I read Frugal Scholar’s post, Virgin Mobile: Worst Customer Service Ever: Move Over Chico’s, and thought this would be a great time to bring up the companies I truly despise and the ones that I sincerely appreciate.

Crappy Companies:

• Fedex – My most recent experience has convinced me to avoid them as much as possible in the future.  There will be a post about it as soon as everything is wrapped up.
• Comcast – Multiple awful customer service experiences regarding glitchy hardware after Time Warner was bought out by Comcast caused us to move to AT&T U-Verse.
• General Motors – As I posted earlier this week, I will never give Chevy my money again after the multiple problems due to poor materials on my Aveo in the last 6 months even though it has less than 42,000 miles.
• Chase – When we were moved over from WAMU, Chase double-charged our $900 mortgage payment and took a little more than 3 weeks to credit it back to our account.  We actually received the credit exactly 5 days before our next mortgage payment was due.
• Gentle Dental – Wiggled while they gave me the shot for pain (that hurt ALOT) and then kept accidentally spraying me in the face since the doctor and assistant were too busy talking to each other to notice.

Front-Running Favorites

• ING Direct – Unknown to me, ING accidentally paid a bill 3 days before my scheduled billing date last year, called me to explain their mistake as soon as they notices their error, offered to waive any overdraft fees that might occur (not a problem since we have $1000 padding built-in to our checking accounts), and credited my account with the lost interest.  I was most impressed by the actual call explaining the mistake mere hours after they found out.
• Discover Card – Two businesses have accidentally double-charged my card and Discover was easy to use online and over the phone.
• AT&T U-Verse – I called to extend my discount rate since my salary had been frozen for another year, but they had already extended it an extra 2 months.  The rep also secured me an additional $10 one-time discount just because I called and “AT&T is trying to help out customers that are suffering in this economic climate”.  The icing on the cake is that the next bills were actually for the stated amounts and continue to be correct!  That never happened when Comcast offered us a credit.

What companies have lost or earned your continued business?