The 10 Best (and 10 Worst) Companies for Customer Service

Isn't best or worse based on the customers interpretation and opinion, meaning a manager could be a douchebag, yet a person will think they were helpful.

Case and point, DirecTV is fuckin awesome! The only time I've ever had to call them, and the guy told me that I was eligible for a credit of $23/mo, and that he had submitted me for it already. Yeah, what other companies will knowingly give you a rebate?
 
Why would they put AT&T and SBC on the list? Last time I checked, SBC bought AT&T and changed their name to AT&T.

I get CC, but considering they're no longer in business, it seems like a pointless entry.
 
SBC/AT&T have been stellar over the years. I've never had a problem with their customer support - they call back and even send out technicians (free of charge, fixed the problem).
 
No tmobile in the best stack? I've dealt a lot with theri CS folks and it's always been perfect.

And Google? WTF? Do they even have a support number to call? With the manner in which they DMCA-takedown non infringing content based on anonymous BS complaints on Youtube I wouldn't rate them very high. Maybe OK for a CS org pwoered by bots or something. Dunno.
 
I agree with the rating for Toyota. We bought a new Camry this summer from our local Toyota dealer. After a month it was evident that my wife could not drive it, as she was too short and felt unsafe backing up. The dealer not only took the car back, they gave us 100% credit for what we had paid and helped us find an older, cheaper used Camry and refunded the difference. Service is first rate. They even touched up some scratches when I had my Solara in for a cleaning.
 
I don't see how Apple made it up there either (paid someone?). The one time I had to use them, they were absolutely incompetent or refused to help because my friend hadn't paid for some "elite" service. Maybe that's it then? The people who voted paid for the "elite" service, so the service they got was decent, or they were conned and don't want to admit it.

Also, I don't see how Dell didn't make it. For 12+ years they have been fantastic to me.
 
In regards to the cable companies, most people don't realize that cable companies are operated like a franchise such as McDonalds and TacoBell lol. Each region is actually different cable company even though they hold the same national corporate name. Having worked for one of these I can tell you some regions are much better at service then others. Some regions would have you sitting there for a couple weeks waiting for a technician to get out to fix a problem while others would even be same day. Even so, some operations were handled by national offices only, which were always slow taking at least 2 days to a couple weeks to fix technical problems because of severe under staffing and red tape.
 
Tytalus said:
Am I the only one who questions this list and things it's highly suspect that Circuit City would be on any "Top 10" list? Circuit City closed over 6 months ago in the United States--why is it still on a Top 10 list?

I'm thinking this list is from 2007, since a lot of the indexes used are from 3Q06 and 1Q07.

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You're right, it's from a blog post from November 2006.
Way to go news guys... just dredge up a 3 year old blog post about customer service and post it verbatim. There's no way companies could have changed since then, or gone out of business... :rolleyes:

http://www.insidecrm.com/archive2/2006/11/the_10_best_and.html
 
Exavior said:
Must depend on where you live.My sister had Comcast and it was horrible. She lost service many times a month. I'd say her phone service cut out for about an hour or two at least 5 times a week. TV and internet not as much, but still about once a week.

calling support just got her the "we are looking into the problem" response.
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Possible, my experience with them is in the Atlanta, Ga. Market. I never used their phone service though, I quit using land lines years ago. In the three years I think it might of dropped once or twice tops.

Version_3 said:
Isn't best or worse based on the customers interpretation and opinion, meaning a manager could be a douchebag, yet a person will think they were helpful.

Case and point, DirecTV is fuckin awesome! The only time I've ever had to call them, and the guy told me that I was eligible for a credit of $23/mo, and that he had submitted me for it already. Yeah, what other companies will knowingly give you a rebate?
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So a Tv service that Drops everytime a storm cloud is in the area is fuckin awesome? Man I wonder what kind of reviews you would give a service that actually worked. Sorry there is nothing awesome about DTv, I had them and forced them to buy all their equipment back and refund my money because they couldn't deliver the TV they promised. It took me 8 months of having their techs out at my house every other week for no TV with full signal strength and still had to threaten a lawsuit to get them to drop the "Early cancellation" fees. You know those stupid contract fees Dish and DTv users have to pay for signing a stupid contract that us cable users don't.
 
