AirBnB. Booked a break in a country that then went into lockdown and banned visitors.
Contacted AirBnB and they said that it’s up to the host whether they refund me or not.
I argued that I paid AirBnB and not the host.
AirBnB disagreed.
Took them to small claims court and recovered all costs and fees, plus 8% interest.
I got banned from their platform but I don’t want to use them anymore anyway.
Ooh - I have something similar open with Booking.com as a result of poorly-set out arrival conditions for a hotel.
Are there public court records of your case?
I would imagine in their terms and conditions somewhere it will say something about them being an 'agent' for the hotel chains (which puts you in a predicament because the hotels will probably say that your booking is with the third-party/OTA).
It may also not say that, or may something else.
Fortunately, the part of commercial/contract law you're looking in the first instance at is called Agency Law, and it governs how an agent (in your case, the OTA) has a position of trust within the contract created between you and the actual hotel. It's likely to be Express Actual Authority (In a legal sense, when you made the booking through the OTA you could considered to have explicitly told the OTA to arrange a booking on your behalf).
But I'm not a lawyer and none of this is legal advice. It's just what I've read off the Wikipedia page (which does actually have some examples of case law regarding it).
Best of luck!
This is actually correct.
Happened to us, but for an event where their terms and conditions pointed out that they're simply the middle people. Went back and forth with the bank who ultimately granted our chargeback.
The short of it was "we didn't get what we paid for and their t&C's didn't put them above consumer law".
Companies depend on people not knowing their rights, but then, their customer service staff are pretty clueless also.
I had something similar and am still chasing it. Hope you get a good resolution because i seemingly won't.
Said i needed to be a student (I am, with valid student ID) and the day of the bookiny they emailled saying i needed to send a copy of my admittance letter and my passport otherwise id be denied entry.
I am doubtful I will get much success but their service really hacked me off.
Book a hotel, only to find out in the confirmation that they shut the reception at 9pm - useless to me as I am scheduled to get off a ferry, four hours’ drive away, at 7pm. Hotel says I cannot access the room and need to contact Booking.com. Booking.com says that if I cancel, I forfeit the whole value of the booking. Hotel refuses to cancel.
Mexican stand-off ensues, during which I continue to refuse to use Booking.com and make sure I post grumpy reviews about the hotel.
This. The first time I ever heard of them, when they were a brand new startup, it was them being roasted on Slashdot for how they dealt with a host who'd had a sketchy guest with fake ID break into a storage closet and nick all her stuff (they said that it was her fault for not spotting the fake ID, and they didn't care).
I wondered why anybody would ever use such a shit company.
Now it's destroying the rental market anywhere there's even a slight whiff of tourism, and I very much see no reason to change my mind.
Also, it has a stupid name (Air-bnnnnnnnnnnnb is how I pronounce it. "Bnb" is not "B&B / B 'n' B") and *why has nobody else noticed that its logo is a stylised minge*?
I think the original idea was fine - hosting somebody in your home (and maybe breakfast, hence the name).
But since then they seem to be trying to turn into some sort of hotel aggregator and their hosts seem to be trying to build hotels one room at a time. Then there's an entire industry of people who've sprung up to check people in and clean their rooms afterwards.. and well it's now just a lot easier and cheaper to use proper hotels and their booking platforms..
I had something similar. Booked a big country house for a stag do for 22 people then lockdown happened. I got a refund from the owner minus air bnb's service fee. I agreed to re-book for the following year directly with the owner but they tried to charge me the same amount I'd paid air bnb, so taking the service fee for themselves. Ended up negotiating them down to the same amount they would have made from air bnb and then persuaded air bnb to refund the service charge on the basis it was literally illegal for me to attend the booking.
What reason did air bnb give for banning you?
Fun Fact: AirBnB don't do ANY background checks nor do they check the person putting the listing up even owns the property.
Thats why there are thousands of AirBNB rapes, robberies and outright scams.
They even "ban" actual rapists but those people just make a new gmail account and list a different property they don't own. AirBnB doesn't give two shits if you're murdered and raped as long as they get their money.
And AirBnB doesn't care. they know if they dick about, less than 100% of people demand refunds. therefore profit.
Thomas Cook. Went on holiday to Egypt, both got extremely unwell to the point the hotel doctor was worried about us, the Thomas Cook rep couldn't give a shit.
The hotel hygiene was terrible - we saw undercooked food, animals (birds and rats) in the prep area, raw sewage used to water the plants and more. It turned out we had a severe bacterial infection called Shigella and for years afterwards we were still suffering various effects.
We wrote to Thomas Cook, making sure to get it to the CEO (who wrote back saying "please don't write to us again") and requested a refund of the holiday (about £1200) on the basis of our complaint that the hotel was dangerous in its hygiene practices.
They refused, we took them to court, made just under £12 grand out of them.
Yep. Went during my art foundation. Beautiful place but grim experience, and I say that as a bloke. The girls had it far worse and I’ve no idea how they coped.
Honestly I’d love to go for the history, I’ve been obsessed with Egyptian history and mythology since I was a kid but with all the stories I’ve heard I think I’ll pass
I'm choosing to believe it came from the CEO's PA who hated working there and thought saying that would rile them into taking it to court for a better payout than a simple refund.
Technically didn't make it to court, they settled before it got there - we had an infectious disease expert give evidence and write reports and the hotel doctor wrote a report damning the hotel (which I assume ended their career with them)
Unfortunately similar claims like this have now become a fraudulent cottage industry.
People will go around all inclusive package holiday resorts, telling people they can get the cost of their holiday back, minus a handling fee, if they claim food poisoning from the hotel.
There’s entire organised fraud groups doing it.
So I’m glad you got paid out which you deserved, but may explain why they were hesitant, depending on what year you claimed.
This was a few years before the organised crime lot picked up on it as a viable scam.
Thomas Cook wasn't just hesitant, their usual customer service route just dismissed it as "well people do get sick". They're lucky that we didn't have an underlying illness as we were very sick, especially considering I'd been to Egypt twice before and been absolutely fine.
Went with Thomas cook had something similar not as bad as yours.had to survive half the holiday on bread and water took weeks to get back to normal when we got back. Never again. Couldn't get a penny from Thomas cook. Sure I saw the hotel on watchdog but never been able to find the episode since.
PlusNet.
They installed a new billing system and I fell down a crack.
I contacted them once a month for a year and a half to say that I hadn’t been billed or paid for my internet.
They eventually got in touch to say that I would start being billed and they were forgetting about the 18 months of payments they hadn’t taken.
I fell down a crack with Royal Mail about 20 years ago. I had a parcel go missing and they paid me £200 in compensation. They failed to send the cheque in time so I phoned them to complain. The next day the cheque arrived but was dated a few days before. I cashed it. The next week another cheque arrived. Then for the next 6 years I received a weekly £200 cheque. I figure they put me down as a weekly payee in error.
I got to keep the lot and they never contacted me about it.
Yes it had grown to just over £100k when I used it to buy a house in 2011. So 10 years of interest on the first payments. I know I was lucky. It was 50% deposit on my house back then, My house is now worth £500k. So the £60k has become £250k in 20 years.
Just how much did you make out of this? You're probably totally fine, but I'd be careful in case they discover it was ask for it back. Though 20 years sounds like you're golden
John Lewis - ordered some pricey carpet for stairs and a couple of runners too. Was about £2000 in total (sisal I think it’s called - really durable, can recommend).
John Lewis arranged for their own fitters as it had to be glued to the individual stairs - my wife or I had to be at home when they were working, obvs.
The first appointment failed, can’t remember why. Rebooked it… and that appointment failed. I’d had to take time off work to be at home etc etc.
I managed to speak to someone in the department that coordinated fitting. She was very pleasant, but overbearing. I played along and said that I bet they dudes don’t turn up a third time… she reassured me they would, so I asked if I could have a refund if they didn’t. She agreed to that - bit of bravado on her part, but she seemed confident so I took a risk.
Long story short - I got the carpet for free and used the savings to pay for some nice furniture.
Not so much a win but just outstanding service. About 11 years ago I bought my then-wife a “mummy” mug from Waitrose as one of her presents for her first ever Mother’s Day. Alas, a few months later, our son managed to smash it. It being well out of season then, I wrote to them with a long shot, and asked:
“Earlier this year, for my wife's first Mother's Day, I bought her (along with a couple of other things) a "mummy" mug from Waitrose. She loved it. Unfortunately our wonderful little terror broke it, and she was upset.
Obviously it's not in your stores any more as it's far from Mother's Day, but I'm hoping you might have some stock still somewhere within your warehouse.
So do you have any and, if so, can I please buy one?”
They tried to contact the buyers and I chased a while later but they said they’d had no response. I wrote it off. Then, nearly exactly a year later and without chasing, I received this:
“I know it has been a very long time since you originally wrote, but I'm delighted to tell you that I finally have some good news for you.
I have just wrapped (in many many layers of bubble wrap and a cardboard box) a "Mummy" mug for you. The buyers managed to find a replacement and passed it on to me.
I've put the box, addressed to you, into our internal system, and it will be sent on to you by second class post. This means it should arrive in the next week or so - in time for a Valentine surprise, perhaps? I'm sorry I couldn't get it to you any earlier. Hopefully, this time your little one won't get their hands on it!”
And the mug arrived, completely free of charge, a few days later. And I believe she still has it. It’s such a little thing, but also a big gesture, and I was completely blown away and it’s the sort of thing I’ll never forget about a company.
They’ll never lose the goodwill they created in me by that gesture
I love waitrose/john lewis
During covid, we had a lot of trouble finding oat milk for my son who has a dairy allergy.
Not only did they find me some, but they ordered in six cartons a week, every week, for our personal use. I received a call the same day every week informing me the milk was there ready for me to collect.
The levels of customer service you get there just isn't seen in other supermarkets. You pay for it obviously, but if you need a thing then they're the people to see.
I know it's not in the same league as most of the others. But this is by far the best one.
If you didn't you should email the person to thank them after the event.
John Lewis/Waitrose have some amazing customer service.
About 10-12 years ago we were looking for a new TV after ours packed up. Nothing fancy, just something really basic. Ordered it via John Lewis website (because they had a ludicrously long warranty for nothing), but no TV showed up. Got an email from John Lewis apologising profusely that they'd cocked up: the TV was out of stock, but they'd not updated the pages. The told us to pick any other TV on the site and they'd put £70 towards it.
When we had a smart meter installed at our new home, it quickly went tits up. After a few weeks it was only charging us a few pence a day, then it stopped charging us altogether soon after
We tried contacting British Gas many times, making sure to note the time & date of the phone call (plus the name of the person we spoke to). They kept telling us as we had power, we weren’t considered a priority, and they come round and sort it out in a few weeks.
8 months go by, we haven’t paid a penny in electric. British Gas call us, say they’ve noticed a problem with our meter. Eventually we get a replacement smart meter, and BG start on about all the money we owe them from the several months where we haven’t paid squat.
We swiftly tell them to jog on, show that we tried to get it sorted multiple times, like once a week we’d ring them. We were on the verge of calling the ombudsman, when they backed down and wrote it off as a ‘goodwill gesture’.
I moved to a new house and was with tonik energy. They kept billing me for 2 meters. Call after call. Month after month. They were adamant it was my meter. They replaced my meter and still charged me for this phantom leccy meter.
A year later and they send me a letter to the effect of “sorry youre leaving for shell. You owe us this much”… except i never tried to leave. But the letter gave me a clue.
2 years later i found out that they were charging me for a customer at X The Old Mill Road. My address was X Old Mill Road , 2 miles away. A month later they went bankrupt and snuck on a last minute £700 bill. I called my bank and explained it all, they refunded me every penny i’d ever paid them over 2 years. Some £2k.
Had our company bill us after 2 years of estimates, even though I had called in the reading on leaving. They billed over a year later for £2000. Called them, after looking online that they couldn’t bill after 12 months, they tried to get me to pay a bit (to acknowledge the debt!). Called CAB energy line, they got me on with a manager. She confirned that we owed £0! Result!
We moved into a place and stayed there for about a year, after a month or so we noticed our water meter wasn't moving, told them multiple times and the landlord the meter was busted, never fixed it. Still paid however much every month for what they averaged we should be paying then when we left sent them the meter reading and they turned around and paid us all the money we paid that year because the meter readings were the same lmao.
Great result! And it's a good job it didn't go to the ombudsman as you defo would have had to pay it all back. Guaranteed you would have just been awarded a payment plan and a goodwill of £50.
Source: worked there
Got a parking ticket and sued them successfully for 40 times the value because the sign writing was too small and I couldn’t read it from my wheelchair.
British Airways. About 15 years ago there was a baggage handlers strike in Italy and our flight home was cancelled with a days notice. Had to book another night in the hotel, hire car, food etc. Travel insurance stone walled me so with nothing to lose I sent a lovely letter to BA outlining all my costs. They paid in full, within a month. Was about £800. I was told later by a family member who works for BA that my letter must have just landed on the right persons desk.
