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39 Times Companies Shot Themselves In The Foot And Lost A Customer For Life
The relationship between a customer and a business can last a lifetime. Thanks to Michael Jordan, my first basketball shoes were Nike, and even though it's been a decade since I was involved in the sport, I still choose the brand over its competitors when I need athletic gear.
However, just like in interpersonal relationships, one can make a mistake that leads to a breakup. Reddit user SnakeCharmerSensei asked everyone on the platform to reveal which companies they've sworn off and why, and disappointed consumers immediately started listing their experiences. Here are the most memorable ones.
Discover more in 45 Times Companies Shot Themselves In The Foot And Lost A Customer For Life
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#2
Any business I walk into that has Fox News or Newsmax on one of its TV's, I immediately turn around and don't come back.
#3
Pulled Jimmy Kimmel from the air when an authoritarian dictator and his minions threatened.
Even after he has been restored, I won’t be going back to Disney/Hulu/ABC/ESPN. Subscription cancelled. App uninstalled. They have to earn back my trust.
#4
Stopped doing business with everyone that was up on that stage at Trump’s inauguration. They made it so easy for me.
#5
Whenever a business tries to use “Ai” instead of a person who is actually trying to help.
I have no interest in helping some mid level executive get a bigger bonus to reduce headcount.
#6
Netflix and Amazon Prime when they added commercials. I'm not paying to see your commercials.
#7
Walgreens.
I have a handful of monthly medications that need refilling and their pharmacy became such a hugely hassle to deal with. They would be late filling them, couldn't keep the simplest things straight and were criminally understaffed.
I moved all my stuff to a small, local pharmacy a couple of years ago - in fact, I'm just back from it - and they are 180° from Walgreens. They went to the trouble of getting all of the refill dates aligned so I don't have to make 5 trips a month And they are noticeably cheaper.
It's actually a pleasure to go.
#8
A dim sum restaurant didn’t let me feed my 2 yo formula as it was “outside food.” We were 5 adults plus my daughter so we ordered enough food for 5 adults but my daughter was hungry so I prepped and bottle and was feeding her when a waiter told me to stop. I didn’t believe him at first and asked to see a manager but the manager came over and confirmed that baby formula was considered “outside food.”.
#9
I dropped my pet off at day care at petsmart and went to pick her up later that day and they wouldn’t give her to me. I was the one that filled out the paperwork that morning and I was the one that dropped her off. But my husband’s name was on the account? So he had to pick her up? Get out of here. We called the cops and they were forced to give me my dog obviously. Won’t shop there obviously.
#10
It was a franchised corporate sandwich shop, an early adopter of "toasted"...
They offered a discount for building residents and I ordered a sandwich. The proprietor berated me that I should not get a discount because I ordered ONLY a sandwich and they don't make any money on them. I responded, "do or don't but don't give me a hard time about it. It was your idea."
I went one more time and ordered the combo special and was refused the discount because it was "already discounted by corporate."
Everyone I knew in the building heard the story.
#11
Anytime Fitness. I paused my membership while out of the country for a month. When I came back they told me I requested it too late (2 weeks before the payment). And they suddenly insisted my payment the month before didn't go through even though I paid that one in cash. I tried to cancel right then and they said they will cancel after I pay for the 2 months. I did just to get out of the contract, filled out the cancellation and had it confirmed through email. Next month they bombard me with payment reminders and call me multiple times. I left a one star review describing all this, suddenly they are apologetic and say they canceled it now and to please remove my review. I left the review up lol.
#12
I was a crafty kid who grew up in a rural area. When Walmart came to town, they put my local fabric store out of business. It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve given the Walton family a cent.
#14
Went to buy some lumber (40s woman). The pressure treated 2x4s were in the lot, so I told the cashier I wanted 6 of the 10'. She continually asked what "he" wants. When I told her they were for me, for deck repair, she laid down heavier, insisting I needed to double check with who I am buying them for. Finally I lost my patience with the back and forth and snapped and told her that she could either ring me up or I was stealing them. Haven't been back.
