Swee Q.

Sainsbury's is a typical big business that makes it virtually impossible to submit a complaint. Go online and try to find a way of doing so! It is not only do they NOT care about customers, they probably derive pleasure in frustrating them. I wanted to leave a complaint about very poor packaging of one of their products but was (most frustrating and annoying me) unable to do so. Their systems are shortsighted as such annoyance forces customers to go online (& instead of just submitting the complaints to them directly) and leave complaints and bad reviews on platforms like Sitejabber. Additionally, it forces customers to go to their competitors that are both better at customer service and better priced (which is not difficult). Really stupid!

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!

Contempt & insults for "veteran" ebay member! I have been a very prolific buyer on eBay for over 17 years. Recently (and for the first time in over two years) I listed via auction a number of items on ebay. After a quarter were sold, ebay – without explanation or reason – restricted my account. I contacted them and was told many times by them (& received a message confirming) that the problem had been resolved. However, because I was about to leave for vacation, I told them not to relist the items they had cancelled as I would not be able to post them. After a month, I contacted them again and asked about the funds that were due to me. Two days later I received a message asking me to provide proof that I had bought the items I had sold. This is ludicrous as many of the items were bought years ago and being low-cost items in the main, I have not kept any records. I have also received nearly 1300 100% positive feedbacks! When I called ebay again today to complain, the Ebay staffer hung up on me and has apparently blocked my number as I am now unable to contact them. I have called the financial ombudsman service and they have opened a case. Let this be a warning to anyone thinking of listing on eBay. They may be good to buyers, but they treat sellers like dirt. They seem to be intent on keeping the over £6000 they all me! There are many other wonderful platforms to use and I would suggest that sellers do online searches to find "alternatives to eBay". Do not suffer and be humiliated by this platform the way that I have been.

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..

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!

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!

Completely useless customer service! I Sent a parcel to California and it was marked delivered. Problem is the recipient has not received the parcel. When I tried to type in the postcode to get details of the journey taken, it would not accept it. I the. Went onto Evri's customer service/help procedure online and the same thing happened. The bot ("Ezra") was off absolutely no help & gave up trying to track the parcel after the first attempt. It simply stated that a postcode was needed (which, of course, rejected) & directed me to their FAQs, which were totally unhelpful. It is hugely problematic when "service" companies try to do things on the cheap to win business only to have customer service suffer. This is yet another company that obviously does not value either its customers or its own reputation. Avoid Evri & use a courier service that has HUMANS manning their customer service!

I have bought through Car And Classic previously and thought they were pretty poor as it seemed that they took far better care of sellers than they did buyers. I was wrong. I sold two cars earlier this week through them and had long conversations with one of the sales people who agreed that as I was going to be taking the photographs, there would be no charge for photography. Obviously (and the next person I spoke with at the company told me this was the case) he did not communicate this arrangement down the line. Indeed, when I received the closing statement, I found that I was charged in full for photography and the editorial (most of which, I provided by way of information). Their "customer success executive" then contacted me to say that I would receive a discount of £50 when I was charged £300 for the "auction editorial fee". (He said that the "discount" would be £400 over 4 cars, so how my discount ended up being £50 is quite beyond me. It is also interesting as the sales rep. I've been dealing with assured me that I'll be getting a discount of "£100 to £200" PER car.) Interestingly, when I tried to find out what their sellers fees are, I found it a real challenge to get the full picture. They seem to try to hide the info in different places i.e. The fee, the minimum fee, and any information relating to photography and editorial costs (which seems not to exist in writing). Car And Classic is quite a distasteful outfit to work with and I am glad to see that there is a "big three" auction house that has started its own online car auction service. I hope it will take a lot of business from this very pathetic cowboy outfit.
PS: I was assured that the payments would be received by me within 24 hours. It's been over 4 days now, and still no funds have been received. Additionally, I've asked Omar to have a senior customer service member ring me. He assured me it would happen. Of course, it hasn't! As I said, pathetic!

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!

