Not every moment is going to be perfect, and no matter how positive we are, we know that things are occasionally going to go wrong.
But sometimes businesses and restaurants do something that is so drastically wrong, it's better to walk away from them forever than to give them a second chance.
Redditor Sir_Sir_ExcuseMe_Sir asked:
"What is your 'never-again' brand, store, restaurant, or company?"
LA Fitness and Planet Fitness
"LA fitness. Their cancellation policy made me so mad. Only can do it in person and you have to do it with a manager who’s there Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM."
"No issue signing me up outside those hours though. F**k LA fitness."
- Fishyswaze
"This was Planet Fitness for me. I had to cancel in person at the original location I had signed up at. The problem was, I had moved 1000 miles away at this point, so I just canceled my debit card, and got a new one with a new number."
- MrBrink10
Etsy
"Etsy. The seller issued us a full refund on some faulty chairs ($1,200!), and Etsy held it and still refused to send it to us. It’s been over a year. Typing this is making me mad again."
- paigez99
ADT Security
"ADT by far. I called them after two years because there was an issue with the alarm. They informed me that, although I was paying every month, their tech never activated our house in their system. Refused a refund."
"This was about 10 years ago in my first house. I’m not going to take any action, but I also won't work with them again."
- Germs15
Wells Fargo
"Wells Fargo. When my dad died, they made settling his accounts so hard. They kept moving the goalposts every time I came in with the last requirements they had. My dad died practically destitute. It took over a month to get ahold of the $2000 he had in his checking account."
- wombat1977
1-800 Flowers and Edible Arrangements
"1-800 Flowers."
"Actually, I never thought I would hold a grudge this long. 15 years I think. I just figured they'd be out of business by now. Shocking they aren't."
- correctingStupid
"Edible arrangements is the same way. 'Free next-day shipping' is their usual gimmicky promotion. It doesn’t mean free shipping. It means if you order 24 hours before, you don’t have to pay extra for it to go out the next day. It’s still like $15 for shipping on already overpriced fruit."
"The last time I ordered from them, I spent $70 on 10 chocolate-covered strawberries. Never again."
- CommishBressler
Bank Of America
"In 2000, I was in college and had a part-time job doing as a substitute after-school caretaking for the YMCA. My checks were small and I didn’t have much money. The YMCA had Bank of America, and I banked at SunTrust, but I figured that I could cash my paycheck at the nearby Bank of America and just have cash."
"It was pretty standard practice at the time to be able to go to a bank where a check was issued and get cash for that check."
"Except that wasn’t the case at Bank of America. Unbeknownst to me, they had a five-dollar check-cashing fee if you didn’t have an account. I was surprised when I was shorted $5 (again, this might have been a $32 paycheck). They didn’t tell me about the fee first and wouldn’t reverse the transaction (I would have happily deposited it for the full amount at my own bank, even if it meant waiting a few days for it to clear)."
"I will never go to a Bank of America. I will walk blocks to not use their ATMs. I would never set foot in their branch because they f**ked me out of five dollars 25 years ago when five dollars was a lot of money to me."
- WhydIJoinRedditAgain
Sony
"Sony. I promised the reps I talked to through my issue with them that I would share this engagement every chance I got. So here it goes. Sorry for the long post."
"I owned one of the early 55-inch LCD projection flat screen tvs from Sony. I had it for 13 months and it worked perfectly. But in that 13th month, one month after the warranty expired, a yellow grid pattern appeared on the screen."
"I called Sony Support about the issue and told them I knew it was out of warranty, but asked what I might be able to do to get it fixed. The very helpful rep went to bat for me and came back with good news."
"Apparently this was a 'known issue' for which a recall has been issued. And even though my unit wasn't under warranty they would cover it, because of the recall. They told me who to call (a fairly local authorized repair shop) and that I would need to pay the repair, send them the invoice from this shop, and they would reimburse me."
"The technician came and replaced a part (can't remember the part, but that doesn't really matter). The total bill came to nearly $1500, which I paid and sent to the address their rep shared with me in order to get reimbursed."
"About a month later, I received a letter from Sony declining to pay for the repair due to the fact that my unit was out of warranty."
"Not concerned, I called support once again and shared with them the conversation I had with their rep, and that if I had to pay for the repair I simply would have gotten a new TV for $1500, rather than repairing it, but I took this action solely based on the direction of the Sony rep."
"This new rep indicated that the rep I had spoken to originally 'would never have said that to me.' When I challenged him and insisted it was true, he volunteered to listen to the recording with me, which, of course, I welcomed, gladly. After hearing what I said was, absolutely, true, he still refused to honor the reimbursement promised because 'the rep was wrong to offer it to me.'"
"I appealed to an arbitration board, who offered me half of the repair. I accepted but told them I'd share this with everyone I ever had the chance to share it with and would NEVER purchase another Sony product in my life. And, 25 years later, I still haven't caved in and bought Sony. I invite you to do the same."