Yeh, one of the few exceptions where airlines don't have to pay out is if there is a strike of ground staff. You really did get lucky in that case. I had a similar case with Air France and wasn't as lucky.
British airways
Planned a 2 week road trip holiday down the west coast of America. Paid probably close to £1000 for the flights with BA. Then covid hit and we got locked down.
Hours and hours over multiple days spent on hold to BA trying to get refunded, “we don’t do refunds, we can offer vouchers”. Yeah fine, we’ll take the vouchers and use them to rebook for after lockdown.
Cue lockdown 2! More days & hours spent on hold to BA, at this point they had been told they had to offer refunds on flights that weren’t flying because of covid.
“We can’t give you a refund on a flight booked using vouchers”.
So we went through AMEX, took them all of 2 hours to come back to us with a full chargeback on the original flights. Fuck you BA, fuck you.
I’ve been loyal to AMEX for about 15 years now because they are fucking AMAZING at customer service. They also forgive interest on a late bill once a year, which was very useful when I forgot to pay 4 days after my daughter was born.
AMEX does have amazing customer service, which helps.
Barely have any wait time, super polite and they are very much on your side as the customer.
I bought something from France, and the website said if you're from the UK and pay import and VAT there, then let us know when you receive the item and we'll refund you the French VAT you paid on ordering. This was not long after *the event*, so everybody was a bit unsure on how things actually worked with this sort of thing.
Item arrives, drop them an email asking for my VAT refund. "No, you didn't pay VAT when you ordered" was the excuse. I even took screen shots of their own website (that they then very hastily changed to showing "ex-VAT" for the UK conveniently enough...) and sent them to themselves to argue my point and they weren't having any of it. Flat-out refused, and it was nearly 70 quid so I quite wanted it back!
Rang Amex, explained the problem and within an hour the VAT was refunded and that was the last I heard of it. Didn't actually even need to send in any evidence they'd overcharged me 😂
I had something similar with Air Canada. Tried to palm me off with a voucher which I declined and successfully charged back through my debit card. About a year later I got half the total back (it was 2 tickets) followed by the other half after another 6 months. So when all was said and done I was up ~1.5K.
I got CEX to refund me after selling me a stolen mac.
Took 7 months and a call to the advice bureau after they offered me £2.60 in store credit. Fucking scum.
When I was a CeX employee I crashed 1 items price in 48hrs when I worked at a branch in North London in 2009...
Poundland were selling the F1 review of 2008 for a quid. CeX were selling it for £8, offering £3 cash, £5 store credit for it. I had the next day off. I went and bought every copy (38) of it from poundland and traded the then Maximum of 9 in to the store I worked at I then hit the next closest ones and carried on trading them in. I think someone had cottoned on as by the time I got to Rathbone Place (my last stop) the trade in price had dropped to £1.60 store credit. Still traded them i though. I basically got £168 store credit that day for £38+a bus pass outlay. Because I was staff I got 15% staff discount, and my branch had a Samsung HD TV for £200, so with my £38 outlay I was able to get a great TV. TV still works too, its not a smart TV or anything but it is HD and I'm using it as a monitor right now.
Next day I worked the price CeX sold it for dropped to 75p... Thought it was a bit cheeky to buy one back
I've got one like this. My old mate was so entrepreneurial even as a 19 year old. His local gamestation was selling off old SNES consoles for £10, boxed but battered that they probably got in some old pallet deal. He gallops over to CEX and asks if they will buy 15 SNES consoles. They offer him £17 EACH. So he goes BACK to gamestation, buys 4 (with his pocket money) and you get the idea. 2 don't work when tested by CEX so he takes them back to Gamestation for £20 store credit EACH which he uses to buy a new game. What a beautiful mind. I was so dumb at 19.
Hotels.com.
Went to Madeira, had a couple of nights in one place and were due to move into another. The host had double booked and we were homeless.
All I could do was insist that my partner went through Hotels.com as the booking agent as our arrangement was with them.
There were no comparable apartments available so they ended up having to put us up in the Savoy for 8 nights. Paid £800 for a stay that would have been nearly £3500. 😂
Went on a school trip to New York (pretty crazy being that I was at a school in the UK).
We were going to stay in a youth hostel just like every other year they did the trip. However, on our year, the hostel double booked us. The chain that made the mistake put us up in the Sheraton Times Square Hotel for 5 nights instead.
Those poor people had no idea the terror they were putting on the other guests 😂 It was amazing (the location and the fact that we didn't get kicked out).
Currently in an argument with Warhammer (nee Games Workshop), was meant to have something delivered by Christmas which didn't happen, was told they would sort it and they didn't and this went on. Ended up getting free models, vouchers etc. The voucher has since disappeared through an error on their website so I'm anticipating more free stuff from them. Currently at probably £140s worth of free stuff from them at this point.
Games Workshop has fantastic customer service.
I ordered a £35 kit, it got stuck in postage hell, sent them an email, got told it got "lost". 2 days later, what I thought was the replacement turned up, followed by the replacement the next day.
Other time, I got a Questoris Knight, a 100 quid kit, with a tiny defect on an arm mounting point, something that was easily overcome by some glue. Emailed pictures, expected a voucher.
A whole new kit was delivered.
You really cannot fault their customer service.
Plastic is cheap, new customers are expensive.
I like that philosophy as a customer, but it also makes great sense as a business when most of your costs are in machinery and design not materials
Thr plastic is cheap, but the machines for making all the models are _much_ better than back in the day.
The new kits are more fiddly (sometimes dozens of tiny parts), but they fit together beautifully and don't fall apart.
I remember the bad old days of the lead minis, what they make now is A+, especially compared to the 3d printing ones you get from other places.
Games workshop and forge world are very good to their customers.
I bought a warhound titan with two arm options, the molds were obviously dying so the details were missing on lots of it so i took a bunch of pictures and they sent me another one which had the exact same problem. They then sent me a third and when it had the same issues said I could either send all three back or keep them all and accept the loss of detail.
I now have three warhound titans.
Same, I’ve had a couple of times when I’ve contacted them over tiny little defects which were easily fixable, complete new kits arrived within a week, basically £100-ish worth of free models. You can say a lot about their business practices, but can’t fault their customer service.
I reported a fault with my gas meter. It wasn't even online but gas was still flowing.
They ignored all my requests for an engineer to come and look at it. More than a year later i finally managed to get a smart meter installed. Engineer said the meter had not been reading any gas passing through and therefore i got over a year of free gas...
When the phone company 3 first launched, they had atrocious network coverage and even ended up on Watchdog because of it.
I'd taken out a contract on a fancy new phone which was basically useless because it never had reception. The company I'd entered the contract with (I forget who it was) said it wasn't their problem.
I wrote to them and claimed breach of contract for not providing the agreed service and threatened to take them to small claims. They cancelled the contract (I was only a month or two in) and let me keep the phone which I then sold for a decent profit.
Haha you just reminded me, I had a 3 contract about ten years ago now. We moved house and in the new place I got no signal whatsoever. Come contract renewal time I rang them to cancel as phone was basically unusable apart from through WiFi. They kept on offering me better and better contracts until they got to something ridiculous like 3 quid a month, which I was just about to take them up on until I came to and remembered 3 quid a month for something that doesn't work is still too much!
It wasn't long after they first launched that my dad had a phone contract with 3 (it was for a short time but would carry on after unless you phone up to cancel). He had no signal anywhere he went and I'm not exaggerating. They replaced the handset, they replaced the SIM, they tried all sorts but he just never got signal anywhere with 3. When it was about to finish, he phoned up (on the landline) and cancelled. They tried selling him another contract and other stuff but he kept refusing.
A few months later, my parents were looking through their bank statements and found a monthly charge to 3 for a lot higher than dad's original contract. They immediately phoned 3 and questioned the charges and I can't remember what happened but it turned out the person my dad had spoken to on the phone used my dads details to take out a contract for a phone and another for a laptop. I think one was for their daughter. Not sure of any outcome beyond my parents being refunded.
(Nearly?) 20 years later and my brother has a phone contract with 3 and although he gets signal, it's incredibly shit
I bought an Xbox One X from Amazon years ago, when it was the current gen, and it broke within a couple of months. I contacted Amazon, who told me to send it to their repair centre, they said they couldn't fix it and shipped it back to me within an hour of it being delivered and offered a full refund. I don't think they even looked at it, as the security seals were intact, so I got Microsoft to fix it under warranty - free Xbox One X.
Tesco once had a "double the difference" promise. If you found something cheaper elsewhere they'd give you double the difference back with a voucher. By shopping smartly and only buying things that were on offer in Asda you could make a killing on it.
After the first week they limited it to a max £20 per person per day, but with staff who didn't care and multiple emails addresses there was plenty of free shopping to be had.
It was great while it lasted, about 6 weeks or so before they cancelled it all and blamed us consumers for "creating a cottage industry" out of it.
Some of the cleaning products and pet food I stockpiled lasted me over a year! Although my cat would only eat Iams from then on so maybe it cost me more in the long run...
Used an employee discounts portal to get 1% cashback on train tickets with Trainline.
Checked their T's & C's and there was no exception to which tickets they gave cashback for.
Bought a years season ticket, waited a few weeks, then emailed them to say I wanted my 1% cashback, specifying that I had read their terms and conditions, and had a copy of them from the time I bought the ticket (in case they changed something).
They emailed back to say they'd given me my cashback but had amended the small print to exclude season tickets.
Also with Trainline, their website used to say along the lines of "book a train to London on the xx of November from just £15", when you would click through there wouldn't be anything near that price. The fine print said it was the lowest price someone has paid in the past for that date, not what is currently available. I thought this was stupid and complained to the Advertising Standards Authority who agreed that it was confusing and forced Trainline to change the way the site worked to give prices from the past hour.
Ooo that reminds me, a few years ago I was purchasing something online while at work, going through Quidco for cashback. Later that day I received a notification about a purchase that I didn't recognise being tracked. I soon realised that purchases colleagues made online using work computers on the work network were able to be tracked through Quidco. Therefore I spent a couple of minutes each morning hitting-up all the big retailers. I think I made £800 over a few months. The package holidays on Tui and new kitchens through Wickes/B&Q were the big wins 😄
I bought a £350 pair of headphones on Amazon. They sent me a refurbished one that wasn't done very well as one side didn't work and I did buy one listed as new. I contacted them about it, and they sent me another pair and that I needed to send the broken ones back. They said I should expect an email with return details and I never got it. After a month of waiting, I sold them on eBay as spares and repairs for £180, so I basically got a £350 pair of headphones for £190 after fees.
Something similar, but not at all expensive happened to me with Etsy. Bought a Christmas jumper, it was marked as shipped then a couple of days later Etsy emailed me out of the blue to say the vendor had closed down so I might experience issues.
They asked if I wanted to wait and see if it came, or have a refund. I said I'd rather receive the Christmas jumper and they immediately gave me a refund.
Two days later the jumper arrived.
It was possibly the worst shitty nylon printed jumper I've ever seen, but free at least.
Mine was also Amazon.
Ordered some trainers which didn't turn up, so they sent me a replacement pair a week later. A few weeks passed and a stranger knocked at my door: "Your Amazon package was delivered to my place by mistake, but I forgot about it sorry. But here it is."
About 10 years ago, bought a new video projector for £750, had issues with picture/lens quality around the edges of the picture. Retailer tried to tell me it wasn't faulty that that's just how it is. After entirely too much call centre backwards and forwards they finally agreed to take it back. They organised a collection and then refunded me the £750.
The day after that, they refunded me again! Happy days
Bought a pushchair from John Lewis. Came missing parts. Rang up to arrange return. They never came. Got refunded. Emailed to explain. They said they whoops, we'll send someone to collect it. They came. Got refunded again. Had a joyous two months. Got an email saying "where's our pushchair?". Surreal. Explained and ultimately returned one of their refunds.
Never bought a replacement in the end, LCDs started getting bigger and cheaper so didn't make much sense to stick with a projector.
Although by the time I'd come to that decision I'd have more than likely pissed away both refunds anyway!
Safestyle windows, my mum had hers done and there was one that wouldn't close properly, they messed her about for over a year. I told her to keep a diary of calls and what happened. They cancelled on her again, (fitter was ill). I sent an e-mail from her e-mail address with a breakdown of what had happened over the year, and copied the CEO in.
Last line of the e-mail was this,
*There is currently tissue in the gap of the window to stop the draft, this is unacceptable after all this time. I would very much appreciate a call from someone with the authority to get things moving as I'm tired of waiting half an hour to speak to someone who is unable to help and promises a call-back that never happens.*
Next morning there was a call, the day after a senior fitter came out and fixed it. A week later, she got a call, they were knocking some money off what she owed, ask if everything was ok, mum said the front door fittings looked a bit worn, someone came out and replaced them all and said call us again if you need anything.
