Which 3 Companies Have You Learned to Hate? Mine are 1=Jetstar; 2=Telstra; 3=BankSA

I now hate dealing with Jetstar more than Telstra and BankSA.

JetStar - Why I've learned to hate Jetstar #1

Short Version
I tried to make a booking on JetStar's website and got multiple errors leading me to call Jetstar to book a flight. Even though they eventually acknowledged the website error was not my browser, they then hit me up for a phone booking fee, got the booking wrong, charged me more that quoted on the phone, and cant send me a receipt/itinerary. Took 5 calls (so far) and I've spent longer booking the flights than we will be on the flights.

Long version - TLDR

  • call centre people have no authority to fix problems and wont let you talk to a supervisor
  • phone call back system doesnt work (press 1 nothing happens)
  • Jetstar charge extra to have an infant on your lap
  • website gives lots of errors
  • cant connect call centre flight bookings to your Jetstar account
  • complaint email is hidden
  • cant get a copy of our itinerary - each time they say just wait 24 hours and nothing happens
  • my friend had a Jetstar flight cancelled last week and instead of refunding they tried to pass him off with a conditional voucher. After a formal complaint they eventually got the correct refund but now also hates Jetstar.

PS Jetstar complaints email is …. [email protected]

Telstra #2 - self explanatory - always a hassle - bill often wrong, call centre a joke.

BankSA #3 - they couldn't organise to increase our credit card limit online or over the phone, or paperless statements (for an OS trip). I had to go into a branch twice (for a paper form they wanted me to fax back?!?). In the end it was easier to get a new credit card from another bank, so I did !

Which Top 3 Companies Have You Learned to Hate Dealing With ???

Comments

        • Why must I update the software? It worked when I bought it, It works now 2 years on, and I expect it to continue to work.

        • +2

          Nuttapillar has a good point, not really any need to update if it’s still working is there?

          Also even though Apple have released new updates where a 5 year old phone can use it, the updated isn’t really optimised for the phone is it? That was my understanding but correct me if I am wrong.

        • @Hirolol: Usually software updates are to patch security holes, provide new features (e.g. Apple introduced HomeKit to integrate with smart home products in iOS 8 and updated Music to include Apple Music streaming services) and allows users to keep their apps running on a compatible OS version.
          I've personally found updating from iOS 10 to iOS 11 resulted in 40 apps being updated to a more recent version of their apps, so each individual app has new features that can be utilised by the end user.

          You don't have to update your software but some people like to know that the product they buy will be supported long term, both software and hardware wise.

          iOS 12 is optimised for all supported devices, it was actually something that Apple wanted to fix with iOS 11. A lot of people who are on the older devices should see a speed improvement as well. For example: https://www.cnet.com/news/ios-12-beta-on-an-old-iphone-5s-wh…

        • -1

          If by "individual privacy" you mean that they do not want anybody but themselves steal, use, and sell your data (such as movement data, usage data), then you are right.
          They keep it all to themselves.
          Apple also works very well with the US government secret services behind the scenes - the media coverage is there to merely calm down the public (source: friends who worked at Apple HQ in the US).

    • +8

      Facebook, Twitter, Apple

      Censorship of conservative opinions.

      Oh yes, the world will miss Alex Jones's intellectual insights.

      Of course he can still rant on many other platforms, or indeed, on his own web site if he so desired. So his 'free speech' is not impinged.

      Perhaps an alternative way of viewing your 'Censorship of conservative opinions' may be: Choosing not to use these private platforms for hate speech, racial and sexual denigration, and spreading of outright lies.

    • Jetstar charge extra to have an infant on your lap

    Yes but you can check in a pram, high chair, car seat and portacot as luggage!

    • or I can fly another airline and not pay the extra $60

    1. ANZ Bank
    2. Google
    3. St Vincent De Paul Society

    and a dishonourable mention to Apple.

    • +21

      Why St Vincent De Paul Society?

      • Aren't they notoriously homophobic?

        • +2

          And they can't spell "the"

  • +9

    Ticketmaster. They bury their support email in an FAQ, when you contact it, they forward you the FAQ again and don’t act on your email unless you send it AGAIN, and then they reply that you’ll have to call them. Which I avoided because… it takes about 40 minutes to get onto an operator! They charge around $8 a ticket, they really have NO excuse for such poor service.

    • +3

      Yeah you get help by actually writing on their Facebook page its ridiculous

  • +1

    As a Telstra employee, didnt realise there's quite so much hate out there for Telstra. I work in a Business2Business area though, so nothing to do with consumer or mobile phones.

    • +5

      You may be even more surprised then, by the number of businesses where the owners have said to me how bad Telstra is / was (before they switched). Usually regarding drop-outs of their internet (= loss of business) and drop-outs of phone lines (= loss of business).