- dclawton
Red Roof Inn
"Red Roof Inn. (Which, yes, it’s a budget hotel, so my expectations were low)."
"Checked in. It wasn’t the room type we booked, called the front desk, they assured us all was fine. Went out the next day. Came back to find our key didn’t work. Turns out they put us in the wrong room, and took everything out of our room while we were gone (did not call us to tell us), and put it in their housekeeping office."
"By the time we got back to the hotel, they tried to tell us the housekeeping office was locked for the night, and we couldn’t get our stuff till the morning. I never ever yell at customer service people, h**l at the time I worked the front desk at a hotel, so I am generally nice."
"I raised h**l. Demanded management, and then demanded higher management. Finally got our stuff back late that night… they had thrown it in bags randomly and some were rather destroyed (most memorably a toothbrush in with shoes?). The manager tried to blame the whole thing on us."
- GraveDancer40
Best Buy
"This reminds me of my situation when I ordered a microwave from Best Buy. FedEx delivered it. It was in a box and I couldn’t see inside the box, so I accepted delivery. The entire glass door was shattered. Best Buy refused to let me return it, and told me to take it up with LG."
"After six months of back-and-forth calls, emails, etc, LG told me it was my fault for accepting delivery and refused to refund me. Fed Ex refused to take responsibility, too. I was out over $200, but I was adjusting to new motherhood and didn’t have the energy to pursue it further."
"Like an id**t, I gave Best Buy another chance a few years later. I needed to return a gift. The f’ers gave me the wrong type of shipping for the return and UPS returned it back to me since it had batteries. Best Buy b.s.ed me saying they would send the correct return shipping, they never did."
"I had to fly to an area where there was a store in order to return the item, which I luckily had a trip to a place that had one, but it was still messed up."
"I hope Best Buy goes out of business. They are the worst."
- Brself
Ashley Furniture
"My daughter and her husband purchased a 'leather' Ashley living room suit before I could warn them. They didn’t realize that bonded leather is just ground-up rubberized leather scraps. The stuff was peeling off within a year."
"The warranty they purchased along with it wouldn’t cover this type of failure. Total ripoff. NEVER buy Ashley furniture or anything with bonded leather."
- Alternative-Ad-1850
Panera Bread
"Panera nowadays."
- ChrissySubBottom
"What I refer to as overpriced hospital food."
- weeshebeast
"I swear they are TRYING to speed run their way to bankruptcy."
- xstrike0
Jiffy Lube
"Jiffy Lube. I smelled burning oil shortly after driving away. I had to pull over on the side of the highway. They left the oil cap off. Luckily it was still in the engine compartment. I have changed my own oil since."
- bipolarnonbinary94
"A motherf**ker tried to charge this poor young girl in front of me $70 for an air filter. He’s doing all kinds of bulls**t demonstrations showing the dirty filter saying how bad it will be for her lungs, blah blah blah."
"An old dude sitting next to me on the bench pipes up, 'You can get one of those for 10 dollars at AutoZone and replace it yourself in two minutes. It’s so easy.'"
"Jiffy Lube guy was p**sed. Absolute scumbag trying to prey on someone who was young and naive. I haven’t been back since. That was 2008."
- Professional_Bundler
Vrbo
"Vrbo."
"Their policies don't protect their customers from something like this happening: Some friends and I booked a house in San Diego (for Comic Con) and drove in from out-of-state, pulled into the driveway, and discovered other people had already checked in."
"(A door had been left unlocked, so we entered and scoped it out but then decided to go back outside and get some answers.) 20 minutes after our check-in time, as we were sitting in the driveway of the home we booked, Vrbo sent us a cancellation notice."
"The service had double-booked the property."
"So here we were stranded in San Diego, having paid a massive amount of money to attend the convention, with no available rooms anywhere (except for some exorbitantly priced options), and Vrbo wouldn't help us."
"Many hours later, we were finally able to find something, but it was pretty run-down, and still cost much more than the place we'd booked through Vrbo."
- ThePurityPixel
Geico
"Geico. After a s**tty insurance guy added me without my consent to my boyfriend's insurance after he filed a claim."
"We lived in the same building but not together, and his car was broken into and I witnessed it and called 911. My boyfriend gave the insurance guy my info thinking he needed it for the claim and then a few weeks later noticed his premium had gone way up."
"The insurance guy was like, 'Well, she has access to your car and I can't change anything now.'"
"We had to demand a higher-up and rip into them before they removed me and only after I threatened to get the state involved. Still makes my blood f**king boil."
- thewoolf44
Not "Happy" With Hooters
"Hooters. Not for any reason you might think. The staff was fine, the food was adequate. However, for the entire 40 minutes I was in there, though, they played one song on repeat."
"That song was 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams. I now also hate the song."
- heelstoo
Though it can be hard to walk away from supporting a business or product, sometimes there's no question but to turn our back on it, and it's clear why these Redditors felt this way in these moments.
From constantly moving goalposts to safety issues, these were all issues that none of us would want to deal with twice.
Keith Pedersen/Facebook