DKS said:
I agree with the rating for Toyota. We bought a new Camry this summer from our local Toyota dealer. After a month it was evident that my wife could not drive it, as she was too short and felt unsafe backing up. The dealer not only took the car back, they gave us 100% credit for what we had paid and helped us find an older, cheaper used Camry and refunded the difference. Service is first rate. They even touched up some scratches when I had my Solara in for a cleaning.
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That has absolutely nothing to do with Toyota MC.... You found yourself a winning dealer.

Just another reason why I question the validity of this survey. Can someone please let me know how I can get customer support for Google?
 
Perhaps. But I have owned Toyota vehicles since 1973. I have purchased them through any number of dealers. One replaced a complete transmission because of a fault. It's not the dealer alone. It's the atttitude throughout the company.
 
Amazon should be there (with the best) despite that it's deteriorated in the last 2 years or so.
 
Ugh, home depot is terrible here in my town. Never anything advertised in stock, nobody around to ask, and the poor employees are stretched out trying to cover everything and failing
 
Dekoth said:
So a Tv service that Drops everytime a storm cloud is in the area is fuckin awesome? Man I wonder what kind of reviews you would give a service that actually worked. Sorry there is nothing awesome about DTv, I had them and forced them to buy all their equipment back and refund my money because they couldn't deliver the TV they promised. It took me 8 months of having their techs out at my house every other week for no TV with full signal strength and still had to threaten a lawsuit to get them to drop the "Early cancellation" fees. You know those stupid contract fees Dish and DTv users have to pay for signing a stupid contract that us cable users don't.
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sorry you had a shitty experience with them, but i've had their service for over 5 years now, and have had basically no problems with them. they gave me a year of free showtime for being a customer for 5 years, and just recently, for some reason my debit card wouldn't authorize, so they weren't able to collect my payment. i called them and paid the bill over the phone, and without me even asking anything, they said that i qualified for a $10 discount for the next 6 months, and applied it immediately.

and i don't have much problem with storm clouds....i mean, on occasion the signal does drop out, but it has to be raining BALLS outside for it to happen. and even then, it usually clears up after a while, even while it's raining. i can live with that....what i may miss on TV, i can just go download online and watch it. no biggie. much better than being enslaved to the shitty cable company around here, who keep jacking prices up every month. also, my GF has HD service through the cable company here, and they CONSTANTLY downgrade HD channels to SD because their network apparently can't handle it or something. i'd be PISSED if i was paying for HD that they couldn't deliver, only to have it downgraded to SD.

but then again, i mounted my own dish, so i know it was done properly......my signal never goes lower than about 92% - 93% unless it's raining like CRAZY outside, and usually stays around 96% - 98%.
 
Dan_D said:
I can't believe Apple made the 10 best list. They suck. Anyone whos ever had a hardware problem with a Mac and called them would probably agree that they suck.
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no they don't!

Their constant recommendation to 'reset the Apple (no decency to say computer) software' to solve all HARDWARE PROLEMS, make them among the best.
 
Dekoth said:
You know, having had Comcast for 3 years I really fail to see where all the comcast hate comes from. I agree they try to pull some BS stunts, but as far as the individual service goes they do quite well. Some of the fastest internet speeds offered, competitive pricing on cable packages (My cable bill was $115 without fail every month for 3 straight years with 10mb internet 21+ average, full HD package with HDDVR and the one time my DVR failed they had it fixed in 24 hours). Now while they aren't nearly as good as my experience with Brighthouse in Fla, they are worlds beyond my experiences with Charter and Direct TV. How charter didn't make the worst list is completely beyond me though. Due to where my job has me living at the moment I am stuck with charter. They keep trying to upsale me on their 10mb service, when they can't even deliver their 5mb to me. I have yet to see above 3mb, like hell I am paying more for the same speeds.
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Well.

I had Comcast installed 4 years ago this month.

In those 4 years, we've had periods where we would get daily outages, horrible lagspikes and timeouts. The router crashed frequently and bandwidth left a lot to be desired.

