Great 'Who Pays Compensation If You Ask?' Hunt

macaroni

basmiles wrote:

As a 'professional' complainer I bring in around £600 a month from complaints. I travel a lot for work so a great deal of these relate to airlines and hotels. I've just had a refund of £650 from Hilton for a poor stay with many errors, £250 from a US hotel for an error in the rate a couple of weeks ago, £270 for a security alert in another US hotel a few weeks before that. On airlines I've had a free upgrade to first with BA due to their catering dispute, a free trip on Concorde - bought with 100,000 BA miles I was given due to a previous problem. I've scored over £500 from my bank in the last year for mistakes, my Amex Platinum annual fee (£275) has been waived. Most of my clothes are bought by insurance or airline compensation for delayed luggage - always look for complicated and tight airline connections. I'm currently in dispute with a credit card company and a mobile phone company. I would expect at least £100 in compensation from each.

Of course I also play the free balance transfer game investing the money in an ISA and high paying deposit accounts and use a cashback credit card. I'm also a seriel collector of Tesco extra points - I now have enough for my £1,500 watch from Goldsmiths (£375 of Tesco vouchers).

I've kept a record for most of this year and have received around £5,000 in cash or cash equivalent benefits from complaints and careful use of offers.

basmiles

Im in awe !!

But how on earth do you find the time and energy to do it???????

Voyager2002

basmiles wrote:

As a 'professional' complainer I bring in around £600 a month from complaints. I travel a lot for work so a great deal of these relate to airlines and hotels. I've just had a refund of £650 from Hilton for a poor stay with many errors, £250 from a US hotel for an error in the rate a couple of weeks ago, £270 for a security alert in another US hotel a few weeks before that. On airlines I've had a free upgrade to first with BA due to their catering dispute, a free trip on Concorde - bought with 100,000 BA miles I was given due to a previous problem. I've scored over £500 from my bank in the last year for mistakes, my Amex Platinum annual fee (£275) has been waived. Most of my clothes are bought by insurance or airline compensation for delayed luggage - always look for complicated and tight airline connections. I'm currently in dispute with a credit card company and a mobile phone company. I would expect at least £100 in compensation from each.

Of course I also play the free balance transfer game investing the money in an ISA and high paying deposit accounts and use a cashback credit card. I'm also a seriel collector of Tesco extra points - I now have enough for my £1,500 watch from Goldsmiths (£375 of Tesco vouchers).

I've kept a record for most of this year and have received around £5,000 in cash or cash equivalent benefits from complaints and careful use of offers.

basmiles

This is only possible for someone who is already a 'valued customer'. I am sure that very many BA passengers were inconvenienced by the catering dispute, but only a tiny minority of them received free upgrades as a result. Probably they were selected on the basis of being frequent flyers, etc.

For the rest of us things are rather different. When Gulf Air screwed up on a grand scale (cancelled booking, lost luggage, no trace of pre-ordered childrens meals) I complained, both to their local agent and to head office. I asked for an upgrade to business class, but all I got was half an hour in the airport lounge.

The activities described by this poster mean that airlines, hotels etc have to spend more resources on keeping their 'elite' customers happy, which means that the rest of us end up paying more and receiving a lower standard of service. He might reflect on this next time he enjoys a first-class seat that he did not pay for.

Voyager2002

A spectacular experience, dating from 1990/91.

Abbey National, my then bank, failed to act on written instructions to transfer funds from a savings account to a current account, and therefore could not acto on written instructions to pay a credit card bill.

At the time this happened, I was travelling through China and across Siberia and Eastern Europe. I arrived in West Berlin with just ten pounds left, but for the first time in months saw a bank with the visa logo. I walked in to get enough money for my journey back to England, and of course found that I was stranded. I ended up sleeping in a hostel for the homeless, which by great good fortune lent me the price of a cheap flight back to the UK.

I had to write to Abbey National about all this in great detail, and it took them about six months to deal with my request for compensation. In the end I did get the 150 pounds that I had requested.

lubava

I'm subscribed to Telewest phone services and on las bill I noticed that 6p. connection charge was applied to my account but I actually it showed that call lasted for 0 seconds. I rung telewest and complained about it and got £5 credited to my bill. Plus I noticed that their new deal was offering more TV channels that I had on my subscription was the same price so I complained and they upgraded my TV channels at no cost.
The moral of the story is if you don't ask you won't get it.

mjanet

basimile :beer:

Lately I have had money back from AOL ,£60 ( in small amounts over a 2 week period as I kept complaining ),plus reduced broadband / phone rental.

