Building up a positive reputation is very difficult, but blunder after blunder can damage it. In a similar vein, it takes a lot of focused effort to turn people into loyal, returning customers… but losing them is possible if you’ve got the wrong strategy. And no business is completely immune to shocks to their profits if they consistently let their customers down.
Today, we’re looking at some of the biggest offenders in the business world, as shared by frustrated internet users in a viral thread on AskReddit. Scroll down to get a better understanding of how some brands, stores, restaurants, and companies earned their ‘never again’ moniker for these disappointed people.
Bored Panda wanted to learn about brand loyalty, including at what point businesses should get worried and start adjusting their strategies, as well as what issues they should prioritize. So, we got in touch with marketing psychology expert Matt Johnson, PhD, the host of the Human Nature and Psychology of Marketing blogs. He was kind enough to shed some light on our questions.
#1
Neiman Marcus. I went there to buy a Prada bag for my mother. She had a knock off she loved, so I figured she’d appreciate the real thing.
I wear t-shirts to work, but this day it was at least a fancy one. It didn’t matter. The sales lady told me “It’s very expensive,” rolled her eyes and walked away.
So, I went next door to the actual Prada store and bought one.
I don’t need to be judged by an angry middle aged woman working retail, thank you very much.
Image source: mailslot
#2
We bought a flea medicine from Hartz to use on our cat and she became lethargic and didn’t eat anything. We took her to the vet and they told us that they have been trying to get that medicine off the shelves because of how it affects animals. I was in a theater watching despicable me when my cat finally passed away. It sucked knowing that my cat is dead because of some money-hungry brand who doesn’t care about the safety of the animals it gives its products to.
Image source: PFChangsOfficial, PFChangsOfficial
#3
Wal-Mart. Because of the everything.
Image source: templenameis_beyonce, SomePlastic
#4
Nestle.
Image source: firepanda11, firepanda11
#5
Panera. They raised prices and shrank their portions a while ago. Not worth it anymore.
Image source: dan1326, Hans_Grubert
#6
Comcast. A door-to-door salesman straight up lied to my dad, saying they had a four-DVR setup that would cost less than what we were paying AT&T. When the installation guy got there, he said that no, they didn’t have a four-DVR setup, he was told to give us the standard two-DVR setup. Which was absolutely not something that would work in a house with six people with wildly different tastes in TV shows.
So my dad tells him never mind, we’re sticking with AT&T then, but because the Comcast guy had already installed our new cable box, he couldn’t take it back with him, so we had to mail it back to Comcast ourselves.
The kicker is, five years later Comcast tried to bill my parents for the cable box, saying we never sent it back. My parents insisted they did, and Comcast wanted the UPS receipt, which obviously we no longer had because it was five years ago and we hadn’t heard anything from them before this. So my parents refused to pay, Comcast sent a collections company after us, and when my parents explained the situation to the collection company, they were like “those f*****s, we’ll take care of this.” That was, thankfully, the end of it.
Image source: Shawnarris, voronaman111
#7
Olive Garden. First the meals got s****y and I could deal with it, but then the Alfredo sauce did too and that’s where I draw the line.
Image source: anon67543, Deadtop1369
#8
I took my beater woods truck to a local tire shop for an alignment. They told me they couldn’t align it because I had a sticky U-joint, and then charged me for and hour of labor because they had to “take the tie rods off.” I argued because a) u-joints don’t impact alignment and b) there was about an inch of grime on the castle nuts, so there’s no way the tie rods came off. They brought out a manager who just made s**t up about how alignments work…I am a mechanical engineer. I think they thought they could get away with it because I am female. Nope, I filed a complaint with the state and they were fined for lying about service costs.
Image source: raiboe, Andrea Piacquadio
#9
Is it me or every brand is in a process to reduce costs, making products and services of bad quality, losing the original magic, and even rising prices to the point where is scam to buy the product again?
Image source: chocodove92, shrinkflation
#10
Starbucks. I’m tired of average coffee being peddled off like it’s some seriously gourmet s**t. Find a smaller chain, something regional. Or a locally owned shop where the owner works there and actually loves coffee. You’ll get better service, better quality, better availability, and better clientele to share it with than the Burger King-esque customers at Starbucks.
Oh, and their f*****g hypocritical politics injection.
Image source: DoingJustOkay, DoingJustOkay
#11
Wayfair. Delivered a wooden table that had a huge split on the side and was broken where you put the leaf to extend the table.
Got FOUR redeliveries and ever single time it was the EXACT same table with the same damage. Eventually got a full refund but did they seriously think that would work? Makes 0 sense to me.
Bonus: Ordered a bedroom set around the same time and paid for delivery and assembly. The “Assemblers” were 2/3 through the assembly and told me they couldn’t finish because they couldn’t understand the instructions.
Had them take all the stuff back and also got a refund.