I've called every time there was an outage that lasted more than 30 minutes. Each time that I did call, I reminded them that there were ongoing issues with smaller outages. throughout the days or weeks. They send techs over. They've swapped routers, often with dead units, and called it a day. They send more techs over. They call to confirm. I wait. Techs never show up. Never ring the doorbell. I call to report. Techs said nobody answered the door. I call bullshit, scream about how I have a direct view of my porch through the front window the entire time I'm waiting. They reschedule. Repeat.

I've had 17 tech visits in the last 4 years until yesterday. Yesterday was the 17th. So I'm fresh off this experience.

Before I get to that... the phone support are morons. They ask me to unplug my router from the AC, wait a minute, plug it back in. Every single incident, I requested for them to put it into my account notes that this is the first thing I do BEFORE I CALL THEM. And they still ask me to do it. They ask me to reboot the computers. "Maybe that will fix the problem." They say. They ask me if I've installed the software that came with the router. You know. Crapware like Norton and various toolbars. "I'm using Linux." "Maybe it would help." "Maybe you should stop reading from a script that has no real world use, stop wasting your time, and more importantly, stop wasting my time... especially considering there is a lengthy documented history of my problems with your service." They usually go quiet for a minute and then say "Well, I looked at the notes" (ARRGHH!) "and we'll schedule a tech to come check it out." Again? "Yes. Again."

Well. I had gotten used to that much by now. But the real kicker was about 3 months ago. Seems my upstairs neighbor (ahem) got busted for excessive use and was terminated as a customer. Fine. So he can't get on anymore. They block his router serial and that's that. He had DSL installed, told us what happened, so we knew. Well, they sent a tech around to disconnect his line from the pole.

They ended up disconnecting ours instead.

I had seen a tech in the alley a few hours that day before something happened, Comcast van and all, but was on my way out to run errands. When I got back, I was faced with pissed off roommates. I'm on the phone with another rep. Explained the situation. Dead line. Can't get anything, no tv, no analogue or digital. No internet. I ask for a tech to be sent out to fix it.

"The soonest we can send someone out is in 4 days." Kind of a problem. 3 people in the house, two work from home and a third goes to grad school. "I'm sorry, but that's the soonest we can do." After talking to the tech for over an hour, they confirm that it's not an area outage, that there were no service visits to the area, that they are unable to contact any of our boxes and we'll have to wait for the tech to show up. While talking with the tech on the phone during that hour... I got a ladder, a pair of pliers, got up to the side of the house, disconnected my neighbor's cable feed and plugged it into our length of cable.

After I swapped the wires and chatted for a bit longer, I asked the rep to ping our modem and tv boxes again. She saw that they were up. "I guess we can go ahead and cancel the appointment since everything seems to be up." And I snapped.

I screamed that they are going to send a tech to fix the problem that the previous tech created, that they are going to get someone to get their ass to the premises and do everything to ensure that they don't make this mistake again. "What mistake?" I explained that while I was talking to her, I got up on the side of my house myself and swapped the wires coming in from the pole. "You what?" You say there was no service calls to the area, then explain why the fuck a tech would physically disconnect the WRONG CUSTOMERS FROM THE POLE. "Hold on a minute."

"We have an opening, it looks like, tomorrow between 10 to 1. Is this a good time for you?"

*sigh*

The tech shows up the next morning, says "Everything looks fine," and fucks off. He did assure me that the line was properly marked with a tag for the apartment floors in this house and we shouldn't be disconnected again.

We're still having problems at this point, but they had gotten significantly worse. It would drop every 7 to 10 minutes and take about 2 minutes to get back online... only to drop again quickly after. So I call. I interrupt the rep and just tell them to read the latest notes. I tell them what's needed, they send a tech out. I explain to the techs what the last guy told me. He goes on my word and checks it out. The two lines going into the house are split in opposite directions to the junction box/ports they connect to. The line that was supposedly going to my house coming in from the right? Well. That wasn't it. The tech marked the wrong tag as mine. So that means the line that was providing me with my connection was still marked as my neighbor's. Joy. I explain all of our issues, the problems. He gets the diagnostic stuff out, asks more questions, I go into as much detail as I can. He mulls it over. Gets more gear out, including a wire tracker tone kit and gets up on the left side of the cables and gets to work.