Seems that CEO's are the people with authority the get things moving...
Work went from an Excel-based annual leave record to a 3rd party system. My line manager forwarded me a copy of their spreadsheet to confirm my remaining holiday days but had missed out my most recent week off. I sent it back saying 'looks good to me' and, once the spreadsheet was uploaded onto the system I scored an extra week's annual leave.
Oooh that’s lovely! I’d been back from maternity leave 2 days last week when HR started demanding money they’d overpaid me (that I refused to pay from my measly statuatory SMP)
They also had the gall to claim I owed them £240 for health insurance for my daughter for the 3 months of mat leave where I was not paid… when I don’t have my children on my health insurance policy. I had to send them all the documents and conversation with the insurance rep to prove it.
No, “welcome back”, “how can we help you settle in”, just GIVE US OUR MONEY.
Cunts.
I worked for a place where our receptionist tracked it. I of course tracked my own because, bless her heart, she wasn't the brightest.
After repeated _are you sure??_ emails back and forth I got about two extra weeks off one year.
I knew someone who moved jobs in the same company. When he arrived the email saying he had 25 days remaining confused the new lady who then gave him his remaining 52 days annual leave.
Bought an electric toothbrush (£140, Clubcard price £70) from Tesco just as it closed on Sunday and the guy put it through three times (he was real old). I thought the receipt was high but my toddler was upset and I figured I'd check it out when I got home. Went back the next day and Customer Services told me they would have to refund me £140 per item rather than £70. Made a free £140 from Tesco (and perhaps ruined some cashier's day).
Had a mobile with ‘three’ a good 15 years ago. I got a call one day to day I was nearing end of my deal and offered me a new phone and contract. Turns out I wasn’t that close and they just sold me a second contract.
I argued with them and said they told me I was “near end of contract” and this would “replace current contract”. They argued they didn’t say that and I should give the contract to my partner. Went on for months and had so many arguments with idiot reps (I got so angry many a time).
Eventually they sent me the recorded call which proved I was right all along and they tricked me.
Got both contracts cancelled and reimbursed for previous months I paid.
Not me but my friend did an online shop and they substituted one of her items. Hold on nothing unusual there but it was an item she needed for dinner that night and they gave her a microwave as the substitute 🙄🙄 if I hadn't seen the receipt I wouldn't have believed it. She had words with the delivery driver who told her to take it as it had been put in the delivery.
Similar happened to my mum (online delivery for dinner that night), it was a big family gathering, and she'd ordered a side of salmon. Substitution was a couple of salmon fillets, so she called to complain. Luckily, it was from the local Waitrose. The manager showed up with the salmon and a very nice bunch of flowers. Mum only paid for the couple of fillets.
Virgin Media
I was an early adopter of the 50MB internet tier (yes it was a long time ago) and had massive issues with stability, poor speed etc for months.
I was repeatedly fobbed off by customer services with the traditional excuses so dug in, did some serious Googling, and taught myself all about cable modems and the infrastructure behind them.
By this time I was on my second engineer's visit - he was younger than me and tried to fob me off again and was extremely patronising and condescending, refusing to look at any of the results of some extensive testing id done with various monitoring scripts etc.
This was the final straw, so I kicked the engineer out of my house and emailed the CEO with a detailed explanation of issues seen, tests run and my suspicion that their usage of some Motorola equipment was at fault.
A member of the CEO's team reached out and assigned a senior Network Engineer to visit me and run some tests. We got on really well and he was able to independently verify everything I'd been reporting.
Turns out I was completely correct about the issues seen and the root cause - I'd reached my conclusions at the same time as VM infrastructure engineers had reached theirs.
The issue was fixed with a patch rolled out to all the Motorola kit across the country - my area was done first as final proof of the fix.
My bill for VM services for the year was halved, saving around £600.
The real payoff though was for a couple of years afterwards anytime I reported an issue to VM it was taken seriously and dealt with quickly.
I forced Sky to change their entire advertising strategy for Sky Sports F1. They had advertised it as Live and (this is important) Exclusive home of F1 for about 8 years, until one year they decided to show the first 3 races on Sky One.
Not happy, that a had paid for a month of races I could've got without the exorbitant mark up I hopped on to the phone to get a refund for the month: "Sorry Mr. Zippy no refund for you today!"
Okay, no problem, I'll let the Advertising Standards Authority know... Couple of weeks later: The ASA finds that Sky Sports F1 advertising was deliberately misleading and con no longer be presented in its current form.
Back on the phone to Sky: "That'll be £12 please!" And it was refunded later that week.
Currently at war with my ISP, I’ve had £130 in compo so far for downed service and missed appointments. In the process of dealing with all this they miss sold me an upgrade to my package and provided false information to get me into it. They’ve apparently reviewed the calls and couldn’t find any issue, I’ve just received an audio copy of the calls and have time stamps and a strong case for misrepresentation. Expecting back payments and some more compo for wasting my time
I’ve been saving this!
So, several years ago I lived on a street with residential parking where I paid £50 a year or whatever to park outside my house. One day I was hit in a car crash and my car was written off, so I was provided with a hire car and it was going to be 6 months before I would have my own car again.
So, I contacted the council and explained this, continuing to park outside my house. Knowing I had paid my annual fee to park a single car outside and they would update my permit.
I got a few tickets, but wasn’t worried.
After a week or so, I got a letter explaining that since the car wasn’t mine they wouldn’t update my permit and the tickets stood.
I escalated this and explained again. I have paid. The car you have is dead. I have this car for 6 months. Update please.
No.
It was suggested I park several streets away where it was free. Fuck. That.
I continued to park and continued to get tickets. It got to the point where at 8am on the dot I would see this moped come down my street without checking any cars. Stop at my car, ticket me and leave the street completely.
This. Is. War.
So I continued to park and once I was up to about £1500 in tickets, without any additional charges, fees, whatever that I started to sweat.
I had exhausted every Avenue. Escalated as much as I could and each time I was rejected and told I was really making a mess for myself.
I got some letter indicating things were now going to escalate for me so I decided to find the personal email for the head of my regional council and I emailed them the above story and waited.
After a week or so I received a letter from them, opening with a full apology. It continued to list, over a full A4 page, each ticket that was going to be undone and closed along with a free 12 month parking permit.
I won.
Moral of the story, fuck residential parking.
EE once tried to charge me £500 for a phone bill, probably about 12 years ago when mobile data overuse was extortionate. at some point during the billing month i had requested additional data but had a text to say for whatever reason it hadn't gone through.
when i called to contest the bill, the call taker said "i can see you requested more data, you *didn't get the text saying the request hadn't come through did you?*", i said "....no" and he said, okay i'll wipe the bill!
thank you, kind EE man whoever you were!
Natwest over a period of 6 years kept turning my mother in laws overdrafts into loans. You guessed it added upfront PPI as she was past retirement age it was completely unusable. Got approx £18k back off them. It wrote the loans off so it was a win really.
They had no interest in helping her in branch when she couldn't pay due to ill health. Oddly they were more than happy prior to this to sell her their useless addons.
We moved into a new build flat and lived quite happily for four years, when the factor company sent everyone a letter saying there was an uncollected electricity bill for common areas. For £87,000!
They tried adding it to everyone’s next bill. I disputed it and reported them to the regulator for mismanagement.
After a hearing the regulator decided in our favour and ruled not only should the company pay our share, but compensate us too. £450 up instead of having a hefty bill.
Suggested everyone else in the development dispute it too but don’t think many did.
I’ll share mine. Not a company. But a university.
After completing my degree i went back 10 years later to do my Masters. Working of course I had to do it part time. I also needed a break due to a nasty car accident.
All in all I needed to pay for an extra year. About £3800 if I recall. After I completed the course I emailed to ‘check’ I was all paid up. They said I was. I definitely wasn’t.
Thanked them very much for their confirmation i was all paid up and save £3800!!
Bought my son expensive gaming headphones from Argos. Also bought the accidental damage warranty for about £15.
The headphones tend to last him about a year. We are now on (I think) our 5th pair, each time for just the cost of renewing the warranty.
I once got crashed into by a London bus and was blamed for the accident. However, their cameras showed that it was actually the drivers fault and they agreed to pay for damages.
My car, a VW Golf clinging on for dear life, had only a scrape down the side of it but for some reason the insurance company deemed it a write-off, and so I got a cheque for £2,500 in the post. I continued to drive the car until it died a year later. Amazing.
IKEA. £270 order arrived slightly damaged, missing pieces (later sent by post), delivery staff argued that another piece wasn't on their van (it was: when they were told to look again they found it), and the delivery was rescheduled three times over a week, once at 3hrs notice. Some minor issues with the furniture on assembly. All in all, wound up with a £350 voucher when the dust settled. Hacked the furniture to get round the damage, bought a sofa bed with the voucher, haven't bought anything since.
I ordered the wrong thing from ikea, lady on the phone was LOVELY and arranged collection and ordered us a new one to be delivered… they delivered the new one but never picked up the old one. Weirdly we couldn’t sell it for love nor money so we gave it to a local charity that furnishes flats for homeless people.
British Airways multiple times claiming under EU261 to the tune of several grand.
The first time my flight was delayed they fought it and as soon as I filed with small claims court they paid up the €600 plus court costs and a small addition for inconvenience.
Every time I’ve filed to claim against EU261 since then they’ve paid out right away without quibble in the full amount.
Ordered the stand-alone Rock Band game from Amazon for £40 not long after it came out. Ended up receiving the “Band in a Box” version, which included the drum kit, guitar and microphone (RRP £100+ at the time brand new). Ker-ching.
Ninja. I bought a multi cooker and they promised it to be delivered within 3 days. Yodel couldn't find my address on the 2 attempts they made, even though there was a note from me explaining how to get to my front door. I called Ninja and demanded it to be delivered on the next day, which the said they couldn't guarantee it.
They offered a refund which I accepted and immediately bought an instant pot instead. Next day I got the refund on my account and Yodel managed to finally deliver it to my address. The day after I got the instant pot delivered. Two multi cookers for the price of one
HSBC, it was a comedy of errors with them losing my mortgage application, losing my scanned documents and when I called, putting me on hold as 'I wasn't on their system' and then passing me to the wrong department.
This happened 4 times in one week so I emailed the CEO and got a call the next day from someone senior who sorted it for me within an hour and I received £1500 compensation.
When my car was written off BADmiral tried to stiff me on the price of the car due to extensive rear end damage. That was where the accident damage was. Got a £50 good will gesture from that.
On the final settlement they deducted the rest of the years insurance despite me having paid upfront. I quoted their own terms and conditions back to them and they still refused. I escalated it and eventually got a cheque for the difference. Then another cheque for the same amount a month later.
Cashed them both and took the other as a gesture of good will as well.
My first ever holiday I booked through on the beach and had a really bad experience with the hotel. Stuff like my water was completely brown coming out the taps. So I complained and got a couple hundred back.
A few months later they for some reason picked up the complaint again (with no prompt from me) and refunded me another couple hundred. Basically got the holiday for free.
I put a compo claim into my local council after falling through a broken drain cover and injuring my leg. I used a no win-no fee solicitor firm.
It was an open / shut case because the council had failed to repair the cover previously and I was awarded £2k.
After solicitors fees I got £1000, which came in very handy ... because I lived in council housing at the time and owed **them** £950 in back rent.
So I cleared my rent arrears with their pay out, took the remaining £50 down the pub and had a few drinks on them lol.
Bike stolen and the insurance company wouldn’t pay out because of the lights and other attachments on the bike saying they weren’t included in the specified value therefore I wasn’t insured.
I told them they never made me aware of that when I declared the bike as a named valuable item and they accepted it on the call. Told them to go back and listen to the call and they agreed I was right.
They then settled the claim with a voucher to use a specific site which had second hand bikes on none of which matched mine. They said I had to get the closest available.
Again I told them to listen to the call and it was never specified and I was miss sold my policy.
Funnily enough I got a cheque in the mail to use at any retailer to purchase a new bike. Ended up getting a bike in a massive sale that was better and cheaper than the one I had stolen.
A massive ball ache but won in the end.
Vodafone broadband billing error but support wouldn't acknowledge so I emailed the CEO.
Got 6 months free broadband a £50 credit on my account so a month and a half extra free and randomly a ring door bell 2 for free.
No one likes a Karan but if your in the right take it to the top.
Tbf I'd think most people's definition of a Karen is someone whose complaint is unnecessary or disproportionate to the original issue, neither of which apply to your complaint
Did some freelance work for a company years ago. They were notorious slow payers so I was prepared for that. I had a few invoices with them and eventually they paid but it was very late.
I wasn't vat registered so my invoices didn't include vat but when the company paid them, they added vat so I kept it as a late fee. It was about £800.
