Companies appear to be struggling still when it comes to providing good customer service, but some continue to be their own worst enemy.
New Issues
Angi
A US service where home maintenance people can list their business and members of the public can look them up to engage them. I cancelled my account with them on the same day I joined, many years ago. This was due to receiving hundreds of emails just in the first hour of creating my account. They bombarded my email account which took me ages to clean out and I was not amused. I asked them never to contact me again.
Fast forward many years to January 2022. Out of the blue, I started to receive very spammy type emails from them. I reached out to their customer service but they failed to respond. I posted something on their Twitter account asking for assistance but they blocked me. They clearly are an extremely dodgy company so I went ahead and reported their email accounts for phishing and blocked all their website IP addresses.
Looking through reviews online I notice my experience is similar to others. Not good.
Netflix
I heard on the grapevine, through social media, that Netflix was increasing its charges but hadn’t notified me of that. I spoke to Netflix and they agreed that notifications to customers should go out at the same time as the media. They did promise I would receive an email 2-3 days before the increase is charged on my account.
They said I would see the increase on 6th February 2022. The increased charge was supposed to have been made on that day, it wasn’t, just the old price. When I called them they said the increased charge would be on 6th April 2022. So I get the feeling there is some miscommunication at the company. It’s not a big issue but they shouldn’t confuse customers and should improve their communication.
Royal Mint
I got all my delivery and billing addresses into a bit of a pick on their system so I wrote to ask them how I can fix it. I got a prompt polite response, they fixed the issues for me. I love it when dealing with a company or organization is this easy.
Updates
Amazon
Last year I reported one of their representatives driving dangerously in our neighbourhood. This hasn’t occurred again. However, when I reported the issue the telephone number they provide was no charge but when calling that number it redirected me to a regular number in the US so I ended up paying $13 for it, I didn’t find this out until I received my mobile bill. I was shocked. That means they have no customer service in Canada and there is a hub in the US, also they lie about their free calling. I was so upset.
We ordered masks from Amazon, it wasn’t Amazon themselves but a 3rd party seller. I assumed Amazon would vet all their sellers, but they obviously don’t. The masks were falsely advertised and weren’t what we wanted. The company tried to fob us off with a 60% refund. 60% of the masks weren’t at fault, all of them were, totally dodgy and unimpressive. Eventually, we did 100% of the money returned. We obviously won’t buy masks off Amazon again.
FedEx
Last year there was a series of misdeliveries by FedEx, I’ve not heard any recent complaints from anybody that this has continued but usually the high season is during the Christmas period, so we shall wait until the end of the year.
Siteground
SpamExperts continues to be a problem although it has slightly improved, but not by much. Now I have a new problem whereby the majority of my emails appear to be in a queue even though they have been delivered. Not sure if I can be bothered to report it to them again. At least it appears I am getting my emails one way or the other.
Telus
Some back and forth with Telus regarding the poor signal on my mobile phone and that of our follow 400 neighbours. I am getting nowhere fast with them really.
I did manage to improve the signal a bit. On my iPhone I turned my Airplane mode on and off, then I re-registered WiFi calling.
I’m trying to avoid having to pay for a landline since I don’t really want to pay for another subscription.
Post
Receiving letters and parcels from overseas continues to be an issue. It took one month for a regular letter to arrive from California via USPS and Canada Post. One small parcel took just over a week from the UK. We still haven’t received some Christmas Cards from California yet, and it’s already the 2nd week of February.
I would personally recommend not sending cheques through the mail but trying to get clients to pay via electronic services. For physical items there is no choice but to use the postal system but I would recommend buy local where possible.
First .ca Spam
I wrote about this here, I won’t mention the company yet but it has been like extracting blood from a stone to get information from them. Not very satisfactory.