    • +3

      Holy moly Telstra are atrocious! Nothing has improved in the last 8 years. Call centre, and in store. Usually someone else's fault, apparently.

    • +1

      I have lots of love for Telstra. I even can't complain about the customer service people I deal with on the phone as well as online.

    • +1

      Telstra employee too, well, partner employee technically although I sell a Telstra product in B2B also. It seems there are more business owners that have had NBN problems than those that haven't.

    • +4

      They take advantage of people whenever they can. My SO's parents have been paying 49 bucks for their mobile plan per month and were still getting 200mb of data in 2018. Must have a model where they don't update packages unless you call in which is a joke

    • The customer satisfaction for most telecommunication companies is pretty low. Look at online reviews for Telstra, Optus, Vodafone. All around the same ball-park. Same goes for the big telecom providers in the US. Telecom is a hard thing to get right.

    • Telstra's B2B is at least as bad! It can take months for a business to get an internet connection.

    • Anyone not aware of the hate for Telstra must be living under a rock. And they are getting the hate they deserve.

    • Business2Business is just as bad if not worse. I personally and all the businesses I have worked with have had many bad experiences with Telstra. Strangely enough, not a single good one.

  • +9
    1. Most political parties
    2. The Catholic Church
    3. A Current Affair
    • +3

      To be fair, OP's was regarding companies.
      I'll happily accept your first two, but 'A Current Affair' is just a programme (made to a formula to intentionally appeal to the bias of their loyal viewers). Maybe it should be Channel 9 as your number 3, which shows this (and other rubbish shows).
      Then again, very easy to change the channel.

    • -3

      These are not companies.

      • +16

        If you think the Catholic Church is not a company you are gravely mistaken.

      • The first 2 definitely are companies, actually the catholic church is many companies and businesses.

  • +1

    How do you pick just 3?

    These 3 all apply the corporate mantra, "Just Give Us Your Money And F#ck Off".

    1/ Telstra, particularly the call centre/s, just let me talk to someone who can fix my …… (insert bill, drop outs, email etc. here) i think call centre operators face the death penalty if they escalate a call.

    2/ Auto & General Insurance, 10 months of fighting and negotiating a simple home claim. Just yesterday after applying to their internal dispute resolution team I got an apology, the assessment was wrong and they will now fix the issue. Oh, and yes, the 60% increase in premium for one small claim was excessive, on review it should be an 8% increase. A difference of over $500.

    Not a company but certainly rogue organisations,
    3/ Governments, Fed, State and local, thieving, incompetent, lying bastards. Their goal is not to make our lives better, it is simply to get / stay elected and keep their individual snouts firmly locked in to the trough.

    There are others, sometimes it just depends on the day,……………………………..

    • It's funny I've been with Telstra forever - maybe 20 years. Never had a problem with their call centres. Maybe I just know how to navigate them better than others.

      • +2

        There is a business opportunity for you there sharing your methods to navigate Telstra.
        Pity Telstra don’t see it that way.

      • You are defiantly in the minority and I hope you keep your blessing.

        My tip to people is just to ask to be canceled and then talk to the cancellations team as they know what they are actually doing.

        • It's probably to do with the fact I know enough about IT, telephony and their processes to know when they are full of shit and when they are not.

  • Helstra
    NBN Co
    Appliances Online

    • Curious to know the hate for appliances online. Never had any issues with them. But they arent as cheap as they used to be.

      • +2

        Best thing I did was wait for the "oh shit Amazon is launching" massive eBay sale in which they had like 10-20% off everything. The Fridge which was same price on eBay as their website dropped hundreds of dollars, and I still got all the benefits of AO with free delivery and taking away our old broken fridge.

    • I think Appliances Online should get some love for this if nothing else. https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/334946?page=1#comment-5165…

    • +1

      Did anyone here list The Tax Office or The Government or the Local Council?

      Not companies…..

      • -4

        Irrelevent - just semantics
        OP is referring to organisations whom we must deal with

        • +1

          lol.

          Title of the thread is:

          Which 3 Companies Have You Learned to Hate? Mine are 1=Jetstar; 2=Telstra; 3=BankSA

          I'm gonna say it's actually relevant.

        • -6

          @Skramit: Fine you do that.

          But you are also saying that the poster has got it all wrong because all those businesses mentioned are actually CORPORATIONS - NOT COMPANIES

          Like I said Its just semantics

          Therefore my comment stays and furthermore…

        • +2

          @Amayzingone:

          While I get your original post (I don't really see the issue with stating the ATO or specific local councils in the grand scheme of things), I have to correct this part:

          But you are also saying that the poster has got it all wrong because all those businesses mentioned are actually CORPORATIONS - NOT COMPANIES

          The Corporations Act clearly defines "companies" as a business structure. See Division 5A: "Types of company".