What does he do? Well. There's ports and then there's splitters. He disconnected me from the splitter, disconnected someone else from a port, plugged me directly into the port and the other into the splitter.

4 years and now my problem is just someone else's problem.

I'm in the city of Chicago, directly off a fiber junction about 1/4 of a mile away. (Making nice with techs gives you all sorts of good information about the infrastructure.)

We still have occasional hits of lag, but at least it's not total dropouts like it was before.

The phone reps are forced to stick to a troubleshooting script that annoy the shit out of people who are having actual, outside of the house, connection problems. In the heart of a major city, I couldn't resolve my connection issues despite having a nearly direct line off the fiber serving this chunk of neighborhood and it took me 4 years, 17 actual tech visits, 8 no shows, to even get this far to improving my connection. Unfortunately, my alternatives are RCN and AT&T.

I even asked about Business connections considering two people here work from home.

It would still be run off the same exact line on the pole. They have a guarantee for business connections only... they just instantly refund you for that day if you call about any issues. It'd be the same old shit, a lower speed cap and more to pay each month.

At least this time around I got a week's credit on the service.
 
Even it is old news the changes in the companies that were good or bad and how they look now is interesting. Companies have been bought and sold, whole service departments cut and replaced with outsourced foreign labor not because the service is better or even equal but simply cheaper and better for the short term bottom line.

Dell has one of the worst BBB rates for a company doing the volume they are.
http://www.bbb.org/central-texas/business-reviews/computers-dealers/dell-in-round-rock-tx-41453

The problem is there XPS, business department and alien ware lines are solid people who know what they are doing. They may be located who knows where but they actually know how to fix their systems. The rest of the systems making up 95% of systems shipped are left to the dregs.

AOL was it's own company then part of time warner and yet and again their own company.

charter cable is the brain child of the that other MS guy.

Best buy has gotten shadier at the way they sell stuff something I had not even though possible.
 
Dan_D said:
I can't believe Apple made the 10 best list. They suck. Anyone whos ever had a hardware problem with a Mac and called them would probably agree that they suck.
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Not true at all. Just recently someone on Shacknews made a similar comment to yours and it resulted in a subthread of dozens of people that had nothing but very positive experiences dealing with their tech support. A friend of mine, after several attempts to fix a busted logic board on a Macbook Pro that was near the end of a three year warranty, was given a brand spanking new one after all was said and done.

My only experience with them was that some dust had collected under the LCD of my iPhone. It kind of bothered me so I brought it into an Apple store to see if they could do something about it. Now, maybe I got some really cool guy there, I dunno, but no questions asked they took it back and 15 minutes later they replaced it with a brand new LCD display.

Every company has bad consumer support nightmares, absolutely, but in general I'd say that Apple goes above and beyond as far as taking care of their customers.
 
DirectTV is another company on that list that is superb, their customer service is amazing.

One company I was surprised not to see is T-Mobile. They have hands down the best, most helpful, most courteous customer service of any cell carrier I've dealt with. At least AT&T is there in the crap pile where they deserve to be. :p
 
Oh, and I'd nominate Amazon to be on the customer service list, their return policy, ease of use, etc etc, its always a pleasure dealing with them, zero headaches.
 
jynxycat said:
I had an amazing time dealing with AOL :\

We got Cable when it was first offered in our area, long long ago.

Two years of AOL go by, and we never use it. That's a lot of money.

Well when we called to cancel, they actually gave us all our money back from the 24 months we never signed in.



Maybe they've gotten worse these last 10 years or so.
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No, they just have a bad reputation.
It's messed up, because I've always had this experience with AOL.

However, my experience with Apple is they delete your forum topics asking for help, and that if you bother to recreate the topic, and mention it was deleted, and that you don't know why, you get attacked by Apple fan boys saying things like "lol you don't know how to use an Apple right? That's funny, you must be a homosexual."

That plus the exploding iPod thing, and how they've handled it terribly...how they told my wife her MacBook Pro power cord wasn't covered under the warranty she had (and it just so happens MBP power cords often break...hers broke in the first month too BTW) and then when her MBP got other problems...web cam broke, screen got bruises, HDD corruption, we sent Apple our MBP to be fixed.
Apple deleted all her data, and her XP partition, and when we got it back, the WEB CAM is still broken...wtf
We managed to get XP installed again right before Leopard came out, but then Apple disabled her XP partition somehow since Leopard came out, forcing us to pay for an unwanted upgrade past Tiger.