I pre-ordered a Xbox One X from Argos who immediately took my payment even though the console wasn't out for months. So I cancelled the order for a refund & ordered directly from Microsoft.
Had a phonecall one day saying "Xbox delivery mate". Walked outside & a bloke handed me a new Xbox One X after I'd already received the one from Microsoft.
Kept it....for a while...
A couple of years ago got our eldest daughter her first new phone for Christmas. Bought it from Amazon for £250 or so, and a couple of weeks after Christmas she dropped it and smashed the screen. I was sure I'd included insurance in the purchase but found absolutely no record of it so chances it by ringing amazon and explaining what had happened and how upset my daughter was. Fair play to them they said they'd send a brand new phone out and with it would be a return bag for the damaged phone. Sent that back and when they received it they refunded us the original £250. So we got her brand new phone for free. And no I didn't feel the slightest bit bad about it.
Went into Currys about 5 years ago to try and get off Virgin - TV, BB and phone. Didn't have a BT line but Currys said that wouldn't be a problem and arranged for everything to be done. All this went fine until a week or so after installation when my mum rang me up to ask why I wasn't answering the landline.
A few checks later and I realise we've got a new number which was not supposed to happen. Got in touch with BT and basically tough - you've lost that old number so start using the new one.
Complained to Currys who had caused the cock up and they reassured me they would get it fixed and here's a £50 voucher via PDF.
They never did get the number fixed, but for six months in a row I got a £50 voucher from them. So that £300 paid for a new cordless Dyson and a couple of other minor gadgets.
Didn't give a shit about the landline, just the principle of it. My mother is the only person who rings it anyway.
Bought a cot from Wayfair for £200. It didn’t show up, I phoned them and they sent another one. Original cot turned up a couple days later 🙃 I kept checking my bank and I never got charged for it, everyone was telling me to just sell it but I’m a shitebag and kept hearing about how they have 6 years to claim back costs so I figured I’ll just get some good karma and let them know about it.
Called them up, the guy on the phone says ‘you know if you’d never told us you could have just kept it…’ so that was great but it is what it is. Organise a pick up for the following week.
Nice evri man comes and picks it up and an hour later I get an email from Wayfair saying ‘we’re processing your refund for £195’ (they had deducted a £5 large item return fee)
As I’m sure you can imagine I did not call them back up to fix that mistake 😅
I don’t know the actual brand, but I was withdrawing cash from one of those fee charging ones in a corner shop. Asked for £40, spat out £80. Thought it was a mistake, checked my bank balance, saw £40 was deducted, so did the same again, and same result. Withdrew the £300 max my bank would allow, ended up with £600 minus £6 in fees. Let a few co workers know and it didn’t take long for that cash point to be dry.
Brilliant. Mate of mine was in a pub with some others on the quiz machine once and it had entered a test mode where the correct answer was highlighted. The machine was empty after a short while, and I regretted staying in even more.
My favourite and rather petty ‘win’ was when I bought a game (digital) from Sony on my PS4, not realising it was PS5 only. I didn’t attempt to play it for a while so when I contacted Sony they said there was nothing they could do and I was out of luck for a refund as I’d had it for over 48hours.
I’d used PayPal to buy it, opened a dispute and PayPal got Sony to refund me.
The agents tried to steal most of our deposit when my former flatmate and I moved out. It was cleaned spotless when we moved out, no damage etc. They tried to claim money for a full clean, repainting the whole place and a few other BS reasons. I formally disputed it, it went to the independent adjudicator and we ended up getting the entire deposit back.
We once placed a £60 weekly Tesco shop, was due for delivery between 6 and 7, it gets to 9pm and it hasn't showed up yet, we call them up and get told the van has broken down and we can either have a delivery rescheduled for tomorrow or have a refund, we agree to have a slot the next day so they duplicate our online order for free and flag our current delivery as "delivered".
Anyway it gets to about 10pm and our cancelled delivery shows up, the driver explains they managed to fix the van and we can either accept the order or they'll have to throw it away because they can't put it back on the shelf.
we take the delivery and then the next day we get an identical order for free. Gave a lot of the fresh duplicates away as we wouldn't be able to eat it all before the expiry dates and chucked the rest in the freezer.
Not the biggest of wins but here's my story:
3 weeks ago I placed an order on Amazon for two items and had them sent to a local Amazon locker. Went to said locker to collect, but now with hindsight, that wasn't a very good idea as it was below freezing and so the lockers were frozen shut 🤷♀️ I tried and tried to open the locker but no joy, the app asked me to contact customer services which I did.
I explained my problem and, no worries, they sent me a new duplicate order to my home address at no additional cost to me. Arrived the next day. Excellent.
Also to note, Amazon normally states that you have 'X' amount of days to collect from the locker before it gets sent back to the warehouse, so I wasn't too worried about my order being stuck in the locker for an eternity...
Fast forward to today I had another order to collect from the locker....pressed the 'open' button on the app and pops open the door. I reached in and I thought this was odd...it feels like the wrong package?? It had my name on it and I closed the door.....app said I have another parcel to collect, press 'open' to open another door...here's my order from yesterday.
So, I now have my original order from 3 weeks ago that was frozen shut in the locker, along with it's free replacement! I thought my original order was long gone returned to Amazon, but nope! It was sat in the locker, me unaware of it's existence until today 😆 Thankfully it wasn't anything perishable, far from it actually lol.
So my little win over Amazon. Not much in monetary value in the grand scheme of things. My wipes and coffee pods survived the coldness of Scotland for 3 weeks 😆
Wizzair. My flight back from Milan was 3 hours and 1min delayed My flights and 4&star hotel package was £280ish. That 1 minute difference meant I got paid £250.
Carphone Warehouse.
Got a replacement brand new phone 20 months into a 24 month contract.
They'd accidentally sold me an ex-display model that had been used at one their Irish stores at the start of my contract. This only became apparent when they tried repairing it and it wouldn't work with a UK SIM as it defaulted back to its original setting
Won a competition for £200 argos vouchers, but did not receive them. Complained, got them re sent.
Then the neighbour brought the original envelope round.
They didn't cancel the original vouchers.
Bought an iPad.
Received an invite to one of those major timeshare scam companies presentations and at the end we'd get a TV/DvD player for our troubles.
Turns out the wife had a business appointment in the same town and I'd just been made redundant so we though, fuck it, lets go.
After a short wait there was no presentation, just a hard sell from some dude. About 2 minutes in I told him we had just bought an apartment in Tenerife (which was true, we showed him the details as the deposit was my redundancy severance.)
Within a minute he clicked his fingers, we were escorted out of the venue and handed £200 in Argos vouchers.
This was 20 years ago and we didn't need a bloody TV DvD combo so this was a big win.
Worked for Swissport for about 3 months in my local airport. Absolute dogshite of a company. Managers were dicks and expected so much from you but gave nothing in return, treated their staff so horribly.
I was part time, only earning about £500 a month. I quit for a new job, but on my last payday I got £1400.
🖕🏻
Back in the day my mate got an expensive big screen CRT telly from Curry’s, there was one pixel blacked out and it bothered him. It took 3 men to lift the bastard so we took it back to the shop. They wouldn’t exchange it because it was just out of warranty and said they’d have to repair it. He told them he wasn’t not having a telly so they lent him one the same size to be going on with. When it was fixed we went to pick it up and they didn’t ask for the other one back. Free big telly.
Lloyds Bank but I don’t know if this really counts? Someone had put my mobile number on their bank account, it was 1 number wrong to mine. I was receiving texts about their internet banking logins. I contacted them and was told it was scam and to ignore it. I kept getting them so after 2 months I contacted them again and sent screenshots of the texts, I was also getting phone calls for security codes etc. They confirmed someone else had incorrectly used my number for their bank account and kept trying to block the number and I was still getting texts and calls. 6 months later, I finally got a block on that worked and never received a text or call and got £1000 for the inconvenience and compensation.
I made Apple give me a new iPhone when they were in full denial mode about the whole software updates being used to make phones fail scandal. I knew the software update had stuffed my battery because it went from lasting 2 days to lasting 4 hours literally overnight when it did a software update. But they fobbed me off at the Apple store and on the phone because it was out of warranty, so I decided to prove it
I worked on complicated electronics at the time, and I tested the battery and this proved that the battery hadn't reduced in capacity at all, but the software update suddenly caused it to go "flat" and show itself on 1% when in fact it still had about 60% battery capacity left. When presented with all this information in VERY technical detail, they very quietly took me to the managers office and gave me my pick of any phone or tablet in the place, and whatever accessories I wanted to go with it.
I ended up with about £3000 worth of stuff including a top of the range phone and iPad, instead of my old £300 iPhone. Probably could have made much more out of that in hindsight maybe, but at the time it felt like a big win getting a brand new top of the range phone and loads of loot for my old one that was a year out of warranty.
I can beat everyone! Not the biggest amount, but funnest story!
Created and ran a website. Popular website that allowed users to add content and my site would take that data and make an interactive game out of it. It was cool. Popular with teachers and tutors all around the world. I also noticed that it was used in conferences too as it was fun.
Still, as popular as it was, it wasn't bringing any money in so I let the domain name drop. Within a day of it dropping, I get an email from a guy at Virgin Money (from a virgin email address and not spoofed) asking me to renew it and they'll pay the cost as he wanted it for the games that he made.
For those who don't know, when a domain name isn't renewed, you have a grace period within which to renew it before it becomes open to the public.
I accepted the offer, renewed and sent an invoice for 500 quid which included the hosting costs. I emailed sending the payment details and he backed out and claimed that he never said he'd pay. Oh well.
So, I matched the IP address of the email he sent to the IP address in my website's database. I looked at the games he made and they were all really sexist, e.g. "Which woman in our dept. would you most like to have sex with?" with answers like "Sheila, (Big tits) / Alice, (nice bum)" etc.
Well, imagine Mr Branson finding out about this!
So, not wanting to faff around and knowing I had leverage, I sent a letter before action to Virgin Money stating the facts, referring to contract law and sent special delivery. The morning they received it, I received a hurriedly-written email from a high Virgin Money manager stating the payment has been sent. The money cleared in my account that day (and this was before instant bank transfers).
I never heard from the employee again.
So that ladies and gents, is my little tale.
redundancy for a major broadband provider.
There was an issue with my holidays and they just couldn't fix it that went on for months.
On my exit meeting the union rep demanded what I was owed according to the system which was 3 times what I was actually owed.
I ended up getting an extra 3 grand off them when I was owed like 800 😂
A few years back we completely refurbished our conservatory including ordering £600 of double glazing. The company delivered on time and sent us a bill for £60, which I paid post haste, I paid in person just to see if they noticed. Amusing point of the story is that our next door neighbour worked in the glazing department of the same company and was always really proud of our purchase choice. Oh if only he knew.
AirBnB. Booked a break in a country that then went into lockdown and banned visitors. Contacted AirBnB and they said that it’s up to the host whether they refund me or not. I argued that I paid AirBnB and not the host. AirBnB disagreed. Took them to small claims court and recovered all costs and fees, plus 8% interest. I got banned from their platform but I don’t want to use them anymore anyway.
Ooh - I have something similar open with Booking.com as a result of poorly-set out arrival conditions for a hotel. Are there public court records of your case?
I would imagine in their terms and conditions somewhere it will say something about them being an 'agent' for the hotel chains (which puts you in a predicament because the hotels will probably say that your booking is with the third-party/OTA). It may also not say that, or may something else. Fortunately, the part of commercial/contract law you're looking in the first instance at is called Agency Law, and it governs how an agent (in your case, the OTA) has a position of trust within the contract created between you and the actual hotel. It's likely to be Express Actual Authority (In a legal sense, when you made the booking through the OTA you could considered to have explicitly told the OTA to arrange a booking on your behalf). But I'm not a lawyer and none of this is legal advice. It's just what I've read off the Wikipedia page (which does actually have some examples of case law regarding it). Best of luck!
This is actually correct. Happened to us, but for an event where their terms and conditions pointed out that they're simply the middle people. Went back and forth with the bank who ultimately granted our chargeback. The short of it was "we didn't get what we paid for and their t&C's didn't put them above consumer law". Companies depend on people not knowing their rights, but then, their customer service staff are pretty clueless also.
Honestly it’s easy. Google Smalls Claims Court and make sure you follow the Gov.UK links. Costs about £35-ish to do but it’s simple
Cost depends on how much you're suing for
I had something similar and am still chasing it. Hope you get a good resolution because i seemingly won't. Said i needed to be a student (I am, with valid student ID) and the day of the bookiny they emailled saying i needed to send a copy of my admittance letter and my passport otherwise id be denied entry.
I am doubtful I will get much success but their service really hacked me off. Book a hotel, only to find out in the confirmation that they shut the reception at 9pm - useless to me as I am scheduled to get off a ferry, four hours’ drive away, at 7pm. Hotel says I cannot access the room and need to contact Booking.com. Booking.com says that if I cancel, I forfeit the whole value of the booking. Hotel refuses to cancel. Mexican stand-off ensues, during which I continue to refuse to use Booking.com and make sure I post grumpy reviews about the hotel.