Image source: TheSublimeStyle, Barry707
#12
Turbo Tax. Did my return, got a notice that my e-file needed to be corrected, logged back in to fix it and my return wasn’t there anymore. 6 hours on the phone with 3 tiers of tech support, each one trying exactly the same thing. Finally they were just trying random s**t, so I tried random s**t in parallel, managed to get to my return with the invoice number from paying for the service WITHOUT logging in. Tried to get them to understand that this was a Very Bad Thing that they should report to someone… and they told me they had no access to anyone technical and no way to submit bugs.
This from the company that lobbied to make it illegal for the government to offer tax filing service.
#13
Purina.
RIGHT NOW AS I’M TYPING THIS, They have friskies canned cat food (at least the seafood ones) on the shelf that are tainted and toxic.
It killed one of our cats and nearly killed another. Symptoms include vomiting, bloody diarrhea, and kidney shutdown.
They are lying, claiming the food is fine, and it’s dated through October of 2020, so rather than pull it all so they can get the poison ones off the shelves, they are just leaving it. Because that’s cheaper.
They paid my vet bills without my even having a necropsy done. They know there’s a problem, and they don’t care. Complain enough and they’ll cut you a check, but that’s not going to bring your cat back.
F**K PURINA.
Image source: daly_o96, daly_o96
#14
1800Flowers. F**k them. They waited several days after I placed an order for Mothers day to tell me that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill the order. They waited until the day before, putting me in a bad position.
Now I google my Moms ZIP, add flowers and have a few choices. I call the local shops directly andq1 1800flowers is cut out of the process.
Image source: philodendrin, Rikonavt
#15
A hospital in my area. My brother and his wife just recently had a baby there. My first nephew and their first child. He was born two weeks premature by scheduled c-section, but you couldn’t tell since he was more than 9 pounds when he came out. If he went full term he could have been more than 11 pounds.
Anyways, he arrives and everything is going well, his blood sugar was a little low, but the doctors claimed it got better. A day later and he begins twitching every once in a while. My sister in law asks the pediatrician and the nurse why and they said that it was fine. The day after that and the twitching increased and he began doing it every other minute. My brother and his wife panic and ask the doctor but the doctor checks his blood quickly and says nothing is wrong but if they’re still worried about it they should wait to go to the pediatrician on Monday (3 days later).
As soon as they leave the hospital despite the baby still twitching they turn around and ask for the doctor to please look one more time. He refuses and tells them that they can’t look anymore because they are discharged from the hospital.
Refusing to believe that their baby was okay, my brother and his wife took him to a different hospital’s emergency room. The doctor there took one look at the baby’s blood and immediately prepared a bottle of formula for him. His blood sugar was 36. If you aren’t familiar with blood sugar then just know that sugar that low can be deadly. My sister in law’s milk hasn’t come in yet, she didn’t know that, and the pediatrician at the first hospital only gave the baby 2 ounces of formula in 2 days. He baby was very close to going into shock. If they took the doctors advice and waited until Monday that baby would have been dead before reaching home.
Edit: My sister in law was checked many times for gestational diabetes and she didn’t have it at any point. The hospital is in Pennsylvania but I won’t name which one at least until my brother and sister in law decide to sue or not. I and most of my family agree that they should sue but they’re much more focused on their new baby at the moment. The baby is fine now and getting fed plenty at home with a mixture of both breast milk and formula.
Image source: VanessaLifts, National Cancer Institute
#16
Spirit airlines. Never again. F**k them.
Flight from Vegas got canceled. They don’t even bother trying to put you on another flight, not only that you have to pay extra for the next flight available. I told them they can go f**k themselves and I want a refund, the customer service person told me he can refund me spirit credit, that’s when I lost it. After enough b******g, he gave me my money back to my credit card and I bought a flight on delta.
Edit: thanks for the silver kind person. After my experience I made it a point to go on several review sites and made a PSA to never fly spirit again. This was one of many incidents I have had to deal with them, this one just broke me because I was flying back from Vegas, I can only handle Vegas for 2 nights, after that I want the f**k outta there, having to stay there another night was not something I wanted to do. Also it was not weather related as they told me, No other flights into detroit that day were cancelled, I checked, I even told that to the customer service agent, he shrugged it off.
Image source: Realdoctorman123, Stanley I Vaughn III
#17
BP. Because their greed caused the largest oil spill in American history.
> BP has denied pressuring the Horizon’s crew to cut corners, but its plans for completing the well kept changing, often in ways that saved time but increased risk.
Image source: real_zexy_specialist, NASA
#18
Dell laptops. One of the only times I actually sprang for the full deal warranty. About 3 months into owning it, I lifted the lid only to have the plastic bezel around the monitor separate entirely from the lid, all the stupid little plastic clips broken. Figured okay, no problem. Full warranty, easy fix. After contacting support, I was told plain and simple that my warranty does not cover ANY plastic part. It was a bloody Dell, the entire laptop was plastic.
