Worst company to do business with award...

Tell us the worst company you've ever dealt with.

which garage should i name?

Fountain Tire. I know a guy who's gathering bogus/inflated work-esitimates from people. I took my mother-in-law's car to one to get new tires put on. They called me in the afternoon and said the car needed $2,200 of other work done immediately - and they were recommending that it not be driven until then - saying it was hoses, belts a few other things including a ball-joint. I told them her car's not worth that much and they said they would only release it if she signed a paper saying that they advised that it only be towed out of their possession. I went and got it regardless. The next day she took it to the corner garage that she'd been dealing with for 20 plus years (who normally fixes her car) and he relaced the balljoint for $159 - saying none of the other stuff was true. The next time I was at that FT I told the manager of this - and that I gave a copy of that estimate sheet to a guy who was collecting them (from that particular FT). He was ashamed of it. They take advantage of people who know little about cars and trust them (a big name like FT). In this racket of car repair - people need to get a few estimates done.

i remember maybe 17-20 years ago one of those little shops said they couldn't give me back my car unless i had a few things done. finally told them id be back the next day.

got it done for a quarter of the price they wanted, elsewhere.

fricking Air Canada. We have more Aeroplan miles than God, accrued via frequent travel ON Air Canada, and they will never, ever allow us to use it for travel when and where we need it. If you don't use them up? They take them away. They recently made 17,000 points of mine vanish, because they weren't used up by some arbitrary date. We've been saving on hubby's card, so the old ones on my card were just sitting there. I decided to transfer them to hubby, and then they wanted to charge me well over $100 to move the points to hubby! Dick all for merchandise that you can get at that level. So I didn't use them. POOF! Gone!

They constantly skimp on what services they provide in flight, their service is atrocious in the airport, when things go wrong they are hell to try to negotiate with, but have no qualms screwing you over repeatedly. The last two flights I took out to Manitoba from Vancouver were delayed by over an hour because of "baggage issues" and they've now destroyed THREE of my children's car seats via their baggage handling.

frick you, Air Canada. frick you right in the ear. Hard.

Don't forget their octogenarian stewardesses. Most of whom were recruited during Orville Wright's inaugural flight.

If you NEED to use your points because they are about to expire anyways you can always cash them in for their Aeroplan branded prepaid Amex. They convert at 14,000 for $100 I believe. You can also exchange at roughly the same amount for Futureshop giftcards as well as many others.

That being said, redeeming Aeroplan points for anything but travel sucks for the value you get per point. I've never had trouble redeeming for travel, but I'm the type that books trips 6 months or more in advance. If your hoping to use them for something like a weekend trip to Vegas or Toronto with less than 3 months notice, you've got a snowballs chance in hell of getting a ticket.

If the points are nearing 7 years in your account and you haven't used them you may as well burn em for some gift cards instead of letting them just evaporate. As long as you understand the rules, Aeroplan is pretty simple. To keep your account active you must make at least one transaction per year...can be as simple as using your Aeroplan Visa, buy gas at Esso, shop at Pharmaplus or convert you Club Sobey's points. And all points expire 7 years from the day the were earned. This prevents people from hoarding millions of points and creating a huge future liability for the program, as well as a potential future scheduling nightmare.

It's all about understanding the rules, and using them to your benefit. Sites like Flyertalk have experts for maximizing the value you can achieve.

"It's all about understanding the rules, and using them to your benefit."

or the companies could just not be a$$holes? nah.. that aint gonna happen damn union run mega large companies being run for profit!

IMHO, they're not being a$$holes on the Aeroplan issue. The rules are pretty clearly stated, one just has to be bothered to read them. There's only 2 real rules you need to know:

All points expire 7 years from day they were earned AND your account goes inactive after 1 year with no activity.

The only other thing you need to worry about is that obviously there will be a limit to the amount of reward seats they can book on any given flight, so the earlier you book the better. You can book up to 12 months in advance, and in fact using Aeroplan for business class or better tickets is probably the BEST use of any rewards points possible. For a 25% increase in points required you can get a ticket that can be 5-8x more than a regular economy ticket. For 120,000 points you can pretty much do a round the world, 4 stop trip in business class. Try looking up what full fare is for a trip like that....typically $10-15K.

Long and short of it is, Aeroplan blows for people who want to use it for spur of the moment trips in the next 3 months or less. They ROCK for people who use it for long haul flights planned well in advance. Much better than Airmiles in this regards, as if you plan your trip on Star Alliance members and avoid Air Canada aircraft your taxes are ridiculously low. Airmiles sucks for taxes and airport fees.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but does A/C's union administer the Aeroplan points program which A/C spun off long ago? How do they fit into the Aeroplan discusion exactly?

You work for air Canada?

You said one thing that stands out above all else: the points were "earned".

So this notion that they can dismiss them because of inactivity is arbitrary and heavy-handed. I accept they are clearly written in the rules. So what? That makes them a$$hats. Ditto making people go through hoops to redeem these points.

I'll betcha their rules don't say "Aeroplan blows for people who want to use it for spur of the moment trips in the next 3 months or less" when buying and paying for air Canada tickets.

grumpyrom wrote:Also, correct me if I'm wrong but does A/C's union administer the Aeroplan points program which A/C spun off long ago? How do they fit into the Aeroplan discusion exactly?

simple

I was trying to pull the legs of the people who defends unions AND the people who defend big business

Agree Jondo, Fountain Tire sucks. As for Air Canada, yep, suck too on the Aeroplan, We had scads of points and were told we had to"buy " them Back. Never bothered with the issue since i heard there was a class action floating around years ago.