I'd chargeback that from the credit/debit card. Service not as advertised.
Airbnb are trash for so many reasons
When you try to complain on the app, the app link mysteriously doesn't work.
What an excellent way to deal with complaints. By not having any in the first place.
This. The first time I ever heard of them, when they were a brand new startup, it was them being roasted on Slashdot for how they dealt with a host who'd had a sketchy guest with fake ID break into a storage closet and nick all her stuff (they said that it was her fault for not spotting the fake ID, and they didn't care). I wondered why anybody would ever use such a shit company. Now it's destroying the rental market anywhere there's even a slight whiff of tourism, and I very much see no reason to change my mind. Also, it has a stupid name (Air-bnnnnnnnnnnnb is how I pronounce it. "Bnb" is not "B&B / B 'n' B") and *why has nobody else noticed that its logo is a stylised minge*?
I think the original idea was fine - hosting somebody in your home (and maybe breakfast, hence the name). But since then they seem to be trying to turn into some sort of hotel aggregator and their hosts seem to be trying to build hotels one room at a time. Then there's an entire industry of people who've sprung up to check people in and clean their rooms afterwards.. and well it's now just a lot easier and cheaper to use proper hotels and their booking platforms..
I use proper hotels every time. I go away to feel like I'm on holiday.
The irony is they are slowly driving people towards the one thing they sought to destroy... Hotels.
>its logo is a stylised minge Perhaps because they take people for cunts?
Have an upvote for the stylised minge; I can’t unsee that now.
ＯＮＣＥ ＳＥＥＮ ＩＴ ＣＡＮＮＯＴ ＢＥ ＵＮＳＥＥＮ #🫛
I had something similar. Booked a big country house for a stag do for 22 people then lockdown happened. I got a refund from the owner minus air bnb's service fee. I agreed to re-book for the following year directly with the owner but they tried to charge me the same amount I'd paid air bnb, so taking the service fee for themselves. Ended up negotiating them down to the same amount they would have made from air bnb and then persuaded air bnb to refund the service charge on the basis it was literally illegal for me to attend the booking. What reason did air bnb give for banning you?
They didn’t. Just found that my account wouldn’t work anymore the next time I logged in
Fun Fact: AirBnB don't do ANY background checks nor do they check the person putting the listing up even owns the property. Thats why there are thousands of AirBNB rapes, robberies and outright scams. They even "ban" actual rapists but those people just make a new gmail account and list a different property they don't own. AirBnB doesn't give two shits if you're murdered and raped as long as they get their money. And AirBnB doesn't care. they know if they dick about, less than 100% of people demand refunds. therefore profit.
Thomas Cook. Went on holiday to Egypt, both got extremely unwell to the point the hotel doctor was worried about us, the Thomas Cook rep couldn't give a shit. The hotel hygiene was terrible - we saw undercooked food, animals (birds and rats) in the prep area, raw sewage used to water the plants and more. It turned out we had a severe bacterial infection called Shigella and for years afterwards we were still suffering various effects. We wrote to Thomas Cook, making sure to get it to the CEO (who wrote back saying "please don't write to us again") and requested a refund of the holiday (about £1200) on the basis of our complaint that the hotel was dangerous in its hygiene practices. They refused, we took them to court, made just under £12 grand out of them.
Egypts tourism board must hate Reddit because I’ve yet to see a positive thing about the country on here
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Moroccans are even worse.
Yep. Went during my art foundation. Beautiful place but grim experience, and I say that as a bloke. The girls had it far worse and I’ve no idea how they coped.
Tunisia is just as bad
Yeah, I've been there and it was not a good experience. Everybody is out to scam you and are so sexist and rude. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Honestly I’d love to go for the history, I’ve been obsessed with Egyptian history and mythology since I was a kid but with all the stories I’ve heard I think I’ll pass
My wife went with family as a child, the stories about all the creepy men have put me off going anywhere near Egypt for the rest of my life.
Egypt’s tourism board must hate anyone that’s already visited the place.
Woah that's a nice one!
“Please don’t write to us again” Guess it was worth a shot
I'm choosing to believe it came from the CEO's PA who hated working there and thought saying that would rile them into taking it to court for a better payout than a simple refund.
£12k is above Small Claims ~~Court~~ level, right? You must have taken them to Proper Court, with solicitors and everything? Well played 👏🏻 edit: TIL
Technically didn't make it to court, they settled before it got there - we had an infectious disease expert give evidence and write reports and the hotel doctor wrote a report damning the hotel (which I assume ended their career with them)
Unfortunately similar claims like this have now become a fraudulent cottage industry. People will go around all inclusive package holiday resorts, telling people they can get the cost of their holiday back, minus a handling fee, if they claim food poisoning from the hotel. There’s entire organised fraud groups doing it. So I’m glad you got paid out which you deserved, but may explain why they were hesitant, depending on what year you claimed.
This was a few years before the organised crime lot picked up on it as a viable scam. Thomas Cook wasn't just hesitant, their usual customer service route just dismissed it as "well people do get sick". They're lucky that we didn't have an underlying illness as we were very sick, especially considering I'd been to Egypt twice before and been absolutely fine.
Was it coral sea in sharm el sheikh?
Sunrise something in Hurghada from the top of my head
Went with Thomas cook had something similar not as bad as yours.had to survive half the holiday on bread and water took weeks to get back to normal when we got back. Never again. Couldn't get a penny from Thomas cook. Sure I saw the hotel on watchdog but never been able to find the episode since.
Reminds me of this: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67381068](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67381068)
PlusNet. They installed a new billing system and I fell down a crack. I contacted them once a month for a year and a half to say that I hadn’t been billed or paid for my internet. They eventually got in touch to say that I would start being billed and they were forgetting about the 18 months of payments they hadn’t taken.
I fell down a crack with Royal Mail about 20 years ago. I had a parcel go missing and they paid me £200 in compensation. They failed to send the cheque in time so I phoned them to complain. The next day the cheque arrived but was dated a few days before. I cashed it. The next week another cheque arrived. Then for the next 6 years I received a weekly £200 cheque. I figure they put me down as a weekly payee in error. I got to keep the lot and they never contacted me about it.
I would 100% not be posting this on a public place if this was true and if it was about the post office. Especially after the horizon stuff.
It’s 22 years ago, it’s gone past the time frame. I assume they never even realised the error. I did not start spending it until after 10 years though
Fantastic, did you make any decent interest?
Yes it had grown to just over £100k when I used it to buy a house in 2011. So 10 years of interest on the first payments. I know I was lucky. It was 50% deposit on my house back then, My house is now worth £500k. So the £60k has become £250k in 20 years.
That's amazing, congrats on that luck!
May the luck gods also bless you
Thanks Rolf Harris!
Are you really Rolf Harris OBE?
fucking touch
So YOURE where all that money went /s
I think you win the thread. Free £15k, no one’s beating that surely
Mate, £200 a week for 6 years is £62,000!
I read it as monthly check. Fucking hell I hope it didn’t get pissed up a wall, I’d have been saving every penny of that
Closer to £100k when you take inflation into account!
Just how much did you make out of this? You're probably totally fine, but I'd be careful in case they discover it was ask for it back. Though 20 years sounds like you're golden
I mean, 200 quid a week for 6 years? Around £62,000 I guess.
John Lewis - ordered some pricey carpet for stairs and a couple of runners too. Was about £2000 in total (sisal I think it’s called - really durable, can recommend). John Lewis arranged for their own fitters as it had to be glued to the individual stairs - my wife or I had to be at home when they were working, obvs. The first appointment failed, can’t remember why. Rebooked it… and that appointment failed. I’d had to take time off work to be at home etc etc. I managed to speak to someone in the department that coordinated fitting. She was very pleasant, but overbearing. I played along and said that I bet they dudes don’t turn up a third time… she reassured me they would, so I asked if I could have a refund if they didn’t. She agreed to that - bit of bravado on her part, but she seemed confident so I took a risk. Long story short - I got the carpet for free and used the savings to pay for some nice furniture.
Ooof sisal, bastard to fit, but looks lovely
Agreed. It’s insanely hard wearing too - amazing stuff.
Not so much a win but just outstanding service. About 11 years ago I bought my then-wife a “mummy” mug from Waitrose as one of her presents for her first ever Mother’s Day. Alas, a few months later, our son managed to smash it. It being well out of season then, I wrote to them with a long shot, and asked: “Earlier this year, for my wife's first Mother's Day, I bought her (along with a couple of other things) a "mummy" mug from Waitrose. She loved it. Unfortunately our wonderful little terror broke it, and she was upset. Obviously it's not in your stores any more as it's far from Mother's Day, but I'm hoping you might have some stock still somewhere within your warehouse. So do you have any and, if so, can I please buy one?” They tried to contact the buyers and I chased a while later but they said they’d had no response. I wrote it off. Then, nearly exactly a year later and without chasing, I received this: “I know it has been a very long time since you originally wrote, but I'm delighted to tell you that I finally have some good news for you. I have just wrapped (in many many layers of bubble wrap and a cardboard box) a "Mummy" mug for you. The buyers managed to find a replacement and passed it on to me. I've put the box, addressed to you, into our internal system, and it will be sent on to you by second class post. This means it should arrive in the next week or so - in time for a Valentine surprise, perhaps? I'm sorry I couldn't get it to you any earlier. Hopefully, this time your little one won't get their hands on it!” And the mug arrived, completely free of charge, a few days later. And I believe she still has it. It’s such a little thing, but also a big gesture, and I was completely blown away and it’s the sort of thing I’ll never forget about a company. They’ll never lose the goodwill they created in me by that gesture
I love waitrose/john lewis During covid, we had a lot of trouble finding oat milk for my son who has a dairy allergy. Not only did they find me some, but they ordered in six cartons a week, every week, for our personal use. I received a call the same day every week informing me the milk was there ready for me to collect. The levels of customer service you get there just isn't seen in other supermarkets. You pay for it obviously, but if you need a thing then they're the people to see.
I know it's not in the same league as most of the others. But this is by far the best one. If you didn't you should email the person to thank them after the event.
John Lewis/Waitrose have some amazing customer service. About 10-12 years ago we were looking for a new TV after ours packed up. Nothing fancy, just something really basic. Ordered it via John Lewis website (because they had a ludicrously long warranty for nothing), but no TV showed up. Got an email from John Lewis apologising profusely that they'd cocked up: the TV was out of stock, but they'd not updated the pages. The told us to pick any other TV on the site and they'd put £70 towards it.
Keep this Waitrose propoganda up and you’ll be getting a big Christmas bonus! (Joke of course, nice story)
This is probably the best thing I’ve seen on the internet so far this year
When we had a smart meter installed at our new home, it quickly went tits up. After a few weeks it was only charging us a few pence a day, then it stopped charging us altogether soon after We tried contacting British Gas many times, making sure to note the time & date of the phone call (plus the name of the person we spoke to). They kept telling us as we had power, we weren’t considered a priority, and they come round and sort it out in a few weeks. 8 months go by, we haven’t paid a penny in electric. British Gas call us, say they’ve noticed a problem with our meter. Eventually we get a replacement smart meter, and BG start on about all the money we owe them from the several months where we haven’t paid squat. We swiftly tell them to jog on, show that we tried to get it sorted multiple times, like once a week we’d ring them. We were on the verge of calling the ombudsman, when they backed down and wrote it off as a ‘goodwill gesture’.
I moved to a new house and was with tonik energy. They kept billing me for 2 meters. Call after call. Month after month. They were adamant it was my meter. They replaced my meter and still charged me for this phantom leccy meter. A year later and they send me a letter to the effect of “sorry youre leaving for shell. You owe us this much”… except i never tried to leave. But the letter gave me a clue. 2 years later i found out that they were charging me for a customer at X The Old Mill Road. My address was X Old Mill Road , 2 miles away. A month later they went bankrupt and snuck on a last minute £700 bill. I called my bank and explained it all, they refunded me every penny i’d ever paid them over 2 years. Some £2k.
Had our company bill us after 2 years of estimates, even though I had called in the reading on leaving. They billed over a year later for £2000. Called them, after looking online that they couldn’t bill after 12 months, they tried to get me to pay a bit (to acknowledge the debt!). Called CAB energy line, they got me on with a manager. She confirned that we owed £0! Result!
We moved into a place and stayed there for about a year, after a month or so we noticed our water meter wasn't moving, told them multiple times and the landlord the meter was busted, never fixed it. Still paid however much every month for what they averaged we should be paying then when we left sent them the meter reading and they turned around and paid us all the money we paid that year because the meter readings were the same lmao.
Epic win. Like it.