Image source: RoundSuccess, RoundSuccess
#19
Chili’s.
I don’t know how this even happens. But I was served fried chicken that was cold and literally had ice on it.
Edit:
To anyone reading this later on, I want you to know that Chili’s PR staff has contacted me trying to smooth things over.
Yeah right.
Chili’s served me frozen food and I’d rather trash them forever than be sweettalked with a gift card.
Image source: anon, littleMAHER1
#20
F*****g At&t it’s one thing after another with these a******s. They’ve been taking 60$ a month from my checking account for the last seven months for a prepaid phone that I don’t have they can’t tell me why or take me off auto draft because I don’t have a phone number to look up the phone that i dont own.
Just spent almost an hour at the bank trying to dispute this s**t. It’s just the most recent in a long list of fuckery caused by At&t.
Those twats.
Image source: thelionintheheart, FoUTASportscaster
#21
Tim Hortons. Quality is gone.
They no longer have in store bakeries, the coffee blend is god awful, the menu is huge, the speed of service is horrible and the way the owners are treated by the franchise is just disgusting.
They need to stop trying to do everything and get back to focusing on what made them great.
Image source: betelgeux, skincarelovaaa
#22
Macy’s. Got a credit card through them to buy a suit. My parents offered to pay the card off as a birthday present. Cue months of them calling me 5+ times a day, asking where the payment, that had already been made, was. Harassing me to make more and larger payments. When it was finally payed off, they then tacked on a “completed payment fee” and never sent a bill, so the whole d**n thing started all over. I was genuinely about to file a lawsuit over harassment or something.
It was unbelievable, because I would tell one person the payment was made, and then get 4 more calls the same day asking the same thing. Then rinse and repeat tomorrow.
Image source: Thromok, Airam Dato-on
#23
Applebee’s. First time I ever got food poisoning from a restaurant.
Image source: PM_ME_YOUR_WORRIES, yoman9595
#24
UPS. Worked in the warehouse for 2 whole days. Im unloading the Semis of packages when my boss tells me to hurry up “If it breaks, it breaks. Not our problem” i lost all respect for them that day and quit at the end of my shift.
Image source: Radius8887, Gavin
#25
Walmart, i’ve never witnessed such terrible situational awareness than in the people that shop at Walmart. I always leave the place angry and I don’t think I’ve been to one in a couple years. The prices are also not that great, you can most likely find everything they have at other places for a lower price if you watch for deals and sales.
Image source: Pissin, Caique Morais
#26
A bar I went to on my 25th birthday. I got there first and opened a tab to get my first couple of drinks before my friends showed up and started buying for me. At the end of the night I went to get my bill, which should have been under $20. Instead, I got a single piece of paper with the total of $85. It did not come with an itemized slip. (EDIT: For the people who can’t gather this from context, that was unusual. All the times I’d gone to the bar before, I got itemized receipts. All of my friends that night got itemized receipts when they closed out.) I spent 20 minutes, on my birthday, at the bar, calling out the bartender’s name, asking for an itemized receipt, while he pretended he could neither see nor hear me.
I went home and reached out to management and explained the story to them, including how long I tried to get his attention. Her reply: “If you thought there was an issue with your receipt, you should have asked the bartender to explain it to you.”
Never again.
Case anyone cares, it’s Penn Social in DC.
EDIT: Since this seems to be coming up a lot: This is America, so not “chip and pin”. They won’t serve you unless they first swipe your credit card. I could not simply “leave without paying”, it was going to be charged to me no matter what. My experience with disputing charges is that it’s not super convenient, so I was really hoping to be able to deal with this at the bar without having to do that.
So please don’t be one of the 337 people who have told me “I would have just left.”
Image source: Oudeis16, Mike Yak
#27
Frontier internet. They’re one of the sh**tiest ISP’s I’ve ever had, I will never go back, no matter how cheap it is.
Image source: imnotsteven7, lesbianpearls
#28
Wayfair. Purchased a $1000 sectional couch that was delivered with damaged upholstery. They refused to let me return it and instead offered me 10% off my next purchase. Yeah….. Never using that discount code.
Image source: KingofClikClak, Guest-Username
#29
I bought an engine from AutoZone for a vehicle I owned. They had a vendor build the engine, and it was supposed to ship to my house. I waited three weeks for it to arrive, but it never did. I contacted their store, was told that it hadn’t shipped yet and was coming via FedEx freight. I kept up with the tracking # but couldn’t get anywhere with it. I kept calling back every couple of days to see what was going on, and no one could figure it out. I finally managed to find out that it had shipped via another company (RL freight), and had been delivered to somewhere else. It was like pulling teeth to get a refund on an engine I never received. It took another two weeks to get the refund.
I won’t buy a soda from AutoZone now.
Image source: WaulsTexLegion, anonymous
#30
Golden Corral. That place is a festering pile of s**t.
Image source: Jwad35
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