          Ltd and Pty Ltd are forms of companies. I did a search on about 10 of the businesses above, all of them were listed on the Australian Business Register ABN Lookup website as either Limited or Proprietary Limited companies.

          The very identification number of companies, the ACN, stands for "Australian Company Number", not "Australian Corporation Number".

      • Did anyone here list The Tax Office or The Government or the Local Council?

        Not companies….

        They are doing their best to try to be :)

  • +2
    1. Jetstar

    Infinite delays and needing to sit on the plane while they fuel (why cant they let us wait at the gate?) with no Aircon..

    Luggage has disappeared twice (found later) because of delays and connecting flights are too close together, weird thing is half of the people get their luggage and half doesn't… seems like they close and take off before the other half arrives.

    1. Telstra

    This is given..

    1. NBN Co

    This is also given

  • -2

    !. Telstra.
    2. Powercor
    3. Amazon.com.au

    1. Citymove
    2. Optus
    3. Samsung
  • +2

    Looks like Telstra is the front runner for most hated company!

  • +10

    Ricardo Cuevas says

    1. Dr Boom Communications
    2. Lifeproof
    3. Productreview
  • +1
    1. Harvey Norman (GST)
    2. Volkswagen group (morally bankrupt company)
    • +2

      Come over to Turmekistan, mate. We have bricks here.

    • +1

      Centrelink (the government version) hasn't made the list… yet.

      Not much left that's made in Australia to complain about centrelink (the Ozb OP).

  • +5

    1 - Dr Boom
    2 - ProductReview
    3 - Optus

  • +1

    Hate is strong word, I’d say businesses I’d stay away from rather.

    1) telcos and service providers with ridiculous tie down contracts (telstra, foxtel, etc)
    2) tooling softwares with subscription service models
    3) pay to win games. (Games that are free to play, but become impossible to progress without purchasing iap)

  • 1- Tigerair
    2- Foxtel

  • +8

    !: Gerry Harvey.

    2: Gerry Harvey.

    3: Gerry Harvey.

    1. ANZ: simply the worst bank ever,
    2. Vodafone AU (more like Vodascam): suspicious charges, need to talk like a day to resolve the problems.
    3. Metro Trains Melbourne: say no more.
      more:
    4. Qantas: overpriced, ground support is horrible.
    5. Optus: got surprise 5k+ charges int'l call because optus technician was put the wrong connection, called and mailed customer service and the respond was we don't care just pay, wtf. Made a report to TIO twice to solve this. Never ever again. And the my account website broke like 6 days a week.
    6. NBNCo
    7. Bose: Sound is fine, the apps and configuration is totally nightmare.
    8. Australia Post
    • Curious about what you mean with Bose.

      I only have QC35 and find the setup fine, are you talking about their AVR type stuff?

    • Bose: Sound is fine

      You might want to look into a hearing test ;)

  • +1

    JETSTAR

  • 1) Tesla for cars or Powerwall batteries. A totally anal company to deal with.
    2) Scoot Airlines.
    3) Jetstar.

    Footnote: Companies with offshore call centres!!

    • +1

      Had to fly scoot recently. No personal AC outlets above the seats and the plane was super hot, most uncomfortable flight I've ever been on.

      • Wait until you fly Air Asia :P

        • +1

          My flight going to my destination was AirAsia. Scoot was worse by far.

  • +7

    As someone who used to bounce between temporary contracts regularly I gotta say I learnt to hate the scam job that is government funded jobseeker agencies. Most of the people in those places don't know their leg from their arm when it comes to finding a job in the current market. A few years back I had a one on one meeting with a manager at one of these places, told her I was trying to get an IT desktop support role (as that's what I'd been doing previously) and she tried to tell me that companies only hire for those roles internally (???) and then tried to send me off to a job interview for an outbound sales role in a call centre. I've also had to look at a few resumes in my time and you can always spot one that was done with the assistance of a JSA because it's 3 pages long with about 1 page worth of relevant information.

    • I second that, the only thing that they are good for is trying to get free stuff out of them that you need. They just wait till you find a job and hope that they can claim it as theirs and get a commission from the gov

  • +1
    1. Herald Sun (home delivery call center)
    2. Stan
    3. GoCatch
    • 4 Nbn co

      • +6

        Jokes on you for reading the Herald Sun

    1. Vodafone
    2. NAB(refused me debit card on my saving account because I was an overseas student)
    3. Optus
  • +2

    Optus and
    Nbn Co
    - they're always doing maintenance and I lose internet for days without any notice

  • +1
    1. Jetstar / Qantas
    2. Harvey Norman
    3. Transurban (CityLink)

    Jetstar for getting political about everything to mask their crappy services at Jetstar
    Harvey Norman for the same reason all OZBs hated Gerry Harvey
    Transurban for trying to make Victorians getting tolled longer by engineering a "spend" on shitty roads in order to make themselves less profitable (so the early termination clause doesn't get invoked) and for trying to extend the deed of arrangement so Victorians getting tolled an extra 10 years.