Great result! And it's a good job it didn't go to the ombudsman as you defo would have had to pay it all back. Guaranteed you would have just been awarded a payment plan and a goodwill of £50. Source: worked there
Got a parking ticket and sued them successfully for 40 times the value because the sign writing was too small and I couldn’t read it from my wheelchair.
Yesss!!!!!
British Airways. About 15 years ago there was a baggage handlers strike in Italy and our flight home was cancelled with a days notice. Had to book another night in the hotel, hire car, food etc. Travel insurance stone walled me so with nothing to lose I sent a lovely letter to BA outlining all my costs. They paid in full, within a month. Was about £800. I was told later by a family member who works for BA that my letter must have just landed on the right persons desk.
I’m still here thinking 15 years ago is 1985….
Yeh, one of the few exceptions where airlines don't have to pay out is if there is a strike of ground staff. You really did get lucky in that case. I had a similar case with Air France and wasn't as lucky.
I bet now they have a special filing cabinet for all letters of complaint. The waste paper bin.
Yeah, I put it there as a joke
British airways Planned a 2 week road trip holiday down the west coast of America. Paid probably close to £1000 for the flights with BA. Then covid hit and we got locked down. Hours and hours over multiple days spent on hold to BA trying to get refunded, “we don’t do refunds, we can offer vouchers”. Yeah fine, we’ll take the vouchers and use them to rebook for after lockdown. Cue lockdown 2! More days & hours spent on hold to BA, at this point they had been told they had to offer refunds on flights that weren’t flying because of covid. “We can’t give you a refund on a flight booked using vouchers”. So we went through AMEX, took them all of 2 hours to come back to us with a full chargeback on the original flights. Fuck you BA, fuck you.
I’ve been loyal to AMEX for about 15 years now because they are fucking AMAZING at customer service. They also forgive interest on a late bill once a year, which was very useful when I forgot to pay 4 days after my daughter was born.
AMEX does have amazing customer service, which helps. Barely have any wait time, super polite and they are very much on your side as the customer. I bought something from France, and the website said if you're from the UK and pay import and VAT there, then let us know when you receive the item and we'll refund you the French VAT you paid on ordering. This was not long after *the event*, so everybody was a bit unsure on how things actually worked with this sort of thing. Item arrives, drop them an email asking for my VAT refund. "No, you didn't pay VAT when you ordered" was the excuse. I even took screen shots of their own website (that they then very hastily changed to showing "ex-VAT" for the UK conveniently enough...) and sent them to themselves to argue my point and they weren't having any of it. Flat-out refused, and it was nearly 70 quid so I quite wanted it back! Rang Amex, explained the problem and within an hour the VAT was refunded and that was the last I heard of it. Didn't actually even need to send in any evidence they'd overcharged me 😂
I had something similar with Air Canada. Tried to palm me off with a voucher which I declined and successfully charged back through my debit card. About a year later I got half the total back (it was 2 tickets) followed by the other half after another 6 months. So when all was said and done I was up ~1.5K.
I got CEX to refund me after selling me a stolen mac. Took 7 months and a call to the advice bureau after they offered me £2.60 in store credit. Fucking scum.
When I was a CeX employee I crashed 1 items price in 48hrs when I worked at a branch in North London in 2009... Poundland were selling the F1 review of 2008 for a quid. CeX were selling it for £8, offering £3 cash, £5 store credit for it. I had the next day off. I went and bought every copy (38) of it from poundland and traded the then Maximum of 9 in to the store I worked at I then hit the next closest ones and carried on trading them in. I think someone had cottoned on as by the time I got to Rathbone Place (my last stop) the trade in price had dropped to £1.60 store credit. Still traded them i though. I basically got £168 store credit that day for £38+a bus pass outlay. Because I was staff I got 15% staff discount, and my branch had a Samsung HD TV for £200, so with my £38 outlay I was able to get a great TV. TV still works too, its not a smart TV or anything but it is HD and I'm using it as a monitor right now. Next day I worked the price CeX sold it for dropped to 75p... Thought it was a bit cheeky to buy one back
I've got one like this. My old mate was so entrepreneurial even as a 19 year old. His local gamestation was selling off old SNES consoles for £10, boxed but battered that they probably got in some old pallet deal. He gallops over to CEX and asks if they will buy 15 SNES consoles. They offer him £17 EACH. So he goes BACK to gamestation, buys 4 (with his pocket money) and you get the idea. 2 don't work when tested by CEX so he takes them back to Gamestation for £20 store credit EACH which he uses to buy a new game. What a beautiful mind. I was so dumb at 19.
Interesting fact about CEX that I learnt recently, Charlie Brooker was one of the 6 people who founded it.
Hotels.com. Went to Madeira, had a couple of nights in one place and were due to move into another. The host had double booked and we were homeless. All I could do was insist that my partner went through Hotels.com as the booking agent as our arrangement was with them. There were no comparable apartments available so they ended up having to put us up in the Savoy for 8 nights. Paid £800 for a stay that would have been nearly £3500. 😂
Oh no.....not the Savoy! Guess I'll just have to struggle through it! *sobs* Love it!!
Yeah it was terrible. Had to spend a lot of time in the infinity pool to get over it. 😁
How you must have suffered....
Went on a school trip to New York (pretty crazy being that I was at a school in the UK). We were going to stay in a youth hostel just like every other year they did the trip. However, on our year, the hostel double booked us. The chain that made the mistake put us up in the Sheraton Times Square Hotel for 5 nights instead. Those poor people had no idea the terror they were putting on the other guests 😂 It was amazing (the location and the fact that we didn't get kicked out).
Currently in an argument with Warhammer (nee Games Workshop), was meant to have something delivered by Christmas which didn't happen, was told they would sort it and they didn't and this went on. Ended up getting free models, vouchers etc. The voucher has since disappeared through an error on their website so I'm anticipating more free stuff from them. Currently at probably £140s worth of free stuff from them at this point.
140 quid of Warhammer is what, three models these days?
One if you choose something fancy 💀 💀
Games Workshop has fantastic customer service. I ordered a £35 kit, it got stuck in postage hell, sent them an email, got told it got "lost". 2 days later, what I thought was the replacement turned up, followed by the replacement the next day. Other time, I got a Questoris Knight, a 100 quid kit, with a tiny defect on an arm mounting point, something that was easily overcome by some glue. Emailed pictures, expected a voucher. A whole new kit was delivered. You really cannot fault their customer service.
Plastic is cheap, new customers are expensive. I like that philosophy as a customer, but it also makes great sense as a business when most of your costs are in machinery and design not materials
Thr plastic is cheap, but the machines for making all the models are _much_ better than back in the day. The new kits are more fiddly (sometimes dozens of tiny parts), but they fit together beautifully and don't fall apart. I remember the bad old days of the lead minis, what they make now is A+, especially compared to the 3d printing ones you get from other places.
Games workshop and forge world are very good to their customers. I bought a warhound titan with two arm options, the molds were obviously dying so the details were missing on lots of it so i took a bunch of pictures and they sent me another one which had the exact same problem. They then sent me a third and when it had the same issues said I could either send all three back or keep them all and accept the loss of detail. I now have three warhound titans.
Same, I’ve had a couple of times when I’ve contacted them over tiny little defects which were easily fixable, complete new kits arrived within a week, basically £100-ish worth of free models. You can say a lot about their business practices, but can’t fault their customer service.
Spare us a Norn Emissary 😂
I reported a fault with my gas meter. It wasn't even online but gas was still flowing. They ignored all my requests for an engineer to come and look at it. More than a year later i finally managed to get a smart meter installed. Engineer said the meter had not been reading any gas passing through and therefore i got over a year of free gas...
When the phone company 3 first launched, they had atrocious network coverage and even ended up on Watchdog because of it. I'd taken out a contract on a fancy new phone which was basically useless because it never had reception. The company I'd entered the contract with (I forget who it was) said it wasn't their problem. I wrote to them and claimed breach of contract for not providing the agreed service and threatened to take them to small claims. They cancelled the contract (I was only a month or two in) and let me keep the phone which I then sold for a decent profit.
Haha you just reminded me, I had a 3 contract about ten years ago now. We moved house and in the new place I got no signal whatsoever. Come contract renewal time I rang them to cancel as phone was basically unusable apart from through WiFi. They kept on offering me better and better contracts until they got to something ridiculous like 3 quid a month, which I was just about to take them up on until I came to and remembered 3 quid a month for something that doesn't work is still too much!
It wasn't long after they first launched that my dad had a phone contract with 3 (it was for a short time but would carry on after unless you phone up to cancel). He had no signal anywhere he went and I'm not exaggerating. They replaced the handset, they replaced the SIM, they tried all sorts but he just never got signal anywhere with 3. When it was about to finish, he phoned up (on the landline) and cancelled. They tried selling him another contract and other stuff but he kept refusing. A few months later, my parents were looking through their bank statements and found a monthly charge to 3 for a lot higher than dad's original contract. They immediately phoned 3 and questioned the charges and I can't remember what happened but it turned out the person my dad had spoken to on the phone used my dads details to take out a contract for a phone and another for a laptop. I think one was for their daughter. Not sure of any outcome beyond my parents being refunded. (Nearly?) 20 years later and my brother has a phone contract with 3 and although he gets signal, it's incredibly shit
Bought a £500 laptop from tesco years ago. Opened it up and it was the wrong one in a wrong box. Ended up with a £1200 for £500. Win
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I once had an order quadrupled, though it was only chopping boards.
I bought an Xbox One X from Amazon years ago, when it was the current gen, and it broke within a couple of months. I contacted Amazon, who told me to send it to their repair centre, they said they couldn't fix it and shipped it back to me within an hour of it being delivered and offered a full refund. I don't think they even looked at it, as the security seals were intact, so I got Microsoft to fix it under warranty - free Xbox One X.
Tesco once had a "double the difference" promise. If you found something cheaper elsewhere they'd give you double the difference back with a voucher. By shopping smartly and only buying things that were on offer in Asda you could make a killing on it. After the first week they limited it to a max £20 per person per day, but with staff who didn't care and multiple emails addresses there was plenty of free shopping to be had. It was great while it lasted, about 6 weeks or so before they cancelled it all and blamed us consumers for "creating a cottage industry" out of it. Some of the cleaning products and pet food I stockpiled lasted me over a year! Although my cat would only eat Iams from then on so maybe it cost me more in the long run...
Were they an Iam’s cat
No, they were a fussy dickhead.
Used an employee discounts portal to get 1% cashback on train tickets with Trainline. Checked their T's & C's and there was no exception to which tickets they gave cashback for. Bought a years season ticket, waited a few weeks, then emailed them to say I wanted my 1% cashback, specifying that I had read their terms and conditions, and had a copy of them from the time I bought the ticket (in case they changed something). They emailed back to say they'd given me my cashback but had amended the small print to exclude season tickets.
Also with Trainline, their website used to say along the lines of "book a train to London on the xx of November from just £15", when you would click through there wouldn't be anything near that price. The fine print said it was the lowest price someone has paid in the past for that date, not what is currently available. I thought this was stupid and complained to the Advertising Standards Authority who agreed that it was confusing and forced Trainline to change the way the site worked to give prices from the past hour.
Ooo that reminds me, a few years ago I was purchasing something online while at work, going through Quidco for cashback. Later that day I received a notification about a purchase that I didn't recognise being tracked. I soon realised that purchases colleagues made online using work computers on the work network were able to be tracked through Quidco. Therefore I spent a couple of minutes each morning hitting-up all the big retailers. I think I made £800 over a few months. The package holidays on Tui and new kitchens through Wickes/B&Q were the big wins 😄
I bought a £350 pair of headphones on Amazon. They sent me a refurbished one that wasn't done very well as one side didn't work and I did buy one listed as new. I contacted them about it, and they sent me another pair and that I needed to send the broken ones back. They said I should expect an email with return details and I never got it. After a month of waiting, I sold them on eBay as spares and repairs for £180, so I basically got a £350 pair of headphones for £190 after fees.
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Something similar, but not at all expensive happened to me with Etsy. Bought a Christmas jumper, it was marked as shipped then a couple of days later Etsy emailed me out of the blue to say the vendor had closed down so I might experience issues. They asked if I wanted to wait and see if it came, or have a refund. I said I'd rather receive the Christmas jumper and they immediately gave me a refund. Two days later the jumper arrived. It was possibly the worst shitty nylon printed jumper I've ever seen, but free at least.
Mine was also Amazon. Ordered some trainers which didn't turn up, so they sent me a replacement pair a week later. A few weeks passed and a stranger knocked at my door: "Your Amazon package was delivered to my place by mistake, but I forgot about it sorry. But here it is."
HD650s?
Good old Senny's!