Apple should be number 2.
Best Buy should be number 1.
Worst companies of course.
I do think Comcast should be number 3...
 
Serpico said:
Not true at all. Just recently someone on Shacknews made a similar comment to yours and it resulted in a subthread of dozens of people that had nothing but very positive experiences dealing with their tech support. A friend of mine, after several attempts to fix a busted logic board on a Macbook Pro that was near the end of a three year warranty, was given a brand spanking new one after all was said and done.

My only experience with them was that some dust had collected under the LCD of my iPhone. It kind of bothered me so I brought it into an Apple store to see if they could do something about it. Now, maybe I got some really cool guy there, I dunno, but no questions asked they took it back and 15 minutes later they replaced it with a brand new LCD display.

Every company has bad consumer support nightmares, absolutely, but in general I'd say that Apple goes above and beyond as far as taking care of their customers.
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I used to support a site that had several hundred Macs. I've also worked in shops that serviced them. Believe me I've dealt with Apple more than most people have. They aren't always bad to deal with but it was never pleasant.
 
techrat said:
Well.

I had Comcast installed 4 years ago this month.

In those 4 years, we've had periods where we would get daily outages, horrible lagspikes and timeouts. The router crashed frequently and bandwidth left a lot to be desired.

I've called every time there was an outage that lasted more than 30 minutes. Each time that I did call, I reminded them that there were ongoing issues with smaller outages. throughout the days or weeks. They send techs over. They've swapped routers, often with dead units, and called it a day. They send more techs over. They call to confirm. I wait. Techs never show up. Never ring the doorbell. I call to report. Techs said nobody answered the door. I call bullshit, scream about how I have a direct view of my porch through the front window the entire time I'm waiting. They reschedule. Repeat.

I've had 17 tech visits in the last 4 years until yesterday. Yesterday was the 17th. So I'm fresh off this experience.

Before I get to that... the phone support are morons. They ask me to unplug my router from the AC, wait a minute, plug it back in. Every single incident, I requested for them to put it into my account notes that this is the first thing I do BEFORE I CALL THEM. And they still ask me to do it. They ask me to reboot the computers. "Maybe that will fix the problem." They say. They ask me if I've installed the software that came with the router. You know. Crapware like Norton and various toolbars. "I'm using Linux." "Maybe it would help." "Maybe you should stop reading from a script that has no real world use, stop wasting your time, and more importantly, stop wasting my time... especially considering there is a lengthy documented history of my problems with your service." They usually go quiet for a minute and then say "Well, I looked at the notes" (ARRGHH!) "and we'll schedule a tech to come check it out." Again? "Yes. Again."

Well. I had gotten used to that much by now. But the real kicker was about 3 months ago. Seems my upstairs neighbor (ahem) got busted for excessive use and was terminated as a customer. Fine. So he can't get on anymore. They block his router serial and that's that. He had DSL installed, told us what happened, so we knew. Well, they sent a tech around to disconnect his line from the pole.

They ended up disconnecting ours instead.

I had seen a tech in the alley a few hours that day before something happened, Comcast van and all, but was on my way out to run errands. When I got back, I was faced with pissed off roommates. I'm on the phone with another rep. Explained the situation. Dead line. Can't get anything, no tv, no analogue or digital. No internet. I ask for a tech to be sent out to fix it.

"The soonest we can send someone out is in 4 days." Kind of a problem. 3 people in the house, two work from home and a third goes to grad school. "I'm sorry, but that's the soonest we can do." After talking to the tech for over an hour, they confirm that it's not an area outage, that there were no service visits to the area, that they are unable to contact any of our boxes and we'll have to wait for the tech to show up. While talking with the tech on the phone during that hour... I got a ladder, a pair of pliers, got up to the side of the house, disconnected my neighbor's cable feed and plugged it into our length of cable.

After I swapped the wires and chatted for a bit longer, I asked the rep to ping our modem and tv boxes again. She saw that they were up. "I guess we can go ahead and cancel the appointment since everything seems to be up." And I snapped.

