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Fucking customers in the ass; The modern business model
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
This whole post got longer than I thought it would, but here's the idea of the thread; How have you guys been fucked over by any sort of business? Additional fees, loophole contract bullshit, etc. My recent story is told below. Spoilered for wall-of-text.
So it's coming up on a month now where I made the decision, and paid, to jump on board with cell phones (yeah I haven't owned one 'til now). I decided to go with Sprint since I use one of their broadband cards for my computer, and thought I'd be able to get some sort of discount with them. So I asked, and I was told about a certain plan. On paper (screen) it sure read right. Unlimited internet use and whatever call details there were. Awesome.
When placing the order on my phone I noticed I couldn't change the shipping address, only the billing one. It appears that they automatically link the shipping address with the account address. The online rep told me that I could get out of the order screen and change my account info, then come back to the ordering screen. I did so, but the shipping address did not update. The online rep assured me that when their shipping department looks at the information they'll adjust as needed. Okay, that sounds alright to me. Order placed.
I wait several days, and I have nothing. When I track my order, Sprint tells me to use a tracking number with UPS. Thanks for the run-around but let's see...
... it shipped to the old address in Texas that night, just hours before I checked on it. This is where all the shit begins.
I contact Sprint and tell them what happened via email. The response says the phone was never delivered "according to their records." The guy said he cancelled it though, and marked my account so that I could go into any Sprint store and still get the online price (which would be free). I left instructions for the folks (who I had been house-sitting for at my previous address, since they're truck drivers) to take the phone delivered there to the Sprint store in town. Surely they'd take it, since I was lucky enough to have family or anyone I know residing there, and not a dickwad stranger who would just use the phone.
Before I get to a store here, the folks tell me the store there won't take the phone. The people at the store wanted my account number, since it was associated with the phone. Urgh. I go to a local store and have better luck; they honor my phone deal, and even let me know that the plan I was informed of online didn't do what I had thought; apparently the plan I picked was strictly for the phone, as it never struck me that internet for the phone and internet for a computer were two different things. They fix that, and tell me that the company would try to fuck me over with a fee for changing my plan. Yet they marked my account with their store info and their word that I was misled and told me to call the support line, and they would not charge me the fee. I haven't gotten to that yet.
I get ahold of the folks and give them the account number so that the store would take the ill-delivered phone. Only, even with that, they didn't want it. More so, they had the balls to tell my mother they would charge her a restocking fee. As soon as she heard that, my mother decided to ship the thing via UPS back to Sprint.
That brings us to now; I've just received an email from Sprint saying the phone returned does not meet the requirements for giving me credit on it, which means I'm going to be charged for it.
It's like every step of the way these people are trying to get a fuckton of money out of me, and I've had it. Even if I get this bullshit resolved so that I don't get charged, I'm giving them back everything (since I'm on the 30 day trial of the phone still). They can keep their phone(s), they can keep their monthly bill for the phone, and just keep me on the damn computer internet thing I still have a year contract on (not paying the fee to break that early). And more so, I'm gonna leave them with the promise that my word of mouth for their business will not be in favor of them at all.
When placing the order on my phone I noticed I couldn't change the shipping address, only the billing one. It appears that they automatically link the shipping address with the account address. The online rep told me that I could get out of the order screen and change my account info, then come back to the ordering screen. I did so, but the shipping address did not update. The online rep assured me that when their shipping department looks at the information they'll adjust as needed. Okay, that sounds alright to me. Order placed.
I wait several days, and I have nothing. When I track my order, Sprint tells me to use a tracking number with UPS. Thanks for the run-around but let's see...
... it shipped to the old address in Texas that night, just hours before I checked on it. This is where all the shit begins.
I contact Sprint and tell them what happened via email. The response says the phone was never delivered "according to their records." The guy said he cancelled it though, and marked my account so that I could go into any Sprint store and still get the online price (which would be free). I left instructions for the folks (who I had been house-sitting for at my previous address, since they're truck drivers) to take the phone delivered there to the Sprint store in town. Surely they'd take it, since I was lucky enough to have family or anyone I know residing there, and not a dickwad stranger who would just use the phone.
Before I get to a store here, the folks tell me the store there won't take the phone. The people at the store wanted my account number, since it was associated with the phone. Urgh. I go to a local store and have better luck; they honor my phone deal, and even let me know that the plan I was informed of online didn't do what I had thought; apparently the plan I picked was strictly for the phone, as it never struck me that internet for the phone and internet for a computer were two different things. They fix that, and tell me that the company would try to fuck me over with a fee for changing my plan. Yet they marked my account with their store info and their word that I was misled and told me to call the support line, and they would not charge me the fee. I haven't gotten to that yet.
I get ahold of the folks and give them the account number so that the store would take the ill-delivered phone. Only, even with that, they didn't want it. More so, they had the balls to tell my mother they would charge her a restocking fee. As soon as she heard that, my mother decided to ship the thing via UPS back to Sprint.
That brings us to now; I've just received an email from Sprint saying the phone returned does not meet the requirements for giving me credit on it, which means I'm going to be charged for it.
