A lesson in terrible customer service

Part 1 of 2

Like everyone in the modern service-based world that we live in, I’ve had my fair share of dealings with customer support, for various reasons.

On the whole, I would say that the service I’ve received has been a very strong… adequate. It’s rare that I’ve felt unfairly treated so that I’ve thoroughly lost-out on something, and I’ve definitely had some “big wins” by holding a company to account for what they’ve previously promised or failed to prevent.

I don’t consider myself unreasonable, but I’m not going to accept a bad product or service without some complaining. If things are really bad, I’ll get very British about it and post a passive-aggressive review about it.

Recently, though, I had the unfortunate chance to receive an order via Uber Eats that was entirely inedible, and then over 7 weeks of the worst customer service I’ve ever known, which I just knew I had to share, for posterity.

Day 1

We’d had a busy few days and decided to order ourselves a healthy treat; there was a new take-away offering calorie-controlled and nutritional meals that we wanted to try. I know, crazy!
We were promised two delicious-sounding curries and some tacos. A tasty and healthy cuddle of a dinner, for a reasonable £29.65 delivered (after a 25% discount).

Unfortunately, what arrived did not meet our expectation.
The rice in both curries was dry and clumpy (which is quite impressive), the prawns were probably half their original size, and had the texture of high-quality shoes to prove it, and the taco shells may have been accidentally replaced by the cardboard they came in, we’ll never know.

I followed UEs advice and sent them pictures of the issues, but really, can you see such issues in pictures? I would think not.

Quite quickly I was told that someone would be in touch “as soon as possible”. Twice, for some reason.

The first unnamed agent to respond immediately, and without prompting, applied some credit to my account. What amazing, proactive customer service!
Unfortunately, the amount that they’d decided to give was a whopping £0.79 (0.27%).

My response:

[Me] Well, that’s a disgusting insult.
No one asked about the list of issues we had with begin given 3 stale dishes.

Terrible customer service.

That’s how you lose a customer.

After an interminable wait for a different agent to pick up the conversation (because I probably took a good 30 seconds to write the response), UE decide to really push their concept of “service” to a new level:

[Agent] We have looked into this for you, and can see that you have already been refunded for this order. This refunded amount should reflect back to your account within the next few business days.
As such, we trust this issue has been successfully resolved, and will be closing out this thread.
If you do have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out again.

Now, I hadn’t eaten at this point. The realisation that we had no dinner was still settling in, and the concept of a cheese toasty was starting to materialise, so I really wasn’t in the mood for condescension or incompetence.

[Me] Refunded? 79p? You can trust it’s resolved all you want, but I’d like to know how to escalate it to a complaint.

If that food had been served to us at a restaurant, we’d have walked out.

That final point is important; walking out of your own home on a bad take-away really doesn’t serve any purpose.

[Me] (after no response for 5 minutes) Hello?

[Agent Asghar] We have reviewed your query but unfortunately, we are unable to comprehend what you are trying to convey. In order for us to look into this further and resolve your query more effectively, please elaborate your query in a brief manner.

We will be keeping an eye out for your response.

I can only assume that this is a stock answer, or they’re purposefully trying to confuse people with unnecessarily complex words for a support issue. Unluckily for them, I’m super wordful and understand 90% of their message.

[Ian] (after re-explaining the quality of the food) I tried raise [sic] a complaint at the time and received 79p refund! Then was told that I should be happy about that.
The food was awful, and my issues have been dismissed. I want to complain.

Usual wait, and a new agent.

[Agent Haseeb] We understand it’s frustrating when you’re expecting a dish to come at a certain temperature and it doesn’t.

Good start

As a one-time courtesy, we’ve made an exception for this first time and we’ve added a £2.99 remaining amount of credit to your […] account.

Sigh.

[Me] Really? We bought over £30 of bad food and get £3.78 back? Refund it to the payment card; we won’t be using Uber Eats again, so credit is no use to us.

How many agents does one conversation need? Let’s find out.

[Agent Asadullah] Thanks for getting back in touch.
As you were already refunded for the item that was missing from your order, we will be unable to provide any further adjustments as this would go against our policy.

Take a deep breath, Ian.

We would strongly recommend you rate your restaurant and meal in the Uber Eats app. [blah, blah blah].
If there is anything else we can help you with please let us know.

[Me] I’ve already rated the order as low as I can. I’m now telling you to refund me as I don’t want credit. We won’t be using Uber Eats again.

[Me] And, please actually read the messages. I’ve never said an item was missing.

[Me] (after a long wait) If you aren’t going to refund me, please tell me how to raise a complaint.

At this point, all hope is lost, toasties are being toasted, terrible take-away is being trashed, and I’m poised to uninstall Uber Eats and demand my account be deleted. Rah! Consumer power.

When suddenly…

[Agent Asim] We’re sorry to hear that your order didn’t meet your expectations. We’ve arranged a refund of £25.87 for this item. It should return to your account within the next 3–5 business days.

Furthermore we added credits of £4.85 in your account which you can use in future orders.

Asim, you legend! You fought against the corporate overlords and overturned years of policy that Asadullah was too afraid to challenge. You’ve saved a customer from jumping ship to a rival (Deliver-who?) and made my toasty taste like sweet victory.

Or did he?…

Part 2 is now available here