I screamed that they are going to send a tech to fix the problem that the previous tech created, that they are going to get someone to get their ass to the premises and do everything to ensure that they don't make this mistake again. "What mistake?" I explained that while I was talking to her, I got up on the side of my house myself and swapped the wires coming in from the pole. "You what?" You say there was no service calls to the area, then explain why the fuck a tech would physically disconnect the WRONG CUSTOMERS FROM THE POLE. "Hold on a minute."

"We have an opening, it looks like, tomorrow between 10 to 1. Is this a good time for you?"

*sigh*

The tech shows up the next morning, says "Everything looks fine," and fucks off. He did assure me that the line was properly marked with a tag for the apartment floors in this house and we shouldn't be disconnected again.

We're still having problems at this point, but they had gotten significantly worse. It would drop every 7 to 10 minutes and take about 2 minutes to get back online... only to drop again quickly after. So I call. I interrupt the rep and just tell them to read the latest notes. I tell them what's needed, they send a tech out. I explain to the techs what the last guy told me. He goes on my word and checks it out. The two lines going into the house are split in opposite directions to the junction box/ports they connect to. The line that was supposedly going to my house coming in from the right? Well. That wasn't it. The tech marked the wrong tag as mine. So that means the line that was providing me with my connection was still marked as my neighbor's. Joy. I explain all of our issues, the problems. He gets the diagnostic stuff out, asks more questions, I go into as much detail as I can. He mulls it over. Gets more gear out, including a wire tracker tone kit and gets up on the left side of the cables and gets to work.

What does he do? Well. There's ports and then there's splitters. He disconnected me from the splitter, disconnected someone else from a port, plugged me directly into the port and the other into the splitter.

4 years and now my problem is just someone else's problem.

I'm in the city of Chicago, directly off a fiber junction about 1/4 of a mile away. (Making nice with techs gives you all sorts of good information about the infrastructure.)

We still have occasional hits of lag, but at least it's not total dropouts like it was before.

The phone reps are forced to stick to a troubleshooting script that annoy the shit out of people who are having actual, outside of the house, connection problems. In the heart of a major city, I couldn't resolve my connection issues despite having a nearly direct line off the fiber serving this chunk of neighborhood and it took me 4 years, 17 actual tech visits, 8 no shows, to even get this far to improving my connection. Unfortunately, my alternatives are RCN and AT&T.

I even asked about Business connections considering two people here work from home.

It would still be run off the same exact line on the pole. They have a guarantee for business connections only... they just instantly refund you for that day if you call about any issues. It'd be the same old shit, a lower speed cap and more to pay each month.

At least this time around I got a week's credit on the service.
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Sounds like you have had a pretty bad localized experience. I would be pissed as well..

A couple of points though.

ALL Tech Support centers follow a scripted troubleshooting process. It isn't personal there are just that many morons out there that call them. Don't complain about it, just do what they ask and it will make the process faster for you. The only time you complain about it is when it is your 2nd+ call within the same 24 hours, then you just kindly ask the tech to move to the next step because you clearly already did that and it did not work. Having had to work phone support my self once, I tend to get a little bent when I see people pissing and moaning about this when they know good and damn well the tech has no choice but to do it and it is done by every single company.

Second point, don't scream at the agents. They aren't paid enough to put up with it. They are just trying to do their job within the rules set before them in order to keep their job. Taking your anger out on them will only result in you getting worse service. I should know, the call center I worked in we made notes and talked about hostile callers. They got what they needed sure, but they didn't get it fast nor did they get anything extra. We would regularly go out of our way to get the ones who were honestly being nice taken care of as fast as we possibly could. However remember sometimes things are simply out of the techs hands, there is little they can do. Hostility for the managers, fine though again same principles apply there as well.
 
I had similar experiences with Comcast,in the last seven months of service with them,I lost service three to four days a month every month because their incompetent servicemen kept disconnecting me every time they did any kind of work on the lines.It's not an isolated or localized problem,either,practically my whole town has switched to satellite,Comcast is losing customers all over.
 
Hopefully it won't drive Verizon's prices up too much...

Comcast outsources all their workers, and they are all contractors, so they only have a job for three to six months, whoever you see.
 
