Being Rude Does Work

Especially with Ticketmaster.

I sent this email to them a few days ago, after wasting too much time trying to speak to someone.

I booked a ticket to see Morrissey at the Roundhouse, a gig which was promptly cancelled (reference number 2342652). Due to the incompetence of either yourselves, or SMS delivery (or most likely, both) I wasted a day to sit at home and have the tickets delivered to me. Naturally, no one turned up and I had to pick the tickets up the venue on the day of the gig. The gig was cancelled and I have been instructed to send the tickets back to yourselves. My Credit Card has not yet been reimbursed and I presume that because you expect me to go to London to pick the tickets up so I can send them back to you.

It would be nice of you (and unprecedented) to contact me to remedy this situation. Every time I deal with your company it is an unmitigated shambles.

If I do not hear from you I shall have no choice but to contact the OFT.

and less than an hour later I got this response

Dear Mr Core

Thank you for your email

May I apologise if you feel you have received unsatisfactory service, this is definitely not our intention.

I can confirm that your booking was refunded on 13th February. A total amount of £43.45 has been credited to the original card used for purchase. It usually takes 2-5 working days for this to appear in your account. Please check your statement.

In accordance with the card processing rules laid out by our Merchant Services provider, all refunds must be issued to the original card used to make the booking. If your card is no longer in use, please contact the card issuer who will be holding the funds. They can then arrange payment to a new account.

If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regard

David Cameron-Pryde

Amazingly, the money i got back included the postage and the booking fee I paid for the ticket.

SMS are incompetant wankers...

They fail to deliver on days you've asked them to redeliver and impossible to get through by phone...

It took them a month to try and deliver my Underworld tickets - it's a good thing that the concert isn't until the end of this month...

I called the people at BT Vision, after transferring me to a ninth individual person (fuckwit), 'a bunch of cunts', the other day, and they hung up on me, 47 minutes after my original inquiry.

So, no, it didnt work for me.

BT are the worst. By far.

They took £160 to install a phone line from me. Yet it wasnt installed because... they didnt turn up. I spent weeks trying to get through to someone. In the end I wrote a letter explaining that the situation should be resolved as soon as possible, otherwise i would have to report them to the Police. A tad extremne possibly but they had taken money off me and activated a direct debit.

They turned up the next day.

I'm still waiting on the ten grand I expected back when I met Stash, anticipating to meet someone who knew what day of the week it was!

That's more an assertive,but reasonable letter rather than rude though Liam,is'nt it? You don't say "Ow! cuntluggs...money back pronto,or I'll skullfuck you and ye dog" or owt rude all..which would have just got you arrested,mebees...So does rudeness work?

Burt Reynolds wrote: I called the people at BT Vision, after transferring me to a ninth individual person (fuckwit), 'a bunch of cunts', the other day, and they hung up on me, 47 minutes after my original inquiry.

So, no, it didnt work for me.

That seems to be more the norm nowadays with fucking loads of companies..Had the same chew with Virgin.Effin mare.

I'm the poor sod who answers your fucking calls. Oh my phone doesn't get sms, oh my bill is high... I lost my phone, I didn'd dowload that song... I never even used sms, yeah right, your gnome did.

To a degree, being rude, obnoxious, and lying does work very well. Few people will stand up to an obnoxious person, if anything they will patronize you just to get rid of you. Moral... honesty is for losers.

SMS are spectacularly useless, truly world class spastics.

Can't give examples as it's not the done thing, but I wouldn't trust them to deliver a shite to the water with their cheeks on the bogseat.

That's polite, Laim. Nothing wrong at all with a sternly-worded email.

I have, in my time, called the AA 'worse than a backstreet garage', a posh hotel in Brighton 'a delapidated Bed and Breakfast' and once offered to drive to the office of my ISP to break the nose of the Customer Support "Engineer". On every occasion I have received full recompense.

The only organisation I have yet to crack fully are my bank. I've got back a only small proportion of the bank charges I've suffered over the years, despite hounding them for the return of every penny. The ongoing OFT case should sort that out though.

Large organisations rely on the majority of their customers rolling over and accepting the crappy service that they have to provide in order to maintain the massive profits they enjoy. The trick is to make it unprofitable for them to argue. By taking loads of their time with your cmoplaint, you are costing them money.

Well done for threatening to call the Police though. That's a lovely idea.

El Jarvo wrote: What happened to Morrissey then? Did he cancel all his Roundhouse dates?

He limped off with a sore throat a few dates in. Jonathan Ross and Russel Brand went on stage to apologise and were roundly booed (accoring to Ross).

I got charged twice for that webcast of the New Order Manc Apollo gig Nov 2005.Second charge was out of the blue like 6 months fcuking later never did get my fiver back.In fatc i should have got £10 back seeing as the webcast didn't work "LIVE" in the first place.Didn't get anywhere with the phone complaints.Wankers

Ker-ching!

You should have sent Instpector Knacker round

Mind you i've got loads of stuff free i should have paid for really like films etc so it's swings and roundabouts

Reverend Big wrote:

The only organisation I have yet to crack fully are my bank. I've got back a only small proportion of the bank charges I've suffered over the years, despite hounding them for the return of every penny. The ongoing OFT case should sort that out though.

Any idea on the status of that case? I thought it was going to be resolved in January. I went overdrawn on my bank account by £110 in January for 7 days, and I've been charged £35 for going overdrawn PLUS £20 for each day I was overdrawn, adding up to a grand total of £175. Thats worse than loansharking.