It's like every step of the way these people are trying to get a fuckton of money out of me, and I've had it. Even if I get this bullshit resolved so that I don't get charged, I'm giving them back everything (since I'm on the 30 day trial of the phone still). They can keep their phone(s), they can keep their monthly bill for the phone, and just keep me on the damn computer internet thing I still have a year contract on (not paying the fee to break that early). And more so, I'm gonna leave them with the promise that my word of mouth for their business will not be in favor of them at all.
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That right there is why I LOATHED and still to this day, loath college. Its one of the biggest fucking scams out there.
"Here is the textbook required for this course next semester, $230.00. Oh, by the way, it will be worth piddlyshit when you try to sell it at the end of the term. Additional screwjob abound when said textbook is replaced in less than a year with a newer addition costing twice as much."
Why don't they go fucking paperless already? its two thousand fucking godamn nine right now.
I lucked out for this one class I'm taking this summer, the teacher is cool and said "go ahead and get edition 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9. I'll tell you what they changed" I got a 6th edition for $3.90 on amazon.
Oh and tourist areas charging out the ass for shitty food then nickle and diming you on everything. $3 split plate charge? Really?
This quarter one chemistry class is all printable handouts and the other has a textbook that basically just covers stuff in the lectures with printable homework, but last quarter I had a lab with a required textbook on top of the lab manual. Like, Lab #1 would be in the manual, and Lab #2 would only be on page 256 of the textbook. It was the most ridiculous textbook shenanigans I'd ever seen.
Yeah text books are ridiculous. I got to the point where I would never buy them, but some of my courses still fucked you over by having the final exam be open book so you had to buy the damn thing.
Fuck cell carriers, seriously.
oh hell, who am I kidding. They'll charge just as much for online access, and you won't even have a reference text to keep after your semester-long access contract is up. So you'll have to pay more to print it off if you want hardcopy. No, thanks.
Man, when I first started my account with Sprint, they were charging me an extra $7 a month because physical mail was coming my way. Then like six months down the line they contacted me and said, "Hey, we'll reduce the cost if you go paperless." Thanks for making that offer on the account info page prior to your offer!
Two of the big ones that stick out in my mind:
1. Gateway liked to offer mail-in rebates with some of the computers. You can see where I'm going with this. The rebate was through a third party, and it was specifically designed to prevent you from getting your money. See, here's what you do: You send in your rebate, and you don't get your money. After waiting a month or two you remember you sent it in and you call the store. The store can't get you the info so they give you the 800 number. You call that number, and someone tells you it should be processed and on the way shortly. A few more weeks go by, you call again. Get the idea? My manager told me that from what he knew, most people had to call about three times before they'd issue the check. The idea is that you'll either forget about it or get so frustrated you just quit trying.
2. The manager of the technical department was given a warning by his district/regional manager that they were fixing computers too fast. I wish I was making this up. He told us one day, just completely exasperated, that he'd been ordered to keep computers in the shop an extra day or so and find ways to tack on more fees because our customer service was too good.
Oh, I also tried being a car salesman for a couple of months about five years ago. Holy shit. I hope I never have to do anything like that ever again.
Those bastards will make it as hard as possible to cancel a membership. I was moving out of town two months before my year long membership expired at Planet Fitness. So I figured I would be able to let the membership expire and run out. None the less I asked to make sure.
Turns out, they have all memberships set to auto renewal. Okay, well just mark my membership not to renew I figured. Nope. You have to wait till the last month to do it. And you have to submit it in a form, no being able to just tell them to do it. Of course, I was just told It had to be in writing, nothing about a form. So I left a letter with my brother, since I wouldn't be in town anymore, and he turned it in person, even getting the girl's name. Of course, I shouldn't have been surprised when the following month I had yet another charge in my debit account.
I called the manager, argued with him, got him to cancel my membership (it had auto renewed) but he wouldn't refund me the one charge. I called my bank and got them to reverse charges.
But yeah, fuck gym memberships. Even though I use them.
Jesus Christ, yes. I had heard all the stories about buying and selling at the college bookstore, but I was like "they can't all be true, right?"
Oh, what a naive freshman I was. My first hint should have been when I saw Barnes and Noble logos everywhere, but they told me I couldn't use my Barnes and Noble card. I paid like $350, and sold them for something like $80. I barely had money to buy the overpriced college tchotchkes for my family for Christmas.
I'm switching over to buying (and selling, if I can figure that shit out) over Amazon. I ran the numbers on this semester's books, and I'm saving an average of ~$20 per book.
Yes yes yes! No... I didn't cum. Textbooks are a scam these days, it's up there with Time Shares.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Email addresses for Sprint Board of Directors
Phone number for executive customer service
When in doubt, search Consumerist
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
God Yes. Specially the stupid overpriced workbooks. Though at least with those you can go in with a couple of students and just make copies.
Speaking of making copies, anyone living by a border town, did you guys ever see people with full copied text books? It's was a common thing in my college to see hand binded copies of entire textbooks, as they would just take them across to Juarez, where copyright laws mean squat, and make a full copy of the textbooks for a fraction of the cost of it.