#15
A local pizza store delivered a pizza to my home. I paid and tipped the driver who held up the tip and said “that’s it?” and walked off. The tip was 15-20%. Never ordered from them again.
#16
I'm Celiac, which I recognize makes me a challenge for restaurants.
We had been recommended a pizza place that served gluten free pizza. So we went. The pizza was great, atmosphere was great, it was overall great.
The owner himself came over to take our payment as our server was either on break or busy. I made sure to tell him it was great and to thank him profusely for offering options for those of us with this specific brand of defective intestine, and he then launched into a whole spiel about how he hated doing it and that "gluten is the point of pizza."
I was completely and totally baffled. On top of the fact that you don't *need* to do it at all, here you have a customer who paying you $150 (wine, appies, cocktails, pizza, dessert, tip) *because you do* for a night out and is basically about to be a customer for a long time and you're s******g all over a big reason why.
Never went back.
#17
Spent $20k having Bekins move my household 5 states away. They sub out every piece of the move apparently. The packers they sent looked like they were out on a prison work release. Unknown to us, instead of packing drawer contents carefully, they just upended the drawers into a box and taped it shut.
One of the packers shoved me (I'm female) but we had no choice but to continue (10k down payment made, 1 lease surrendered & new lease signed with 5k in deposits made.)
In the middle of the move, the driver's truck started experiencing difficulty, so he just drove to his home in another state, offloaded our container into a field next to his house in the direct sun and Bekins stopped communicating with us.
After a week and dozens of calls to the move manager assigned to us, I looked up the phone number for the president of Bekins and put my husband on the phone with him. He told him that he either called us by the end of the day with the date we could expect our belongings or he was gonna file a police report for theft. That solved the problem.
Never. Ever. And I mean EVER. Use Bekins.
#18
It was my favorite pizza place, one of the only NY style pizza shops in the area. Sat inside for a slice one day and overheard the owner speaking down to his employees. In fact, he was so loud and it was in the open, the whole place heard him going in on these high schools kids, for requesting scheduled time off work. Friendly banter is one thing, this was not that. I have a low tolerance for disrespect and couldn't go back. I went to the local facebook group for pizza recommendations and saw others posted similar complaints of the owner. The place closed two years later. The other mom & pop pizzeria is thriving 🍕.
#19
I asked a clerk if they had a larger size in a pretty sequined dress. He looked me up and down suggested that a *more flattering* dress for my *body type* might be this plain black one over here. I'd recently lost a lot of weight and was feeling proud of my body...until then. Sorry, Express. I know one clerk doesn't represent your whole brand but I still can't see your logo without reliving that shame.
#21
Amazon has turned into complete trash. It's turned into the US version of Temu, only more pricey. I canceled prime over a year ago and have no regrets.
#23
I used TurboTax for my federal taxes, and it said state filing was included at no extra charge. Everything looked fine, so I paid. But the next day, I was charged about $100 more.
When I called support, the rep accused me of lying and trying to commit fraud, insisting TurboTax never offered free state filing. I sent screenshots showing otherwise.
I later made a new account to check and discovered the trick: the “Total” page hides an additional cost below a hidden scroll area with no scrollbar. They made it look free, then charged extra.
Since then, I’ve avoided TurboTax completely.
#24
The owner made it to the front page of r/all for being against student loan relief but had had millions of COVID relief written off. His argument was that if you take a loan you need to pay it back.
Also the chicken was pretty mid, ngl.
#25
So way way back in another age I went into a CompUSA and got stopped going in, accused of shoplifting, and they demanded to search my bag…
On the way in.
So I told them to frick off and never bought anything there again. I won too, because they went out of business a few years later. See boycotts work!
#26
For me it was a local coffee shop. They started watering down their espresso shots to save money. The difference was immediate and the quality just plummeted. I gave them a couple of chances but I wasn't going to pay $5 for brown water.
#27
The grocery store I used to frequent put up security cameras above each self checkout line and that thing triggers "Putting unscanned item in bag" feature so much I was tired of being treated like a thief so I left and haven't been back since.
Also they kept putting those stupid cardboard displays in the middle of the aisles, I remember when I was a child, you could have two shopping carts pass with plenty of room in between them.