Like with many online businesses, when things are going smoothly, there is little by way of problems and Catawiki performs well. But the moment problems appear, it becomes virtually impossible to get hold of Catawiki's Customer Service (assuming it even exists). I rang today at 4:15 CET – 45 minutes before they were meant to shut (according to their voicemail). What did I get but a recorded message saying that their offices are closed and, of course, suggesting that I fill in the form, which I suspect will result in a similar Nada. I can understand that they're trying to cut cost in order to raise their profits, but sacrificing customer service is not the way to do it. I hope that other disruptive online platforms will come up and complete aggressively against Catawiki. Indeed, there are already at least 1 other platform that I use which does a similar job (and arguably better in terms of Customer Service) but charges less. For what it does, Catawiki is certainly not cheap. I have bought 27 watches through Catawiki, but shall not be doing so again.
PS: Catawiki should really show the selling price or highest bid on items that have been sold or for which bidding has closed. It currently fails to do so as if the selling price or closing bid were secret. Being open (like its competitors) would help bidders & watchers better understand the market better, which can only help Catawiki.

An absolute slimeball con!
This company also trades as BestToBuy. It is an absolute scam! It offers attractive items at knock down prices but what you will receive is nothing like what you paid for. I ordered a bronze mechanical automatic watch but received a cheap & nasty quartz watch (without so much as an invoice). They will also cleverly send it by tracked shipping so that they have proof that an item was delivered to you – albeit not what you ordered. When you complain, the Customer Service lady ("Ingrid Nodal") - who seems to be located in Thailand - will first send you detailed tracking information showing it's been delivered. When you point out that you did not receive what you paid for, she will then say that she will send the correct one but it will take a long time. Finally, when you chase up, she will not reply. This is an absolute slimeball con. I have reported it to my credit card company for a refund.

When Bloombar describes a watch as having "papers", do not take their word on it. Check! I recently bought a watch from them through watchcollecting.com. It was described as having "papers". This was not the case as the only thing that came with was a plastic warranty card. They (and watchcollecting.com) insisted that this was correct. I'm a member of a pretty well informed watch forum and having posed the question to some of the experts there, their opinions concurred with mine that a plastic warranty card per se does not constitute "papers". I wrote to Sam Buckell at Bloombar who disappointingly refuted any responsibility by replying, "As our contractual agreement as well as yours is with Watch Collecting, not with us we have referred your complaint to them with our comments." This statement is disingenuous as watchcollecting.com (as all auction houses) state clearly that they act as agents for the seller. This is not the the very first time I've bought from Bloombar but it will be the last. When things go well, they are fine. When things go wrong, however, they will do nothing by way of customer service. Myopically foolish..

SCAM!

Easy to deposit funds but IMPOSSIBLE to sell. I tried selling. Regardless of what option I clicked to pay into (Mastercard, Visa, overseas Visa and even my Binance cash balance), it came up with the following excuses:
1) Card number is not supported
The processor of cards (visa, master) you are using is not supported. Please change another card with different processor and try again (RC*******)
2) Service Not Available
Based on our Internal Policy, this service is not available for your account. Please try again with a different payment method or select another currency.
3) Unable to Process
The issuing country of this card is not supported. Please change a card and try again (RC*******). Binance is such a crooked operation!

I bought a step stool from the Home Bargains store at Yate and on one of the very first times it was used, it broke under my wife. It was very fortunate that I was just next to her and managed to catch her
Thus preventing what would likely have been a bad fall. Still, my wife sprained her hip as a consequence. I contacted their customer service dept which gave me the runaround and insisted that I return the stool to the Yate store – even though I sent them several photographs of the broken object. As it had been a few months since I bought the stool, I had not kept the receipt (who keeps receipts for months on a less than £30 purchase?) My wife returned it as instructed and I wrote to customer service again informing them that it had been returned. I also sent them a photo of the receipt provided by the store – which included the name of the person accepting it. It has been three weeks since then and still no reply from home bargains. It just shows how pathetic they are and how little they care about customers and their reputation. They may be cheap, but if you have any problems with their products, do not expect any remedy or service!