Now i get my tires at Canadian Tire or WalMart, fly WestJet and use Air Miles ( haven't had to purchase an airline ticket in over 6 years). Problem solved.

The beauty of competition. Imagine if we opened our sky's to true competition...

grumpy old man wrote:You work for air Canada?

You said one thing that stands out above all else: the points were "earned".

So this notion that they can dismiss them because of inactivity is arbitrary and heavy-handed. I accept they are clearly written in the rules. So what? That makes them a$$hats. Ditto making people go through hoops to redeem these points.

I'll betcha their rules don't say "Aeroplan blows for people who want to use it for spur of the moment trips in the next 3 months or less" when buying and paying for air Canada tickets.

Nah, I don't work for A/C...I'm just a little shocked at the difficulty some people clearly have with Aeroplan. It's not an issue I've ever experienced. Perhaps it can be a bit of a pain if one is uninformed, but to me the benefits outway the potential difficulties.

My initial comments were made to try and help explain some of the better ways to use points if they are about to expire, and to better explain the 2 or 3 main rules all Aeroplan collectors should know.

Deank wrote:

grumpyrom wrote:Also, correct me if I'm wrong but does A/C's union administer the Aeroplan points program which A/C spun off long ago? How do they fit into the Aeroplan discusion exactly?

simple

I was trying to pull the legs of the people who defends unions AND the people who defend big business

I know...just poking back at you a bit. BTW, I would never defend big business.

Heh heh heh Really?

Despite my company's adherence to them, I absolutely hate DHL's customer service.

I have been dealing with shipping and logistics companies for nearly twenty years, and nobody, NOBODY has had more of our packages disappear without a trace than DHL. Their customer service (so far removed from the front line) are almost completely useless. Even if you have the waybill number (and tracking numbers for each individual piece), they still can't tell you where the packages are...

You sir are correct DHL blows. I've had them deliver my package down the street and then tell me it's sitting at my back door. Only after asking them what adress did they deliver to did they realise the dropped it off 20 numbers down the block. Idiots. They then told me I could go pick it up from the house myself or they would send the driver out the next day " if there are problems". I ended upmfeelin like a thief going over to pick up my own package from someone elses back door.

^ LOL, pretty typical.

The manager of our Leduc, Alberta branch refers to DHL as "Deliver Half Later".

I know that all the major courier companies lose packages (it's bound to happen amongst the thousands of packages shipped every day), but DHL seems to lose more than the others in our experience.

Deliver half later seems to be the mantra of many of these courier companies. And they don't seem even remotely concerned about it...

Worse yet we often don't realize that a package or two is missing until later. Then we have to figure out who or what is the problem. Did the shipper misship or did the carrier lose or misplace something?

One thing that's annoyed me for years: when a "next-day air" shipment goes missing for a couple of days, they will still charge you for next-day service and will not adjust the bill.

I wasn't surprised when I heard DHL was leaving the US market altogether, because they "couldn't compete" with Fed Ex or UPS.

Hah! Farging icewholes... Withhold payment...

Re: Aeroplan & travel booking: I cannot EVER get a flight into Miami or Fort Lauderdale, even up to 18 months in advance, for four people when I need it. Unless I want to use 500,000 points, instead of the 100,000 points it should be costing. Jacksonville? Maybe. Sarasota? Crap shoot. Savannah, GA? Sure. But that doesn't help me when I need to get to Miami or Lauderdale to connect w/ a boat etc. Same problem w/ Aeroplan and Europe. Cannot get flights into Venice when I need them. Even 2 years in advance. For two people OR four people. Unless I top up with cash OR blow 5x times the points normally required to fly to a European destination. I've had no problem booking Aeroplan for short-haul, intra-provincial flights on short notice (i.e - Vancouver to Prince George in a week) for the normal # of points. We have also never had a problem cashing out for merchandise i.e) watches, luggage but run into problems with the long-haul flights EVERY TIME.

I do realize they stipulate that 1 year inactivity (which is what zapped my points) etc. isn't a secret. It's just really POOR practice. I'm sure it saves them major money, but it's bogus. People like my father have flown to Europe and back several times, spent assloads of money on flights, and earned their points. Rescinding them because he doesn't know how to use the internet to cash in and doesn't get updates from them regularly? Evil. Not allowing me to transfer my points to my spouse without paying per point? Total bullshit.

There was a time, when I worked for Marriott, that I dealt with a lot of A/C and British Airways folks on a day in and day out basis. I always felt bad for the A/C people, who seemed very nice, and took a lot of sh1t. But the corporate entity ground them down, and eventually they were so cut back, so bare bones, that the few who survived the axings were bitter and angry. I've never had the problems with West Jet, Lufthansa, BA or JAL that I have with A/C. United? Same problems. They're the A/C affiliate in the US. No wonder...

ETA: I agree with the DHL assertion. If you want something you're shipping to arrive sh1t-kicked beyond recognition, or just completely lost, DHL is your company. As much as I love to hate Purolator, they are light years ahead of DHL.

CIBC makes baby Jesus cry, but that may be my personal experience.

CitizenSourpuss wrote:
ETA: I agree with the DHL assertion. If you want something you're shipping to arrive sh1t-kicked beyond recognition, or just completely lost, DHL is your company. As much as I love to hate Purolator, they are light years ahead of DHL.

They're all like that. I worked for UPS for only two hours before I walked off the job in disgust. Apparently "Fragile" means "kick it a few times more" to some people.