I always threaten to take my business elsewhere and 9 times out of 10 I've had my charges refunded, worth a try.

It started in January. A report I read gave the numbers of lawyers who were involved, it was amazing. Shows what a gravy train the charges must be: the banks must be spending millions each on legal representation to defend their right to charge customers what they want. It being a joint action they must need teams of lawyers to watch the other banks lawyers and more to argue the case.

It's a fucking cruel way to carry on - the charges, by definition, kick you when you're down. I've been down recently, the cost of my divorce has crippled me. So right when the lawyers and accountants have taken every penny you have, the banks swedge in with £400 of charges in a week. Fucking wankers, I shit them.

Failing a meteorite smashing into the courts and killing all the lawyers and bankers in one hit, I hope the OFT does their job well and soon. The banks owe me literally thousands of pounds and I really could do with it back.

Sometimes I just call the bank to discuss this with them; keep them on the phone for an hour or so when I'm drunk, demanding to speak to the most senior manager I can get through to. It doesn't make a blind bit of difference but it does make me feel better to know that I've taken an hour of their time when they could have been fucking with someone else.

And another thing...

A classic:

Reverend Big wrote: It started in January. A report I read gave the numbers of lawyers who were involved, it was amazing..

It's a fucking cruel way to carry on -

Failing a meteorite smashing into the courts and killing all the lawyers and bankers in one hit, I hope the OFT does their job well and soon.

Sometimes I just call the bank to discuss this with them

And another thing...

Brilliant.. Ouch. Charges plus charges. Can only wish that one of your calls is randomly chosen as, 'This call may be recorded for quality control purposes. In Future..

Edit. 10 weeks?!. Lesser evils in Daily Life is walking away from sub- par Customer service. No time for it. Esp. after who- ever behind the counter goes on why something isn't possible. When it is just basics. They either don't know or aren't doing their job. Screw it and take business elsewhere. Their loss.

My old bank told me that to accompany the mortgage I had with them I'd have to use their home and contents insurance. I said that I didn't need to as I already had insurance as I'd been living there for a number of years. They then told me I'd have to pay them a service charge of £30. Why? Because they'd have to contact my insurers to establish whether this was true. I told them that I had all the paper work and that I was going to bring it in the next day and invoice them £30 for my troubles. "I'm sure we can waive the fee in this instance...." was their response. criminals

Burt Reynolds wrote: Any idea on the status of that case? I thought it was going to be resolved in January. I went overdrawn on my bank account by £110 in January for 7 days, and I've been charged £35 for going overdrawn PLUS £20 for each day I was overdrawn, adding up to a grand total of £175. Thats worse than loansharking.

You deal with banksters ? Is that common use in England ?

Facsimile wrote: My old bank told me that to accompany the mortgage I had with them I'd have to use their home and contents insurance. I said that I didn't need to as I already had insurance as I'd been living there for a number of years. They then told me I'd have to pay them a service charge of £30. Why? Because they'd have to contact my insurers to establish whether this was true. I told them that I had all the paper work and that I was going to bring it in the next day and invoice them £30 for my troubles. "I'm sure we can waive the fee in this instance...." was their response. criminals

The most galling of all us surely the £30 letter, that was sent from a mailmerger and never touched by human hand. That one is defo not surviving this case, in which the banks must prove that the charges reflect the cost to themselves. My current bank do not charge for letters, but my previous lot did. I once replied to a letter of theirs and on the bottom put, "as a courtesy, I have waived my usual £25 letter writing fee, however, any future replies you may solicit will attract the appropriate charge" Or something along those lines. I've also been trying to figure out the minimum legal typeface to put MY T+C on a letter to my bank/other shower.

One I've noticed is when you call a company to honor its warranty, they will give the merchandise, try to charge you the mail (which a bit of arguing reverses this) and they want to stick you on the same only expiring warranty. When I've asked for new warranties they always answer, "no sir, if we did that to every warrantied item we would be out of business."

My reply, "So you are openly admiting that your products will most likely break before a new warranty ends? Doesn't sound like you have much trust and faith in your product"

Their reply has been, "just a second sir" a few moments later, "we would be glad to put on a new warranty with the new product*"

*They always try to give some refurbished product in return as well. My reply is, "I paid full price for this product to work under the conditions you have stated in your instruction manual. I did not pay for a refurbished model, if I wanted that I would have sought that out on the day of purchase. I bought a new product, i expect a new product in return. I will not pay the price for your company's faulty manufaturing/engineering. I will accept nothing less than a new product shipped to me, with no cost to me."

I didn't think your email was rude Liam, I thought it was assertive and quite clear to those concerned that you weren't going to take no for an answer.

I personally always (where possible) try to deal with people/companys etc face to face. I have a terrible temper and talking to some dick head on the end of a phone really angers me, I have been known to get all Basil Fawlty with said dick heads...

I don't like to be rude to anyone unless i'm having the piss taken out of me. One time springs to mind tho. I was in the Bass centre in London a few years back and all the staff were cooing round the bass player from Jamiraqui. They'd seen me come in and left me standing there, for 10 mins I patiently waited. Then the old red mist started descending. I walked up to the staff and said ' when you've finished wanking over this fella would it be possible to be served?' I got served quite quickly after that!! On the way out I saw that Jamiraqui's bassist was laughing at me and I told him he could Funk off as well. As I walked back to the station I realised he wasn't laughing at me but what i'd said to the staff....