Great 'Who Pays Compensation If You Ask?' Hunt

gromituk

That's why biscuits cost £1 each in Waitrose

MissG_2

A few weeks ago I had so many problems with my AOL service, it took approx 6 weeks to resolve and it involved the o/h spending hours on the phone.

In the end this manager sorted the problem and promised compensation for the trouble. Next thing we know is the compensation of 1 months service does not arrive and the DD is pulled.

He isn’t too happy and is right back on the phone to AOL asking for a complaints form. When he received is he gave it to them with both barrels, one of their complaints managers got back to him really quickly (within 48 hours) and offer the following:-

1 = He has said that each of the people who have not fulfilled their promise will be offered feedback in order to improve their service. :T
2 = Reduced my broadband cost from £17.99 p/month to £15.99 for life. :T
3 = 6 months FOC service :T

MissG_2

Also got 2 months free line rental of BT, when i connected years ago we requested for the number to be ex directory. We discovered it wasnt and made a simple request for it to be fixed.

Two weeks later and our number is still showing on their website, called up again and this time requsted to be compensated because we were receiving unwelcome calls which had been generated from the phone book or website.

Offered £5 goodwill and politley told them where to go, settled for 2 months free line rental. Probably could have got more with DPA issues from initial order but could be bothered with the hassle and main thing is problem sorted.

eddybennet

When we moved to our new house in February, we found that the phone line was unable to support broadband - so we opted to get it through Telewest/Blueyonder cable broadband instead. As we use 1899, we decided to stick with BT for our phone line.

When the broadband engineer came to install the cable and modem all looked fine. He did a very neat job wiring the cable in, and it all worked first time. However, our phone stopped working!

After very close investigation, it turned out that the broadband engineer had stapled through a very small section of our BT phone cable. I complained to Blueyonder, who said that while they were unable to come out and fix it themselves (apparently the phone cabling to the first phoen socket in yoru house is BT property) they said that they would pay the BT charges to come and put it right - and that was without me needing to ask.

BT couldn't fit us in for abotu 4 days, so when I sent off a copy of the £130 BT bill to fix the problem to Blueyonder I also pointed out that due to their engineer's problem stapling skills we had been needing to use mobile phones for our calls rather than a landline. They sent an extra £50 as a goodwill payment without even asking how much we'd spent on calls. We'd only made about a fiver's worth!

All in all, I was throroughly impressed with Blueyonder's customer support, so kudos them :T

Nessie1702

Some of my complaints relate to food:

"Frozen" milk from M&S - Sent a letter of complaint in regarding the fact that the milk I'd bought had been frozen, as there were ice parcticles in it. Got a £10 voucher and an explanation that the delivery lorry was at a lower temperature than the chills on the shop floor

Black foreign object in Sainsbury's Oat & Bran Flakes - wasn't sure what it was, so wrote in enclosing the object and got a letter back saying it was a bit of rubber from the processing plant and given £15 of vouchers.

Bought a cheese & chutney sandwich in Mull for £3.50 and the quality was dire, so wrote to point this out and got my money back

Found some prawn shell in Scampi, so wrote to the company and enclosed the offending shell. Asked how this could have happened and what steps they have in place to prevent similar incidences in the future - got £10 for my trouble.

A piece of pre-formed chicken fell out of a M&S potato gratin that was labelled "Suitable for Vegetarians" I won't eat meat, so spoilt the meal. Got £25 of vouchers and letter in reply after sending the piece of chicken in for M&S to investigate.

Have had problems with D/D from bank account for car insurance and brought this to Bank and Insurance companies attention - got 3 free months car insurance and £50 from the bank

Had problems getting a washing machine delivered and plumbed in from Comet - the two men who did the delivery did not want to plumb it in (Friday afternoon syndrome) So, had to wait in twice for delivery etc, was compensated £50.

On a Greek holiday a number of years ago, one of the day trips we'd paid for was cancelled at very short notice (i.e. at the transfer bus stop at 5 a.m. due to inclement weather!) The company (Unijet/First Choice) had already charged my credit card £85.33, and it took several letters and phone calls while in Greece and back home to get any satisfaction. Got a cheque for £125 to compensate for my time and the charge on the credit card.

Had problems with Telewest on moving house (access to e-mail in particular) and

Poor service is unacceptable and I refuse to accept it. Equally though, if I get good service, I will write and let the company know.

gromituk

Let's have a list of the people you've written to in praise then.

jand_3

Four of us recently went on holiday with Mytravel. On the flight everyone was given a snack of sandwiches, crisps etc. After most of the people on the aircraft had eaten the sandwiches (ham and cheese) we discovered they were out of date by 2 days!!!! I'm a veggi and a veggi meal had been booked, but the sarnies were all ham and cheese. When this was pointed out to the cabin crew they said " well just take the ham off". We wrote a complaints form in flight and heard nothing. Then contacted them 2 weeks following our return. They have sent a cheque for £60 (4 X £15) the cost of the inflight meals. They say they are at a loss as to how the out of date food reached the aircraft but are looking into it. I'm fairly new to "real" money saving and need to know, do you think this is fair compensation?? Should we write again or what????!!!! We have our dated flight tickets and kept the dated sarni wrappers as proof.

gromituk

Well £15 is many, many times the cost of an in-flight ham sandwich!

peakgeezer

My first post so hope I'm on topic and so on....

In the last 2 years I have had problems with 3 banks ranging from continous errors when setting up my wifes new account (Royal Bank of Scotland) to receiving illiterate letters (Britannia Building Society) and finally odd handling of direct debits after making a manual payment in the same month (Citibank).

Which lengthy correspondence with each of the above banks I finally requsted an "ex gratia" payment to compensate me for my inconvenience. I asked for £30 from Royal Bank of Scotland, later I upped this to £40 from Britannia and finally £50 from Citibank. In each case they paid up, although Citibank said I'd asked for £60 and paid me that, well who am I to complain (no pun intended).

You'll probably have to be persistent and progress up the ladder to more senior staff but my exxperience is that it pays to be firm and ask for compensation with a letter or two, stick to your guns and don't let them fob you off.

good luck to you all...

tee_pee_2

complained at a brewers fayre about a meal and got £40 compensation. Complained about united utilities and got £25 credit on my bill.

My friend complained to Next about a bed she bought there was a delay in the delivery she complained she had slept on the floor ( and pregnant at the time) and got £100 compensation.