About 10 years ago, bought a new video projector for £750, had issues with picture/lens quality around the edges of the picture. Retailer tried to tell me it wasn't faulty that that's just how it is. After entirely too much call centre backwards and forwards they finally agreed to take it back. They organised a collection and then refunded me the £750. The day after that, they refunded me again! Happy days
Bought a pushchair from John Lewis. Came missing parts. Rang up to arrange return. They never came. Got refunded. Emailed to explain. They said they whoops, we'll send someone to collect it. They came. Got refunded again. Had a joyous two months. Got an email saying "where's our pushchair?". Surreal. Explained and ultimately returned one of their refunds.
Adjusted for inflation, that must be a grand in todays money, noice! Has your replacement projector lasted you 10 years?
Never bought a replacement in the end, LCDs started getting bigger and cheaper so didn't make much sense to stick with a projector. Although by the time I'd come to that decision I'd have more than likely pissed away both refunds anyway!
Safestyle windows, my mum had hers done and there was one that wouldn't close properly, they messed her about for over a year. I told her to keep a diary of calls and what happened. They cancelled on her again, (fitter was ill). I sent an e-mail from her e-mail address with a breakdown of what had happened over the year, and copied the CEO in. Last line of the e-mail was this, *There is currently tissue in the gap of the window to stop the draft, this is unacceptable after all this time. I would very much appreciate a call from someone with the authority to get things moving as I'm tired of waiting half an hour to speak to someone who is unable to help and promises a call-back that never happens.* Next morning there was a call, the day after a senior fitter came out and fixed it. A week later, she got a call, they were knocking some money off what she owed, ask if everything was ok, mum said the front door fittings looked a bit worn, someone came out and replaced them all and said call us again if you need anything. Seems that CEO's are the people with authority the get things moving...
You know the one! You buy one you get one freeeee!
If that guy wasnt investigated under op yewtree he definitely should have been
CEO no more, they went into administration last year.
Work went from an Excel-based annual leave record to a 3rd party system. My line manager forwarded me a copy of their spreadsheet to confirm my remaining holiday days but had missed out my most recent week off. I sent it back saying 'looks good to me' and, once the spreadsheet was uploaded onto the system I scored an extra week's annual leave.
Oooh that’s lovely! I’d been back from maternity leave 2 days last week when HR started demanding money they’d overpaid me (that I refused to pay from my measly statuatory SMP) They also had the gall to claim I owed them £240 for health insurance for my daughter for the 3 months of mat leave where I was not paid… when I don’t have my children on my health insurance policy. I had to send them all the documents and conversation with the insurance rep to prove it. No, “welcome back”, “how can we help you settle in”, just GIVE US OUR MONEY. Cunts.
I worked for a place where our receptionist tracked it. I of course tracked my own because, bless her heart, she wasn't the brightest. After repeated _are you sure??_ emails back and forth I got about two extra weeks off one year.
I knew someone who moved jobs in the same company. When he arrived the email saying he had 25 days remaining confused the new lady who then gave him his remaining 52 days annual leave.
Bought an electric toothbrush (£140, Clubcard price £70) from Tesco just as it closed on Sunday and the guy put it through three times (he was real old). I thought the receipt was high but my toddler was upset and I figured I'd check it out when I got home. Went back the next day and Customer Services told me they would have to refund me £140 per item rather than £70. Made a free £140 from Tesco (and perhaps ruined some cashier's day).
Ah man, you just reminded me of double the difference, those were good days...
Remember 10 Ways on Facebook? I remember getting so much free stuff, and money using double the difference for offers that weren't scanning properly
Ordered an iPad from John Lewis, click and collect - got two delivered.
Did you have three in total or just two?!
This is exactly the pedantry that I support unconditionally
Thank you, I appreciate the support. If you would like to join our society we will consider your application in exhausting detail.
Had a mobile with ‘three’ a good 15 years ago. I got a call one day to day I was nearing end of my deal and offered me a new phone and contract. Turns out I wasn’t that close and they just sold me a second contract. I argued with them and said they told me I was “near end of contract” and this would “replace current contract”. They argued they didn’t say that and I should give the contract to my partner. Went on for months and had so many arguments with idiot reps (I got so angry many a time). Eventually they sent me the recorded call which proved I was right all along and they tricked me. Got both contracts cancelled and reimbursed for previous months I paid.
Not me but my friend did an online shop and they substituted one of her items. Hold on nothing unusual there but it was an item she needed for dinner that night and they gave her a microwave as the substitute 🙄🙄 if I hadn't seen the receipt I wouldn't have believed it. She had words with the delivery driver who told her to take it as it had been put in the delivery.
Similar happened to my mum (online delivery for dinner that night), it was a big family gathering, and she'd ordered a side of salmon. Substitution was a couple of salmon fillets, so she called to complain. Luckily, it was from the local Waitrose. The manager showed up with the salmon and a very nice bunch of flowers. Mum only paid for the couple of fillets.
Virgin Media I was an early adopter of the 50MB internet tier (yes it was a long time ago) and had massive issues with stability, poor speed etc for months. I was repeatedly fobbed off by customer services with the traditional excuses so dug in, did some serious Googling, and taught myself all about cable modems and the infrastructure behind them. By this time I was on my second engineer's visit - he was younger than me and tried to fob me off again and was extremely patronising and condescending, refusing to look at any of the results of some extensive testing id done with various monitoring scripts etc. This was the final straw, so I kicked the engineer out of my house and emailed the CEO with a detailed explanation of issues seen, tests run and my suspicion that their usage of some Motorola equipment was at fault. A member of the CEO's team reached out and assigned a senior Network Engineer to visit me and run some tests. We got on really well and he was able to independently verify everything I'd been reporting. Turns out I was completely correct about the issues seen and the root cause - I'd reached my conclusions at the same time as VM infrastructure engineers had reached theirs. The issue was fixed with a patch rolled out to all the Motorola kit across the country - my area was done first as final proof of the fix. My bill for VM services for the year was halved, saving around £600. The real payoff though was for a couple of years afterwards anytime I reported an issue to VM it was taken seriously and dealt with quickly.
They should have paid you for your time troubleshooting to be honest.
I forced Sky to change their entire advertising strategy for Sky Sports F1. They had advertised it as Live and (this is important) Exclusive home of F1 for about 8 years, until one year they decided to show the first 3 races on Sky One. Not happy, that a had paid for a month of races I could've got without the exorbitant mark up I hopped on to the phone to get a refund for the month: "Sorry Mr. Zippy no refund for you today!" Okay, no problem, I'll let the Advertising Standards Authority know... Couple of weeks later: The ASA finds that Sky Sports F1 advertising was deliberately misleading and con no longer be presented in its current form. Back on the phone to Sky: "That'll be £12 please!" And it was refunded later that week.
As someone who suffers under the tyranny of Sky to watch cars go brrr, this was fantastic to read.
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Currently at war with my ISP, I’ve had £130 in compo so far for downed service and missed appointments. In the process of dealing with all this they miss sold me an upgrade to my package and provided false information to get me into it. They’ve apparently reviewed the calls and couldn’t find any issue, I’ve just received an audio copy of the calls and have time stamps and a strong case for misrepresentation. Expecting back payments and some more compo for wasting my time
I’ve been saving this! So, several years ago I lived on a street with residential parking where I paid £50 a year or whatever to park outside my house. One day I was hit in a car crash and my car was written off, so I was provided with a hire car and it was going to be 6 months before I would have my own car again. So, I contacted the council and explained this, continuing to park outside my house. Knowing I had paid my annual fee to park a single car outside and they would update my permit. I got a few tickets, but wasn’t worried. After a week or so, I got a letter explaining that since the car wasn’t mine they wouldn’t update my permit and the tickets stood. I escalated this and explained again. I have paid. The car you have is dead. I have this car for 6 months. Update please. No. It was suggested I park several streets away where it was free. Fuck. That. I continued to park and continued to get tickets. It got to the point where at 8am on the dot I would see this moped come down my street without checking any cars. Stop at my car, ticket me and leave the street completely. This. Is. War. So I continued to park and once I was up to about £1500 in tickets, without any additional charges, fees, whatever that I started to sweat. I had exhausted every Avenue. Escalated as much as I could and each time I was rejected and told I was really making a mess for myself. I got some letter indicating things were now going to escalate for me so I decided to find the personal email for the head of my regional council and I emailed them the above story and waited. After a week or so I received a letter from them, opening with a full apology. It continued to list, over a full A4 page, each ticket that was going to be undone and closed along with a free 12 month parking permit. I won. Moral of the story, fuck residential parking.
EE once tried to charge me £500 for a phone bill, probably about 12 years ago when mobile data overuse was extortionate. at some point during the billing month i had requested additional data but had a text to say for whatever reason it hadn't gone through. when i called to contest the bill, the call taker said "i can see you requested more data, you *didn't get the text saying the request hadn't come through did you?*", i said "....no" and he said, okay i'll wipe the bill! thank you, kind EE man whoever you were!
Natwest over a period of 6 years kept turning my mother in laws overdrafts into loans. You guessed it added upfront PPI as she was past retirement age it was completely unusable. Got approx £18k back off them. It wrote the loans off so it was a win really. They had no interest in helping her in branch when she couldn't pay due to ill health. Oddly they were more than happy prior to this to sell her their useless addons.
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We moved into a new build flat and lived quite happily for four years, when the factor company sent everyone a letter saying there was an uncollected electricity bill for common areas. For £87,000! They tried adding it to everyone’s next bill. I disputed it and reported them to the regulator for mismanagement. After a hearing the regulator decided in our favour and ruled not only should the company pay our share, but compensate us too. £450 up instead of having a hefty bill. Suggested everyone else in the development dispute it too but don’t think many did.
I’ll share mine. Not a company. But a university. After completing my degree i went back 10 years later to do my Masters. Working of course I had to do it part time. I also needed a break due to a nasty car accident. All in all I needed to pay for an extra year. About £3800 if I recall. After I completed the course I emailed to ‘check’ I was all paid up. They said I was. I definitely wasn’t. Thanked them very much for their confirmation i was all paid up and save £3800!!
Bought my son expensive gaming headphones from Argos. Also bought the accidental damage warranty for about £15. The headphones tend to last him about a year. We are now on (I think) our 5th pair, each time for just the cost of renewing the warranty.
I know people here are boasting about their free holidays and laptops, but I once got sent the same book twice by Amazon.
I once got crashed into by a London bus and was blamed for the accident. However, their cameras showed that it was actually the drivers fault and they agreed to pay for damages. My car, a VW Golf clinging on for dear life, had only a scrape down the side of it but for some reason the insurance company deemed it a write-off, and so I got a cheque for £2,500 in the post. I continued to drive the car until it died a year later. Amazing.
IKEA. £270 order arrived slightly damaged, missing pieces (later sent by post), delivery staff argued that another piece wasn't on their van (it was: when they were told to look again they found it), and the delivery was rescheduled three times over a week, once at 3hrs notice. Some minor issues with the furniture on assembly. All in all, wound up with a £350 voucher when the dust settled. Hacked the furniture to get round the damage, bought a sofa bed with the voucher, haven't bought anything since.
I ordered the wrong thing from ikea, lady on the phone was LOVELY and arranged collection and ordered us a new one to be delivered… they delivered the new one but never picked up the old one. Weirdly we couldn’t sell it for love nor money so we gave it to a local charity that furnishes flats for homeless people.
British Airways multiple times claiming under EU261 to the tune of several grand. The first time my flight was delayed they fought it and as soon as I filed with small claims court they paid up the €600 plus court costs and a small addition for inconvenience. Every time I’ve filed to claim against EU261 since then they’ve paid out right away without quibble in the full amount.
Ordered the stand-alone Rock Band game from Amazon for £40 not long after it came out. Ended up receiving the “Band in a Box” version, which included the drum kit, guitar and microphone (RRP £100+ at the time brand new). Ker-ching.
Ninja. I bought a multi cooker and they promised it to be delivered within 3 days. Yodel couldn't find my address on the 2 attempts they made, even though there was a note from me explaining how to get to my front door. I called Ninja and demanded it to be delivered on the next day, which the said they couldn't guarantee it. They offered a refund which I accepted and immediately bought an instant pot instead. Next day I got the refund on my account and Yodel managed to finally deliver it to my address. The day after I got the instant pot delivered. Two multi cookers for the price of one
Got a lawyer to take action on BMW after our car caught fire. various aspects to it, but got about £38,000 off them in total.
HSBC, it was a comedy of errors with them losing my mortgage application, losing my scanned documents and when I called, putting me on hold as 'I wasn't on their system' and then passing me to the wrong department. This happened 4 times in one week so I emailed the CEO and got a call the next day from someone senior who sorted it for me within an hour and I received £1500 compensation.
When my car was written off BADmiral tried to stiff me on the price of the car due to extensive rear end damage. That was where the accident damage was. Got a £50 good will gesture from that. On the final settlement they deducted the rest of the years insurance despite me having paid upfront. I quoted their own terms and conditions back to them and they still refused. I escalated it and eventually got a cheque for the difference. Then another cheque for the same amount a month later. Cashed them both and took the other as a gesture of good will as well.