  • +2
    1. GoCatch
    2. NRMA
    3. Facebook
  • +2

    GoCatch

    • +1

      Are those assholes still in business?

  • +1

    Auspost
    Apple
    Optus

  • Apple
    Telstra
    CBA

  • +1
    1. Commonwealth Bank
    2. Herald Sun (home delivery call centre)
    3. Harvey Norman

    Bunch of leeches!

    • I don't read the Herald Sun, but got a subscription for the Roald Dahl books they had a while ago. I only paid the initial amount, but it was such a pain to get them to stop delivering their trash. I tried contacting them 4 times. One time they stopped coming for about 2 weeks then started up again. In the end I guessed which newsagent was likely delivering the papers and after contacting them directly was finally able to get them stopped.

    1. Spintel (I never thought that a telco company could ever be worse than Telstra….)
    2. Telstra (How bad is it when a Telstra store has to lodge a formal complaint against itself to get an issue resolved..!)
    3. ANZ (Total contempt for customers. A lifetime of 40+ years of loyal business was mocked as irrelevant in failing to match a local Building Society home loan…)
    • I'm curious about the formal complaint with Telstra, what exactly happened?

      • Transfer a business number to private number. The Telstra store employee actually knew how to do it & lodged all the correct info, but couldn't get their useless overseas colleages to understand/comply. Turned into a 2 day, 3 separate trips to the store & multiple phone calls by the store employee (should have taken 30 min). He just got so frustrated that he lodged the complaint as apparently they have to act on it. Number was transferred within about 6 hours but the complaint department didn't follow up with me for about a week. Just pathetic. I actually find the store employees try their best in a completely dysfunctional environment.

        • Yikes, that sounds awful.

          I think you're right about the store employees trying their best in the dysfunctional environment. It's bad enough for us as customers, but imagine having to work in that environment. A lot of customers would also take their frustration out on you since you work for the company, even though you just want to help.

        • By the way, I instantly ported to Aldi with zero issues & can't fault their coverage (Telstra network) or pricing.

  • +1

    All companies are an evil expression of the most evil socio-economic system ever devised: Capitalism. That said some are worse than others. Privately owned companies can be ownly moderately bad, but publically listed ones are malevolent, designed solely to rip money from the poor and redistribute it to the parasitic, sybaritic shareholders.

    • +1

      So what’s better than capitalism? Let me guess you think socialism?

      • To paraphrase Churchill
        Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others

    1. Co-op Bookshop. Sold me bunch of goods which they never had in stock, and made me buy a membership, for the privilege of them taking my money for the goods which they never had to sell in the first place, until refund finally given (with paypal case) .
    2. Australian Geographic (which is I later discovered is same company as co-op bookshop) . Again, took my money, $150 , for something they never had (or never intended to supply me with) .
      I chose collect in store, for a drone, called the store, they alleged that they had no knowledge of my order (about 1 week after I ordered and paid in full) .
      Store told me they had 1 in stock, but demanded I prove order, and refused to put it aside until it was all sorted out.
      Contacted Australian Geographic (co-op bookshop) on their main number, only to have them put me on hold repeatedly, while they chatted with the Shellharbour store, then told me they had 1 in stock, but it was a 'display model' . I said I want what I paid for, a brand new unopened item. They assured me it was unopened and brand new, only thing that made it 'display model' was a sticker on box stating display (this is what they promised me) .
      Drove approx 45 minutes to store to collect, then when I arrived at store, manager was extremely rude, said "you can have this, or else nothing" also told me "you didn't drive that far" as if he completely didn't give a sh*t about my 1.5 hours round trip, which when I got there, turned out that the 'display model' was opened, used, tampered with, and missing parts. He made series of rediculous excuses and did not apologize at all for their stuffing customers around.
      He assured me the 'display model' was "pretty much like new" . I went to fly it, and it just kept flipping and crashing into the dirt immediately . Upon my own investigation and problem solving, (and support from drone manufacturer) I discovered that the drone had missing propellers, and had been replaced with wrong propellers. The drone manufacturer said there is no way that they would have supplied the wrong propellers. Probably crashed by someone at the store, and replaced wrong propellers thinking they are all the same.
    3. Ebay/Paypal . Things have really gone downhill I think. They charge more in fees, and too many scammers on there these days. If you keep an eye out for deals on here its OK. But it's an horrible experience when you've been scammed, even if you eventually win and get money back, it really has turned me off ebay and paypal.
  • 1.Amazon Us for not shipping out to australia anymore

    2.Harvey for causing amazon to stop shipping to australia

    3.Ebay for high selling fee's on both item and postage

  • +1

    Woolies
    Telstra
    Dodo
    Optus
    (I can't count)

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