And I guess I got lucky. As a Poli Science major, I held on to alot of the books I was forced to buy. Even the ones that could be classified as textbooks still make for good reading even now.
He gets a girlfriend. She gets pregnant. She goes batshit insane and I move out.
Cable is in my name so I call them up.
Yo. How much to change my service to a new location?
"Thirty dollar install fee is all there is to it."
GREAT!
Well, I get things swapped over and my next bill comes.
Three hundred dollars.
Something to do with prorating my bill for the half month or so, plus the next month of service because they had to create a new account.
I tell 'em that this was some shit, as I was told I'd only have to pay 30$ transfer fee. Nothing about prorating, new accounts, etc.
I tell them to shut me off and that I'll go with DirecTV.
"That will be a 200$ early termination fee."
But I've had your service for two and a half years.
"But we had to create a new account for you when you moved."
...
Still, that blows.
My girlfriend got those little tarot card junk mails her mother signed her up for that junk send like tarot cards, fortunes and little rocks to help improve your chi or some stupid shit like that, it was a free sample or whatever. Okay, cool, whatever, so we got another one next month. Uh, okay maybe they made a mistake. So she goes into the hospital out of town, I go with her, and when I get back there a stack of these things about 8 high in front of our door. And a machine full of messages from the company wanting to know where our payment is. And a collection call letting us know she defaulted and they were collecting.
I told them we never signed up for it and her mother signed her up for a free sample.
"Yeah, well, there's cut out in the invoice that has the reason."
"Okay let me check."
"So, uh, this little one line statement that's in pt 4 font telling me that if I don't send this back in a self-addressed and stamped envelope I'm going to get charged $50 a month? I have 6 months worth of this shit here. We were out of town on a medical emergency."
"Okay we'll credit your account if you send them all back."
"Yeah okay it's going to cost me $200 to send all this shit back to you anyways. No, what you're going to do is cancel our account, and cancel the collections."
"I can't do that."
"Sure you can, unless you think you can go to court and win against someone who was in the hospital and wasn't able to return this tiny stub and pay you $5.95 + a stamp to stop charging them."
"uhhhhh okay let me cancel your account and cancel the collection."
"Thanks."
"Okay all set sir, could you please send them all back?"
"Sure, if you send me a self address stamped envelope I'll send them back."
"...Good day sir."
I think it was a company called "Mind, Body, Spirit" or something like that. I never did get a box that was already paid that I could ship it back in.
Having got tired of being dicked around for what was $632 in training paid up front i cancel. they tell me i cant have my money back cause you have to send in a written certified letter withing 3 fucking days of paying. in small fucking font, and after having waited a week for the douches to set it up.
Call discover to reverse the charges, they do but ultimately i lose because they had it written in some microscopic font. fucking biggest bullshit ever.
bowen's story has put a question in my head: How legal is it to make the assumption that no response means you have agreed to sign up for the deal?
No free time per month. You pay per minute per phone call. You pay per text (although it's more like email here). You pay for internet packets. And you pay for the phone on top of the plan per month, although usually they (at least my carrier does) have a deal that can take away the price of the phone for free and you just pay the plan, but those phones are shit (but the most basic phone plan is like $10 a month, plus paying for all the other stuff you do).
Example: last month my phone bill was over $100, and I mostly text/email. I have a fucking awesome phone, but seriously. Fuck this noise. At least this carrier has free in-network calling (except between the hours of 9-12 PM), and I think other carriers are catching on to it, finally. And I think free in-network SMS, but it's not much more characters than Twitter, and a separate deal from straight-up texting on the phones and I'm still not sure how to do it...
Then there's also the business of ATM card fees, too... But that's just as bad in the States. >.<
Who's common folk?
It's not. They do it to see who'll pay it, and keep paying for their service, receiving something doesn't constitute a contract or agreement. That's how they make a large portion of their money, because most people think it's okay, or legal.
I probably would have fought it more. You signed up for a service that they failed to deliver. You should have either gotten your money back or demanded a different trainer who would actually show up.
Speaking of ATM cards...
My bank has been hacked twice in the past two years. Both times they just cut my card off without sending a letter or anything.
The second time I actually called to replace my card as machines had stopped reading it. They said it would take a week for me to get my card, but that they will wait to cut my old one off for a few days so I'll only be without a card for a day or so.
Well, they cut my card off the very next day. Two weeks go by and I get no new card. So I call them.
Hax!
And their policy was to only send out cards after someone calls them regarding an inactive account.
So I had to wait 4 weeks for access to my bank account.
I don't use checks.
That's literally it. And you save like 50% at least. I'll see if I can dig it up from my friend...
I'm gonna still watch out for it but man, that was making my heart stop.
You could've walked into the bank and got money out though? All you have to do is get a withdrawal slip, sign a piece of paper, and show them ID.
You young whippersnappers and your machine banking!
This.
There are ways to get money out of your account that don't involve an ATM or a check.