I bought a fully comprehensive car insurance policy and due to an accident, need to make a claim. The policy clearly states that to make a claim, go to insurance.claim@*******. Lo & behold, this leads to all avenues EXCEPT that for lodging a claim. When I searched for booking.com's customer service (phone) details, I was delighted to reach their site which proudly claimed that customers could reach them 24/7 - but no matter what I did, no phone number could be found. I am supposed to be a Genius level 3 customer but this doesn't help me one bit! When there is no problem, Booking.com works well BUT the moment you need their help, they become invisible & totally uncontactable! This is a pathetic business that very unprofessionally (& very short-sightedly) ignores customers and treats them as a mere, dispensible inconvenience. Do NOT BUY INSURANCE from this scam merchant!

I transferred my SIPP to Barnet Waddingham (BW) because my previous provider did not allow certain investments. BW is diabolically bad and treats client service as an annoying inconvenience to be dispensed with. On 16th February, I received notice from Interactive Investor (that it would cease providing its Pension Trading Account service and thus clients were to transfer their accounts elsewhere. After many attempts, I managed to get hold of my BW relationship manager, MC. He assured me that he would find an alternative PTA provider and would email me to let me know. That, as always in the past, never happened. MC is a disgrace to his profession. After waiting for several weeks, I contacted BW again and was put through to someone who assured me that he would come back with the information I needed. I also asked for a change of relationship manager because MC was absolutely useless. The person I spoke with agreed to pass my message to his superiors. It has been 1.5 months now and nothing has happened. Today, I tried calling BW again but, of course, their robot informed me that all the agents were tied up… This happens all the time. If you're looking for a SIPP provider, the last firm you should go to should be BW. It is pathetic beyond belief and specialises in adding insult to injury - a true disgrace to its industry.

The 3-strong service crew led by Iryan on Scoot flight TR431 from Kuching to Singapore on 20 April exhibited an appallingly dismal standard of customer service. I had injured my leg and was walking with a cane but had been allocated a seat in the 2nd last row. (Scoot's app is also very poor as confirmed by the senior crewmember, Iryan, when I mentioned it.) The app very annoyingly would not allow me to add a seat selection when checking in. Having thrice asked 2 members of the crew if I could be moved closer the front, I was assured by both that they would check & revert. When this failed to happen, I asked for the 4th time and was promptly told by Iryan that there were no available seats except for upgradable ones. When I informed him that I would be happy to pay for one of these, he said he would need to check (about what I do not know) and revert. Naturally, this failed to happen yet again. I then asked one of his colleagues to call him over. When he finally deigned to appear, I informed him that by failing to deliver what they promised every single time, they were adding insult to injury - which invariably results in poor customer experience. Iryan was surprisingly blasé and didn't seem to be at all bothered by this; almost as if receiving such complaints was a regular occurrence to be ignored. Intriguingly, as he mentioned that he had no idea what customer service training SIA crew received, I detected an ill-concealed smirk. Considering that Scoot is part of SIA (of which I have been a Gold Krisflyer member for well over 2 decades), this is most disappointing. I would've thought that they would select and train their frontline service staff - even for the low end Scoot - to reflect SIA's lofty standards to ensure positive customer experience. (In a world where consumers always have options, customer service is often what differentiates!) This is evidently not the case. Needless to say, I will be avoiding this airline like the plague in future. PS: (1) I never did hear from Iryan if there was an upgradable seat available (I highly suspect that there was). (2) iryan jovially pointed out that SIA's Krisflyer gold membership was worth nothing when flying Scoot.

The partner I dealt with is exceedingly poor in communicating & does not bother to reply to voicemails & emails. Quite pathetic. He appointed an associate (consultant - outsourced?) to deal with my issue against a cowboy motor repairer (and scam artist) when they should have known from the outset that this was a non-starter because the scammer had dissolved the company he used. I ended up paying this law firm c. £3,000 for zippo. I now understand why there is such a host of lawyer jokes!

In the last fortnight I have spoken with Which? Legal thrice. Each time, a swift appointment was arranged and each advisor I spoke with was professional, very personable and provided sound advice. One even sent me an excellent template to edit and send to a party with whom I had serious issues with. Another advisor (re another issue) explained that as the company had deviously wound itself up, there was no recourse under UK law (as Lord Denning MR so astutely observed, "the law is an $#*!"). This was very unlike a legal firm which I had engaged. (The latter disgustingly charged me c. £3,000 to come to the same conclusion.) The Which? Legal service at £9 a month is well worth it.