived. I have tried contacting them but (1) there was no way to choose the entire shop - the only option was to choose just 1 item (ludicrous!) & (2) the chatbot was pathetic and not at all helpful + the customer service line not only failed to pick up after 15 minutes BUT was also quiet throughout, so I never knew for sure if the call was still on (or had been terminated). (B) I have been charged 4 times through my secondary credit card for items I cannot trace. When I tried Amazon's pitifully customer-unfriendly "Customer Service", the same problems as in (A) above. Amazon must really hate its customers!