Fail to see how Apple made it on the list, let alone #1, did they threaten someone with a lawsuit if they didn't make it up there, or offer people free exploding ipods and iphones?
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Genius bar. Plain and simple. Not to mention the level of service you get in their stores. Anyone there is willing to take the time to go through just about anything with you. You book the Genius time on their website. You can book personal (ie one on one shopping time) at any of their stores. Good luck with that and Dell. Not to mention that you can call in the first 90 days and ask any questions you want about their supported applications.

Their staff are ALWAYS excellent and well trained. The stores are ALWAYS well laid out and immaculate. I have confidence in anything I buy in their stores. Their website is also excellent. Everything is well laid out and you can quickly see their entire lineup and see how things fit.

That company just does everything to a standard.

In terms of Home Depot, I tend to buy low priced miscellaneous items, but always have someone who is knowledgeable and nice walking me halfway across the store to try to find some bizarre widget to help with a problem with the house. I am yet to get bad service there.
 
I've had pretty bad experiences with Apple. Two months ago a university-owned Macbook Pro under warranty started having issues with the LCD backlight not turning on. First, the "Geniuses" were incompetent and could not even get the correct serial number or service code entered and insisted that the Macbook was out of warranty. Had to argue with two of them until we held their hands in reading each character out loud, one at a time. Magically, the Macbook is still under warranty. After they took it apart they came up with a story that they couldn't repair it due to internal damage that was the result of a fall. Now, the Macbook worked fine when used with a monitor, so any "internal damage" would be limited to screen. When asked to show the damage they randomly pointed at the motherboard and said somewhere along the lines that I wouldn't understand if they showed me as I'm not trained in diagnosing specially designed Apple hardware... Even though I've been doing computer hardware repair for years...

This is a clear indication of why we do not purchase anything from Apple. We buy tons of computers, monitors and network printers from Dell and their customer service is amazing (given that we get the "better" corporate service). If a printer goes down all we have to do is give them a call and they overnight a 50 pound printer to us before we ship out the defective one.
 
Applecare doesn't cover drops. Why is this bad service? I don't think that Apple hid this from you up front. It pays to not drop laptops. ;)

Apple is still, to my knowledge, the only manufacturer that uses magnetic power cables on all of their laptops to protect against this.
 
Yes, but he never said he dropped it, the apple techs came up with some bullshit excuse that it was the cause of a drop, then refused to show it to him. I think that puts them as the ones at fault here.
 
That's the thing though; it wasn't dropped. It sat on a desk its entire life and was used as a desktop replacement in one of the pr offices. The only reason the old PC was replaced was because they got it in their heads that the software that needed "only runs well" on Macs, like Photoshop.
 
PyroHoltz said:
Charter Communications should be added to the list for worst customer service, my vote would probably put them somewhere in the middle of the list.
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Worst company that I had to deal with in my lifetime. 18 months of 500+ ms ping during peak times not only for myself, but everyone in that city, and the surrounding cities.
The worst part was the cs agents were told to send techs when it was clearly an issue on the backbone. So you just wasted time with appointments and that's all they had to offer. The kicker was appointments could only be made during business hours "due to company policy" but the issue was clearly during peak times (after hours).
Only way everyone knew it was a global issue was from dslreports and articles in the paper. So glad to be out of charter territory as it was my only option at the time.
 
general said:
Not to mention the level of service you get in their stores.
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You and I must be shopping at different Apple stores because the ones here are utter chaos to say the least. It's almost comical how many people are standing around outraged at the poor level of customer service there. Even the most die hard Apples fans I know dread visiting the Apple Stores.
 
punkrockpolak said:
First, the "Geniuses" were incompetent and could not even get the correct serial number or service code entered and insisted that the Macbook was out of warranty. Had to argue with two of them until we held their hands in reading each character out loud, one at a time. Magically, the Macbook is still under warranty.
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If the SN on macbooks is anything like it is on iPods, i can't blame them!

Those things are hard to read when new with good eyes, throw in bad eyes or ANY amount of normal wear, and all bets are off!
 
Anyone wonder how Google made in the positive of customer service.... how does one every contact google... oh wait.. you can't.
 
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