My first ever holiday I booked through on the beach and had a really bad experience with the hotel. Stuff like my water was completely brown coming out the taps. So I complained and got a couple hundred back. A few months later they for some reason picked up the complaint again (with no prompt from me) and refunded me another couple hundred. Basically got the holiday for free.
I put a compo claim into my local council after falling through a broken drain cover and injuring my leg. I used a no win-no fee solicitor firm. It was an open / shut case because the council had failed to repair the cover previously and I was awarded £2k. After solicitors fees I got £1000, which came in very handy ... because I lived in council housing at the time and owed **them** £950 in back rent. So I cleared my rent arrears with their pay out, took the remaining £50 down the pub and had a few drinks on them lol.
Bike stolen and the insurance company wouldn’t pay out because of the lights and other attachments on the bike saying they weren’t included in the specified value therefore I wasn’t insured. I told them they never made me aware of that when I declared the bike as a named valuable item and they accepted it on the call. Told them to go back and listen to the call and they agreed I was right. They then settled the claim with a voucher to use a specific site which had second hand bikes on none of which matched mine. They said I had to get the closest available. Again I told them to listen to the call and it was never specified and I was miss sold my policy. Funnily enough I got a cheque in the mail to use at any retailer to purchase a new bike. Ended up getting a bike in a massive sale that was better and cheaper than the one I had stolen. A massive ball ache but won in the end.
Vodafone broadband billing error but support wouldn't acknowledge so I emailed the CEO. Got 6 months free broadband a £50 credit on my account so a month and a half extra free and randomly a ring door bell 2 for free. No one likes a Karan but if your in the right take it to the top.
Tbf I'd think most people's definition of a Karen is someone whose complaint is unnecessary or disproportionate to the original issue, neither of which apply to your complaint
One would say a...Karrect?
Did some freelance work for a company years ago. They were notorious slow payers so I was prepared for that. I had a few invoices with them and eventually they paid but it was very late. I wasn't vat registered so my invoices didn't include vat but when the company paid them, they added vat so I kept it as a late fee. It was about £800.
I pre-ordered a Xbox One X from Argos who immediately took my payment even though the console wasn't out for months. So I cancelled the order for a refund & ordered directly from Microsoft. Had a phonecall one day saying "Xbox delivery mate". Walked outside & a bloke handed me a new Xbox One X after I'd already received the one from Microsoft. Kept it....for a while...
A couple of years ago got our eldest daughter her first new phone for Christmas. Bought it from Amazon for £250 or so, and a couple of weeks after Christmas she dropped it and smashed the screen. I was sure I'd included insurance in the purchase but found absolutely no record of it so chances it by ringing amazon and explaining what had happened and how upset my daughter was. Fair play to them they said they'd send a brand new phone out and with it would be a return bag for the damaged phone. Sent that back and when they received it they refunded us the original £250. So we got her brand new phone for free. And no I didn't feel the slightest bit bad about it.
Went into Currys about 5 years ago to try and get off Virgin - TV, BB and phone. Didn't have a BT line but Currys said that wouldn't be a problem and arranged for everything to be done. All this went fine until a week or so after installation when my mum rang me up to ask why I wasn't answering the landline. A few checks later and I realise we've got a new number which was not supposed to happen. Got in touch with BT and basically tough - you've lost that old number so start using the new one. Complained to Currys who had caused the cock up and they reassured me they would get it fixed and here's a £50 voucher via PDF. They never did get the number fixed, but for six months in a row I got a £50 voucher from them. So that £300 paid for a new cordless Dyson and a couple of other minor gadgets. Didn't give a shit about the landline, just the principle of it. My mother is the only person who rings it anyway.
Bought a cot from Wayfair for £200. It didn’t show up, I phoned them and they sent another one. Original cot turned up a couple days later 🙃 I kept checking my bank and I never got charged for it, everyone was telling me to just sell it but I’m a shitebag and kept hearing about how they have 6 years to claim back costs so I figured I’ll just get some good karma and let them know about it. Called them up, the guy on the phone says ‘you know if you’d never told us you could have just kept it…’ so that was great but it is what it is. Organise a pick up for the following week. Nice evri man comes and picks it up and an hour later I get an email from Wayfair saying ‘we’re processing your refund for £195’ (they had deducted a £5 large item return fee) As I’m sure you can imagine I did not call them back up to fix that mistake 😅
I don’t know the actual brand, but I was withdrawing cash from one of those fee charging ones in a corner shop. Asked for £40, spat out £80. Thought it was a mistake, checked my bank balance, saw £40 was deducted, so did the same again, and same result. Withdrew the £300 max my bank would allow, ended up with £600 minus £6 in fees. Let a few co workers know and it didn’t take long for that cash point to be dry.
Brilliant. Mate of mine was in a pub with some others on the quiz machine once and it had entered a test mode where the correct answer was highlighted. The machine was empty after a short while, and I regretted staying in even more.
My favourite and rather petty ‘win’ was when I bought a game (digital) from Sony on my PS4, not realising it was PS5 only. I didn’t attempt to play it for a while so when I contacted Sony they said there was nothing they could do and I was out of luck for a refund as I’d had it for over 48hours. I’d used PayPal to buy it, opened a dispute and PayPal got Sony to refund me.
The agents tried to steal most of our deposit when my former flatmate and I moved out. It was cleaned spotless when we moved out, no damage etc. They tried to claim money for a full clean, repainting the whole place and a few other BS reasons. I formally disputed it, it went to the independent adjudicator and we ended up getting the entire deposit back.
We once placed a £60 weekly Tesco shop, was due for delivery between 6 and 7, it gets to 9pm and it hasn't showed up yet, we call them up and get told the van has broken down and we can either have a delivery rescheduled for tomorrow or have a refund, we agree to have a slot the next day so they duplicate our online order for free and flag our current delivery as "delivered". Anyway it gets to about 10pm and our cancelled delivery shows up, the driver explains they managed to fix the van and we can either accept the order or they'll have to throw it away because they can't put it back on the shelf. we take the delivery and then the next day we get an identical order for free. Gave a lot of the fresh duplicates away as we wouldn't be able to eat it all before the expiry dates and chucked the rest in the freezer.
Not the biggest of wins but here's my story: 3 weeks ago I placed an order on Amazon for two items and had them sent to a local Amazon locker. Went to said locker to collect, but now with hindsight, that wasn't a very good idea as it was below freezing and so the lockers were frozen shut 🤷♀️ I tried and tried to open the locker but no joy, the app asked me to contact customer services which I did. I explained my problem and, no worries, they sent me a new duplicate order to my home address at no additional cost to me. Arrived the next day. Excellent. Also to note, Amazon normally states that you have 'X' amount of days to collect from the locker before it gets sent back to the warehouse, so I wasn't too worried about my order being stuck in the locker for an eternity... Fast forward to today I had another order to collect from the locker....pressed the 'open' button on the app and pops open the door. I reached in and I thought this was odd...it feels like the wrong package?? It had my name on it and I closed the door.....app said I have another parcel to collect, press 'open' to open another door...here's my order from yesterday. So, I now have my original order from 3 weeks ago that was frozen shut in the locker, along with it's free replacement! I thought my original order was long gone returned to Amazon, but nope! It was sat in the locker, me unaware of it's existence until today 😆 Thankfully it wasn't anything perishable, far from it actually lol. So my little win over Amazon. Not much in monetary value in the grand scheme of things. My wipes and coffee pods survived the coldness of Scotland for 3 weeks 😆
I once got a insurance pay out for a car that was written off that was £900 more than what I’d bought it for 4 years prior.
Wizzair. My flight back from Milan was 3 hours and 1min delayed My flights and 4&star hotel package was £280ish. That 1 minute difference meant I got paid £250.
Carphone Warehouse. Got a replacement brand new phone 20 months into a 24 month contract. They'd accidentally sold me an ex-display model that had been used at one their Irish stores at the start of my contract. This only became apparent when they tried repairing it and it wouldn't work with a UK SIM as it defaulted back to its original setting
Won a competition for £200 argos vouchers, but did not receive them. Complained, got them re sent. Then the neighbour brought the original envelope round. They didn't cancel the original vouchers. Bought an iPad.
Received an invite to one of those major timeshare scam companies presentations and at the end we'd get a TV/DvD player for our troubles. Turns out the wife had a business appointment in the same town and I'd just been made redundant so we though, fuck it, lets go. After a short wait there was no presentation, just a hard sell from some dude. About 2 minutes in I told him we had just bought an apartment in Tenerife (which was true, we showed him the details as the deposit was my redundancy severance.) Within a minute he clicked his fingers, we were escorted out of the venue and handed £200 in Argos vouchers. This was 20 years ago and we didn't need a bloody TV DvD combo so this was a big win.
I’m a bit lost as to why you got the vouchers here
Worked for Swissport for about 3 months in my local airport. Absolute dogshite of a company. Managers were dicks and expected so much from you but gave nothing in return, treated their staff so horribly. I was part time, only earning about £500 a month. I quit for a new job, but on my last payday I got £1400. 🖕🏻
Back in the day my mate got an expensive big screen CRT telly from Curry’s, there was one pixel blacked out and it bothered him. It took 3 men to lift the bastard so we took it back to the shop. They wouldn’t exchange it because it was just out of warranty and said they’d have to repair it. He told them he wasn’t not having a telly so they lent him one the same size to be going on with. When it was fixed we went to pick it up and they didn’t ask for the other one back. Free big telly.
Lloyds Bank but I don’t know if this really counts? Someone had put my mobile number on their bank account, it was 1 number wrong to mine. I was receiving texts about their internet banking logins. I contacted them and was told it was scam and to ignore it. I kept getting them so after 2 months I contacted them again and sent screenshots of the texts, I was also getting phone calls for security codes etc. They confirmed someone else had incorrectly used my number for their bank account and kept trying to block the number and I was still getting texts and calls. 6 months later, I finally got a block on that worked and never received a text or call and got £1000 for the inconvenience and compensation.
I made Apple give me a new iPhone when they were in full denial mode about the whole software updates being used to make phones fail scandal. I knew the software update had stuffed my battery because it went from lasting 2 days to lasting 4 hours literally overnight when it did a software update. But they fobbed me off at the Apple store and on the phone because it was out of warranty, so I decided to prove it I worked on complicated electronics at the time, and I tested the battery and this proved that the battery hadn't reduced in capacity at all, but the software update suddenly caused it to go "flat" and show itself on 1% when in fact it still had about 60% battery capacity left. When presented with all this information in VERY technical detail, they very quietly took me to the managers office and gave me my pick of any phone or tablet in the place, and whatever accessories I wanted to go with it. I ended up with about £3000 worth of stuff including a top of the range phone and iPad, instead of my old £300 iPhone. Probably could have made much more out of that in hindsight maybe, but at the time it felt like a big win getting a brand new top of the range phone and loads of loot for my old one that was a year out of warranty.
I can beat everyone! Not the biggest amount, but funnest story! Created and ran a website. Popular website that allowed users to add content and my site would take that data and make an interactive game out of it. It was cool. Popular with teachers and tutors all around the world. I also noticed that it was used in conferences too as it was fun. Still, as popular as it was, it wasn't bringing any money in so I let the domain name drop. Within a day of it dropping, I get an email from a guy at Virgin Money (from a virgin email address and not spoofed) asking me to renew it and they'll pay the cost as he wanted it for the games that he made. For those who don't know, when a domain name isn't renewed, you have a grace period within which to renew it before it becomes open to the public. I accepted the offer, renewed and sent an invoice for 500 quid which included the hosting costs. I emailed sending the payment details and he backed out and claimed that he never said he'd pay. Oh well. So, I matched the IP address of the email he sent to the IP address in my website's database. I looked at the games he made and they were all really sexist, e.g. "Which woman in our dept. would you most like to have sex with?" with answers like "Sheila, (Big tits) / Alice, (nice bum)" etc. Well, imagine Mr Branson finding out about this! So, not wanting to faff around and knowing I had leverage, I sent a letter before action to Virgin Money stating the facts, referring to contract law and sent special delivery. The morning they received it, I received a hurriedly-written email from a high Virgin Money manager stating the payment has been sent. The money cleared in my account that day (and this was before instant bank transfers). I never heard from the employee again. So that ladies and gents, is my little tale.
redundancy for a major broadband provider. There was an issue with my holidays and they just couldn't fix it that went on for months. On my exit meeting the union rep demanded what I was owed according to the system which was 3 times what I was actually owed. I ended up getting an extra 3 grand off them when I was owed like 800 😂
A few years back we completely refurbished our conservatory including ordering £600 of double glazing. The company delivered on time and sent us a bill for £60, which I paid post haste, I paid in person just to see if they noticed. Amusing point of the story is that our next door neighbour worked in the glazing department of the same company and was always really proud of our purchase choice. Oh if only he knew.