Friday, October 14, 2005

Bad Company

After my anti-KLM rant earlier this week, I thought it time to exclusively reveal some of the other major companies that have incurred my wrath and made me resolve to never use their services again. This is a list of companies that have bothered me personally rather than the usual list of companies that are run by known fascists, do cosmetics tests on animals, dissuade mothers from breastfeeding, and are in bed with the Israeli army, are into the factory farming of animals, and just generally clog up the planet with shit food and worse packaging (list available on request). It goes without saying that these companies are the lowest of the low. (Before long a comment will appear on here accusing me of being "feel-good" and "knee-jerk" because of this paragraph.)

So, anyway, companies that I want to name and shame here are:

  1. UPS. Some time ago I ordered a laptop computer over the Internet and had it delivered to a friend in the US who was coming over to visit. There wasn't much time between the order and the time of his departure, so I paid extra for super fast overnight delivery. But the computer didn't arrive. Even three days after I had ordered it overnight. It finally showed up 5 days later, after my friend had left. Obviously this meant I had to make other arrangements for getting hold of it and had to wait a while longer to receive it.

    Now, in the grand scheme of things, this inconvenience was minor and no more than an irritation. What bothered me about UPS's role in this was their refusal to offer me an apology, despite repeated complaints and requests. Also they didn't offer me a refund of the extra payment I made for overnight delivery. They refused anything. So, these days whenever I order anything online I ask the seller if they use UPS and choose not to buy if the answer is yes. Which will probablynot bother UPS in the slightest, but if they;d been prepared to just send me an email saying "Sorry, we messed up your order" I would be quite happy to use them. I'm guessing that lack of apology has cost them about $50 to this point, and will continue to do so. Hah. Take that, Useless Pathetic Scumbags!


  2. Mastercard. I have a bank accouint in the US, for which I have a cashpoint card issued by my bank in association with Mastercard. This allows (or allowed) me to access my money wherever I am, which was very convenient. But then, without warning, and for no apparent reason the card stopped working. It came while we were away for a few days, and left us with no money.

    I later discovered that this was a decision of Mastercard rather than the bank and involved them denying the use of their cashcards in Romania, through some kind of racist caricature of Romanians as corrupt thieves. As far as I can tell, this only applies to Romanians (I found I could use it in Ukraine, for example). Once again, while the policy itself is merely a minor inconvenience, the lack of warning and the complete lack of apology when I complained, was the thing that really bugged me.

    "Pissing off your customers by arbitarily fucking with them? Priceless"

I have to go now, you'll be sorry to hear, so any further vitriol aimed at unfeeling multinational conglomerates completely uninterested in the individual customers will have to wait.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

your mom's in bed with palestine soldiers in turn, why don't you join in you poof.
Mircea

Andy said...

Mircea! You're back! I've sorely missed your incisive wit and intelligent contributions to these comment pages.

Andy said...

Well, coming from the master of hyperbolic/simplistic doggerel, I'm not sure how to take that.

It's a caricature of their reasoning to be sure, but it's basically what they told me.