LLoydstsb bank £100 + 2 large bunches of flowers ( complained the first bunch was nearly dead lol ) for them adding an extra two oo's to a cheque I paid in and not correcting their mistake when I informed them.The person who wrote the chq accepted a bottle of whisky as compensation #SHOCK

Manchester airport £22.50 for damaged case.

Am presently waiting for carphone warehouse to offer , if not then I will not hesitate to ask.

Quaff

I ordered a new phone from Vodaphone and was told it would be delivered the next day, but at no specified time. I waited until 5pm and nothing arrived. I phoned Vodaphone, there was a problem with the delivery for which they apologised and offered me £10 credit to my bill. I replied "I would have happily paid you £10 not to have sat in all day waiting for this phone to arrive" they responded by doubling the compensation to £20.

Quaff

Carl.

British Telecom Broadband Option 4

Recently migrated to BT for Broadband after speed issues with another ISP.

Was told at PoS to uninstall my Norton Suite when I got the disc they sent because Norton was on the CD. It wasn't.

Was then told that it would download immediately when I connected via BT. It didn't.

Was then told that I could download it via the security center. I couldn't.

Upon phoning them up, the Indian's kept repeatedly telling me that Norton Anti-Virus 2006 and Norton Firewall 2006 would not run on my machine due to the fact I have only 128mbs of ram.

This was a complete lie because Norton Internet Security 2006 full suite was running fine on my machine until they told me to uninstall it.

I phoned up and complained and after 2hrs on the phone to India was offered 2 months rebate (£43.98). I refused this as NortonIS has a rrp of £49.99 and I requested 3 months, after some further debate, the three months (£65.97) was sanctioned.

Upon having to call the Indian Call Center again, I was asking them a very simple question that I was refused an answer to, I requested my MAC so that I could goto a company who answered the question that they are asked instead of reading from an irrelevant script.

Eventually got through to a department in Warrington who answered all my questions, sorted an ongoing problem and told me to send my Primus bill when received and they would refund all the calls to the completely useless Indian call center.

Not a lot in terms of compensation because I still had to buy Norton, but the gesture certainly sedated my extreme anger.

Middle_Sister

Twice I arranged for a Siemens gas rep of Br Gas to come and change my meter but twice despite having my contact numbers did they ring and say they were on their way. I had arranged for them to call me 10 mins before they arrived at the house as I am only 10 mins away. I got £20 compensation. The next time they arranged it between 5pm - 8pm and I waited and waited. Eventually I called them at 7.45pm only to be told the engineer had gone off sick and "did nobody call you". I wrote twice to complain and received another £20. I'm surprised these people are still representing British Gas. Dreadful customer service.
Whilst at Gatwick airport I stepped on the moving walkway and felt the heel of my shoe go backwards. I wrote a nice letter to them explaining what happened saying the shoes had cost about £15 and I would accept a goodwill gesture of £10. £10 came in the mail. Good service.
I entered a text competition sponsored by Coca-Cola thru Morrisons and it finished at midnight on a certain day. On that day I texted and a message came back saying the competition had closed. I wrote complaining and got £10 in vouchers and the assurance my entry had gone forward into the draw.
At the cinema last Sat the movie should have started at 11.45am but at 11.55 nothing had happened. I twice complained to ushers and was told it would start any minute. The actual movie started at 12.20pm. I collared the manager saying it was unacceptable and seemingly it had been programmed in incorrectly all week and I was the only one to complain!!! I was offered my money back £14.75.
We really need to speak out about bad service.

pabby-ellis

:T i have had success in both banks paying compensation. HSBC offered compensation due to the delay in opening the credit card that was brought to my attention couple of weeks ago by moneysaver - remember the one that will pay £25 just for having it? well, i've made £25.00 out of them so far, just need to keep on now to ensure i get the promised £20.00

A&L were digging their heels in about mis information and not paying the £50incentive i've been fighting for. eventually i wrote to Financial ombudsman and within 10 days, i had an offer for £65.00 including my costs which i happily accepted.

keep on,and if you're right - you get the money!!:T

gromituk

"One MoneySaver takes it so far he claims to make £600/month, perhaps that's OTT, but it's good motivation."

So Martin says on his newsletter. I don't think he should be endorsing such activity. I agree wholeheartedly that often we don't complain enough, and let companies get away with shoddy practice as a result. HOWEVER, basmiles [and let's not quote his entire posting again, please!!] deliberately courts opportunities to complain by choosing flight connections which are likely to go wrong, hoping that they will, in order to claim compensation. I think this steps over the line of reasonable behaviour. It is a version of ambulance-chasing which is leading us into a society where no-one will offer anything with the slightest risk involved, for fear of repercussion.