Guardian Readers Detail Battles with Big Companies

Guardian readers from across the US wrote in to tell us about their battles with big companies, and the time, expense and emotional toll exacted by businesses they say are prioritizing the bottom line over all else.

The top takeaway: people really, really don’t like AI customer service.

Readers’ main complaint is not that it is impersonal, it’s that it doesn’t work for anything but the most basic customer service tasks, like checking balances, changing addresses or making payments, things most customers are doing online anyway.

About one in 10 of the reader responses we have received so far called out automated chatbots as endless doom loops, a massive time suck, and steep hurdle to resolving product problems and fraud claims.

“It’s the bots. Daily battle with stupid, useless, brain-dead bots on the phone, trying to reach a human being to learn or explore or resolve some damn thing,” wrote a communications professor from a university near Boston. “Infuriating, exhausting, debilitating, depressing, enraging. Ugh.”

After that, frustrations with telecom overcharges and installation, declining product quality everywhere from tractors to garden hose accessories and pantry staples, and struggles with finance companies and health insurance coverage topped the list.

Overlapping failures

Many readers cited overlapping company failures that created nightmare scenarios: hundreds of dollars lost, days spent trying to rectify mistakes, scrambles over Thanksgiving dinner and health-threatening lapses.

When her local CVS said at the last minute it would not be able to fill a daily prescription for six weeks, Melanie Cooley, an Arizona educator, tracked down a pharmacy that had it in stock in another state, and arranged for it to be shipped to Indianapolis, where she would be traveling. The express delivery arrived days late, then went to the wrong mailbox.

“It took almost three weeks and assists from friends and family in three different states to get one bottle of pills,” she wrote. “I spent an extra $50 on top of my co-pay to get the meds to me.” She was off the medication for two weeks. CVS said: “Our pharmacy teams make every effort to ensure patients have access to the medications they need.”

Carol Murdock, a former healthcare executive in Nashville, said she spent an entire day trying to reach a human to resolve a fraudulent $629 charge on her AT&T bill for a phone line she doesn’t own. “I think this is their entire goal. Exasperate consumers until they give up. It is maddening,” she said. The bill is still outstanding, she added. AT&T did not reply to requests for comment.

One California tech employee told the Guardian she spent days trying to get a Rebel baby stroller rerouted to a new city via FedEx after it didn’t show up when promised. Multiple phone calls, emails, contradictory information from two companies and additional charges later, she resorted to asking a friend to bring it on a flight.

“What stands out is not a single mistake, but the amount of time required to navigate a fragmented customer-service system,” she wrote. Rebel told the Guardian it was “continuously looking for ways to ensure our customers receive clear, timely support when these situations arise”.

When his Samsung oven and range stopped working soon after he bought it, Josh Dayberry from Indiana spent hours being transferred on the phone, then hours more waiting for a repairman who never showed. Ultimately, he bought a cheaper range to cook Thanksgiving dinner.

The Samsung still sits in his garage after another round of hours-long phone calls. “I have plenty of resources and am also a licensed attorney. I can be quite stubborn. For me to not be able to resolve the issue was in my mind quite remarkable,” he writes. Samsung did not reply to requests for comment.

Hope and despair

Many who wrote were in their 60s and 70s, and said they dreaded a retirement marked by pinching pennies and battling companies.

Carroll Strauss, 77, an attorney in California, wrote about her two useless HP printers and a barrage of unwanted subscriptions. “Even the Veterans Administration where I get my healthcare is impossible to get on the phone … I have never felt so hopeless in my life,” she said.

Notable in a country known for its optimism and robust embrace of market forces, some readers say they are doubting the entire economic system.

As a 35-year-old software engineer in Pennsylvania wrote: “There is no compelling reason to want to stay in this country any more … The products that we buy are garbage and don’t last or need an app to use the product … You have to spend countless time researching, arguing with customer service reps and working around invasive ‘features’.” Everything is a “cash grab or a scam”, he added.

Bill from Massachusetts criticized “endless waits on phone calls to medical facilities and insurance companies to get simple questions answered” and phone trees and FAQs that don’t help. “All because companies value slashing payroll to boost returns for stockholders,” he said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some readers are offering the country’s politicians some advice: “If someone ran for the presidency on the single issue of protecting consumers from predation, and didn’t fall for the Republican-Democrat culture war stuff, they’d be elected,” wrote Los Angeles’s Jesse Bufford. “Why that doesn’t happen is an important question that I’d love the Guardian to look into.”