#28
Halfords fitted a new battery in my car. About 3 months later they did my mot + service and told me my battery hadn't been fitted properly was unsafe and that it would cost £x to repair.
Stupid idiots hadn't clocked that they had fitted it and got very defensive when I pointed this out, asked if it should still be under warranty and told them that they would be fixing it at their own cost. They did but I've found a more trustworthy garage since.
#29
A Sushi place I used to go to quite often, Owners mother came to work for them. Carrying the Bento box and my rolls, her thumb was in my rice. I complained to the owner and she just shrugged it off, "it's my mom what can you do?". I replied I can never come here again, she didn't believe me as I was a weekly customer. That was my last visit, I ran into the owner a few months later and she exclaimed, what Happened? we miss you. I retold the complaint and she brushed it off again. I called the health department, they shut them down, not for fingers in the food but the food storage was atrocious for fresh fish. The local paper did a write up on how the inspector found various types of fish in a single container cross contaminating and non wrapped or covered in the walkin.
Turns out there were other health complaints about the place and multiple people reporting food poisoning.
#33
Chipotle. Too much of a headache trying to jump through hoops to get them not to skimp. Kids today have no idea how good Chipotle was in the early 2000's. Huge portions, great quality, very good value. Nowadays it's just trash.
#34
Reading about the absolutely horrendous crimes against humanity the banana giant Chiquita has done .
#35
Budget Rental Car. POS car broke down. Called budget, they set up towing, and off it went.
I got a $400 charge for tire damage (I assume from the towing company, if that was even legit.)
They reversed it but I never have gone back. Don’t trust them now at all.
#36
My dog got nipped in the ear at a doggy daycare he attended at least once a week for 4 years. The cut was tiny but he was absolutely covered in blood since he’s white and the ears are super sensitive for dogs. They made no attempt to clean him up or at least put a human bandaid on his ear until I got there. The daycare recently had a new management take over so this was the last straw. Then they didn’t even call or text to check up on him after 4 years of loyal service.
#37
My wife used to buy a lot of clothes from Kitten D'amour, I went in there one day to buy a dress for her birthday and the girl walked up and said "we dont have anything in your price range you should leave."
To the stores credit the manager walked over and apologised, but when I saw that girl was still working there a few days later we decided we would never be back.
#38
My then nine-year old daughter loved playing Webkinz, a game where you buy stuffed animals that come with codes and you can then interact with virtual versions online. She had done extra work and saved up $40 for months to buy some sort of treasure pack, and when she finally purchased it a bug in their software prevented her from receiving the things she had saved so hard to purchase. No biggy, I thought, I'll just contact support and see if they can fix it or, worst case, give her a refund for the loot she didn't get.
I got a constant runaround from their eStore to their online support to their phone support, and in the end they first implied that it was my daughter's fault for not understanding how to work their mobile app, then when I presented the evidence that she had done exactly what they told her to do they sent this:
> Please be advised that, as stated in our User Agreement, the website and all materials contained on it are provided on an 'as is' and 'as available' basis, without warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied. Any lost or missing items resulting from a minor anomaly on the website will NOT be awarded. For more information please refer to the User Agreement located on the main Webkinz homepage.
>
> We are aware that sometimes technical problems do arise while using the website and we continue to address these issues. Our technical team works very hard to not only fix problems as they arise but also to make sure that once an issue is identified and fixed, it does not reoccur.
>
> We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused
The sight of my daughter bursting into tears when all of her hard work was wasted because this petty-a*s company couldn't be bothered to fix things is forever seared into my brain.
Part of my career has been presenting on how to create exceptional customer experiences; at this point, I've probably presented to nearly 1,000 CEOs over the last ten years. And every time, I tell them this story, with names, as a cautionary tale. Don't be like Webkinz and the Ganz company that owns them.
#39
Medical office messed up my billing for 6 out of 12 months. I called them on it and they gave me attitude. Told my provider I was done, give me a referral so I can go somewhere that I don't have to constantly confirm the billing is correct and get attitude when it's not.
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