Great 'Who Pays Compensation If You Ask?' Hunt

ingram62

Hi

I work for a bank and when I get a complaint I do not mind giving compensation if we have made an error, but I do think that there are a lot of people these days, who complain for no real reason, hoping that we will just give them money to stop them sendining letters in.

Cheers


Elaine

steve!_10

The company I used to work for used to have an excellent reputation. Even when we made the odd !!!!-up, people would ask for compensation and I'd just say no (I'm nice like that ). The majority still remained as customers too ... I think some companies would do quite well telling customers to shove off when they try and extract every single penny for petty and understandable delays and whatnot. Providing of course they're confident enough in their product to begin with.

I wonder how many serial complainers would be prepared to put their money where their mouth is and walk. Depending on what the product/service is, I bet a fair few would just suck it (for want of a better expression).

wilko99

Previous occupaints of my house had not informed bank of their move. I was receiving current account statements, pension statements as well. I invoiced them for £100.00 for my time in writting to them and posting stuff back. Finally got £20.00.

Better than nowt.

Wilko99

blindman

plane_boy2000 wrote:

he is entitled to expect to be compensated.

NOPE
He is entitled to a service he pays for, if he has problems then why doesn't he go somewhere else?
By his own admission he is a "professional complainer" i.e ambulance chaser.

Sounds like you and him make a great pair!

blindman

plane_boy2000 wrote:

Grow up.

being entitled to SAGA offers I am grown up.

If the service is poor you have a right to complain.

True

.... paid £4K for a flight I have a right to expect everything to be just right, and if it isnt then I complain and EXPECT to be compensated.

You are a sad example of our society.

By complaining we drive standards higher for all users.

Yes, but by EXPECTING compensation you are being greedy and quite often ruin the service others get in the future.

bootman

I have just got £10 from BG. 8 phone called 2 complaint emails, 1 fax 1 photo copy of stuff they wanted and postage.

They put me on the wrong tarriff when I switched. Sent me confirmation of the lower one bt put me on the higher one. Noblody would correct it.

Nice chap did it for me yesterday but said he could only give £10 as this was his limit allowed.

Just about covered my costs but not the hours I spent hanging on a phone line.

fox2319

Bought one of the Dell PC's a month or so back, they changed the offer the day after I bought it to include an extra 512MB of RAM so I phoned up to complain. Initially told it was just down to the way they do business, offers change daily etc. etc.. I pointed out that under distance selling I could cancel the order at no cost to myself and they eventually offered to upgrade the memory which, as the PC had been shipped, would now have to be done by an engineer.

All fine (although I had some mucking about waiting for the delivery of the memory) and then I had to wait around for a morning to welcome their engineer to install the memory. At 1 o'clock, Dell acknowledged that he was a no-show and agreed to let me install the memory myself without voiding the warranty (2pm he phoned to say he'd be there at 3pm for my 'morning' appt!).

I told Dell when I phoned up that I was very unhappy with the extra hassle and the engineer's no-show and wanted to make a complaint. They told me that I was not able to do this online or over the phone and that I should write off to some address in Ireland.

That's been sitting in my desk drawer for the past month or so and then I got the weekly newsletter and decided to look around on the internet to see if I could find an easier way to complain, quick search on google came up with an online form to complain. I filled this in this morning and got a call within 2 hours with an offer of £40 compensation.

Not bad really, original PC + extra memory for £40 less than the bargain price which they'd originally tempted me with!

Cheers

Jeff

davisneil

its a sad case of these people who rub their money in our faces...i detect a whole 'i have a gold card so i'm better than you' vibe about all this. i was hard pushed to get 20 quid out of barclays a few years back because they screwed up my account and jumped at the chance to charge me for it. But of course the people who got 5-figure balances get the whole package cause the banks dont want to upset them, at the expense of everyone else.

its the same on trains...everyone gets crammed in like sardines all standing jeapordising safety just so they can have lovely big empty first class cabins in every other carriage. that unused space could seat more people but dont be silly...

shiirley

zipman23 wrote:

In the end, I asked for compensation for all my trouble as I had been paying £25/month for the first 6 months and then £40.00/month thereafter for something that didn't work to anywhere near what it should have done. I was told that Three don't DO compensation so they have my money and I was paying £8.99/month for insurance and when there were problems, nobody would fix them!

Actually, that's not true. With Three, it depends on who you speak to on the phone. There are some really incompetent advisors, and there are some really good ones. I've found a good advisor with the Three call-in centre and she has been giving me 'gestures of goodwill' everytime I complain. So far, I've managed to squeeze 10 quid off Three without much trouble.

Next time, if the advisor refuses to budge, just ask for someone else to deal with your case.

Deborah_Britz

Having to request compensation really should not be neccessary; those companies that actually care about their customers just offer it upfront. I had a complaint about a Waitrose baked product (a childs ginger biscuit) and was immediately offered two replacements (one for each child present) on the shop floor, followed up by a letter of apology, a second letter explaining what they'd done and then a voucher for £25 to spend in store. That truly is compensation; real responses, genuine concern and a worthwhile sum of money.
I now return (whenever I can afford it!) and relay this story to others - they really are the winners, of course, but just by doing a good job. One doesn't always feel equal to the task of complaining and it's great when a company respects that and acts unprompted.