Companies you will never deal with again

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Matt
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Nothing pissed me off recently, but I thought I would throw this up here after sharing my thoughts with a coworker having problems with Frontier Communications

What companies have driving you away with their horrible service, prices, or business model?

Here's my list:

WaterWatch Corporation - This company reads the water meters of apartment complexes and divides them by the number of apartments (crazy math here) and sends out paper bills to each resident. They give the apartment complex a cut. They take enormous service fees, almost criminal. Then charge large convenience fees if you pay online by bank account or by credit card. They have the only bills I pay now by stamped postage. Water is cheap... in fact it only costs me 4-5 for water/sewer... but they tack on so much in service fees and profit mongering to do all that crazy math, my bill ends up having $10-10 in service fees a month---that's more than the water itself!!! Someone lock these assholes up.

Frontier Corporation - Rochester's beloved telecommunications monopoly. Want caller ID? $45/mo. Want your phone service turned off? $50 termination fee. Want to be constantly nickle & dimed until you just commit fully to a cell phone or VOIP like everyone else, start with Frontier. I signed up for online billing, entered in all my bank account information and let it be. The next month, my account was automatically paid-- 3 days late -- and I was charged a late fee. This went on for months, hours of service calls, cancellation of the autopay and they still deducted the amount every month from my account (that's theft). I cancelled my account altogether and they charged me a $50 fee, which was partly paid by all the late fees on the over payments they did not credit me back. This company can die, and they will, and I will celebrate.

1 800 Flowers - Set up 3 major flower-giving events when they had a deal. Pre-paid months ahead and thought I was an evil genius for getting in on a deal and pre-planning these awesome gifts way ahead of time. First even came and went. I just assumed all went well. When I followed up, the recipient had no idea what I was talking about. When I realized no delivery happened, 3 days after the event I called 1800 flowers. They had a record of the sale. It was set up for the right day and address, but no delivery. Oh well. Not a huge deal... they did a minor upgrade (+$10) and delivered the next day.
Second event, the more important one, came... and I was sure to be called as the really expensive delivery arrived.... nothing... waited until evening... nothing...called them to tell them, if they deliver this late, it has to go to a new address. They assured me it would be at the new address shortly. Nothing. Called angrily that night. They claimed it had been delivered just a few minutes ago. Just in case, we drove my wife's place of work to see if it had been delivered there (as scheduled during the day) - nope...The next day, coming home from work, just outside my door was a wilted a makeshift bouquet of leftover scraps that looked nothing like the $100 item ordered. Called them. They refused to refund the money for this and the third prepaid delivery.
f*** this company.
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cbobcat49
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DirectBuy

We very nearly fell for their scam tactics a few years ago.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. ~Henry David Thoreau
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ApproachingLight
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Frontier.Yes!!

Frontier business bills are the worst. They hide yellow pages charges in all sorts of places (when we used to use them). And the bills are like reading Chinese. Each month we have to take them apart to be sure they are correct.

No question if and when we can reasonably move some where else we will. We killed our home phones for the same reason, and hey, no one younger than say 45 has a hard wired home phone anymore.
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Matt
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cbobcat49 wrote:DirectBuy

We very nearly fell for their scam tactics a few years ago.
I'm not familiar with them.
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hobkyl
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VZW.

Oh wait, ill have to pay like $300+ in termination fees. :angry:
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cbobcat49
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DirectBuy

We very nearly fell for their scam tactics a few years ago.

I'm not familiar with them.
The first review here pretty much sums it up...

http://news.consumerreports.org/home/20 ... tbu-1.html
With DirectBuy, it will cost you a lot to save
Sep 13, 2007 2:34 PM

Your town or city might have been blanketed recently with newspaper ads and TV commercials for DirectBuy. The nationwide buying club, with headquarters in Merrillville, Indiana, promises members access to 700 brand-name manufacturers of home goods and the opportunity to buy merchandise with no “hidden store markups and middlemen costs.” Ads invite you to an open house, where you’ll see “confidential” wholesale prices. “We can’t show you the brand names and we certainly can’t show you the prices,” read one ad. What it also doesn’t show you is DirectBuy’s steep membership cost.

The Real Deal
To evaluate the pitch, we went undercover at two DirectBuy franchises in New York. Both gave us the same hard sell and offers of up to 70 percent off retail prices if we were to join. Only after an hour and a half of sales pitches and video testimonials from members did we learn the membership fee: $4,900 to $4,990 (plus tax) for three years and then $190 a year for seven more. Financing is available at 17.75 percent.

After the fee disclosure, we discovered that we had to sign up on the spot or never come back. We couldn’t bring DirectBuy’s “confidential” prices elsewhere to comparison shop, the representatives said, because this would likely anger retailers who might then retaliate against the manufacturers by refusing to sell their merchandise.

The fine print in the DirectBuy contract says you cannot return items, cancel orders, or terminate your membership. When we asked if, after plunking down $5,000, we could cancel and get a refund, a salesperson said, “You’ll have to check state law.” A review of New York state law revealed that the three-day cooling-off period for canceling contracts wouldn’t apply in this case.

Tacked onto the cost of merchandise—which you select from catalogs since DirectBuy has limited showrooms—are a 6 percent handling fee, shipping fees, and tax. Goods are typically shipped only to your local center, so you might pay additional fees to actually get your new stuff home.

Just how good are the prices? We compared them against those of other retailers. Prices for electronics and appliances were often only slightly better than those at online retailers and in some instances higher. For example, a 46-inch JVC flat-screen TV selling for $2,586 on DirectBuy’s site cost $2,095 elsewhere. We did find deep discounts on flooring and high-end furniture. In fact, one member we interviewed estimated that she saved about $50,000 over several years on furniture and a kitchen remodel using DirectBuy. Yet the club did poorly on some basics. We found a Kohler bath faucet for $300 less on a kitchen-and-bath Web site.

Some DirectBuy members complained to us about poor customer service and long waits for merchandise. But since DirectBuy outlets are franchises, service varies by location. Most outlets have a good record with the Better Business Bureau, though some have a poor one or have been suspended from the BBB.

The Bottom Line
The lack of price transparency makes it hard to evaluate whether you’ll save by joining DirectBuy. But even if you were to save 25 percent on purchases after joining, you’d need to spend more than $20,000 just to recoup your membership fee. DirectBuy might save you money if you’re furnishing a house from scratch or doing a major renovation. But since you can’t shop around beforehand, you’ll be joining blind.—Chris Fichera

This article first appeared in the September 2007 issue of Consumer Reports Money Adviser.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. ~Henry David Thoreau
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Matt
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Canon inkjet printer division
I have an i9900 in my office. I print maybe 20 pages a month on average. I replace and ink cart every time I print. It's become such an obvious rip off that I ring a bell every time i replace a cartridge and everyone in the office thinks it's hilarious. I turn it on... it grinds gears and chugs away for a good 3 minutes, feeds in a sheet of paper, then stops... then in the bottom right... yellow is out. Why is it always yellow? I rarely print yellow! I'm down to 40 spare cartridges. None of which are yellow. This thing is costing me nearly $1/page now. f*** you, canon, and your bullshit ripoff printers.

Love my Kodak at home, by the way. $10 ink carts.... runs out at a reasonable time, doesn't have to drink ink every time I turn it on.
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