ISSUE: Gas pump malfunctions twice in about three weeks causing excess charges to my credit card

RESOLUTION: Barely refunded my money

COMPANY RATING: One star (out of five)

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As if gas prices aren’t high enough, get a load of this...

About two month ago, I went to the corner 7-11 where I regularly fill up my tank and started pumping some gas. After the nozzle auto-stopped, I placed it back on the pump and glanced at the display to see what the damage was. To my surprise, the digits were still slowly clicking up.

I ran inside the gas station and brought out the attendant who witness the mystery pennies being added to the bill. After a stunned look or two, he asked me what I thought I owed and he paid me the difference. He also promised to have the pump tested.

Fast forward a few weeks and I was back at the same 7-11 looking to fill up my four 5-gallon gas cans to prepare for the possible arrival of Hurricane Ike.

I pulled up to the same pump and started filling up the cans with $3.72/gal gas. As I was getting toward the top of the 4th gas can, the pump slowed down considerably. I looked up to see that the display was nearing $85 (which is the maximum amount you can charge on a single credit card swipe). As expect, *bang*... a hard stop right at $85.00.

How could this be? Twenty gallons x $3.72 = $74.40... and I had not even filled the 4th can yet!

I rushed inside the station to once again alert the attendant to an issue with the pump. This time I got a song-and-dance about how it might be a display issue and that I should wait to see my bill -or- perhaps I had overfilled the 5-gallon containers.

As I looked at the receipt, it showed that I had pumped 22.795 gallons. Doing some quick math I explained that to achieve this amount of pumped gas I would have had to be pumping gas onto the ground. Unfortunately, no understanding or reason would occur that day. The attendant simply took down my info and said someone would call me.

Several days later, I had not received a call and I stopped by the 7-11 to speak to a manager. Long story short, this game of cat and mouse lasted about 3 weeks when I had finally had enough. After broken promises of return phone calls and a resolution from the manager, I called the 7-11 Corporate Hotline for some satisfaction.

At 1-800-255-0711, I was issued case #0809112984 and assured a field rep would contact me in about 24 hours. Now, 14 days later and a few calls from me to them later, I am still waiting for a call from 7-11 Corporate.

In the meantime, the gas station manager and I finally settled up. One day on my way home from work, I stopped in again to see if the store manager had taken care of the issue yet. The attendant went in the back office and came back with a handwritten note showing that they should pump $7.44 worth of gas into my car. The note arrived at this figure by multiplying 2.8 x $3.72.

I explained to the attendant that the manager (a) couldn’t do simple arithmetic, (b) forgot that I had gotten *less than* 20 gallons and (c) hadn’t taken into consideration that the gas price was now $3.98/gal. I fought with the attendant and he finally provided me $10.75 worth of gas.

The final straw came tonight when I made my third post-complaint call to 7-11 Corporate. “Is anyone going to call me back,“ I asked. ”The manager settled with you already, so there is no need,“ replied the voice. A few more minutes of insane dialog occurred before...

”So, let me sum this up before I hang up with you...“ I said. ”First, you have a pump that malfunctions twice to the same individual within a month. Second, your store ignores, deflects and doesn’t follow-through on a fix for three weeks. Then, when they do ‘fix’ the issue they don’t even settle for the right amount of gas. Next, Corporate fails to deliver on their promise to have a field rep contact me to resolve the issue...“ Disinterested customer service rep: “Yes, since the manager paid you, this issue is considered closed. Is there anything else I can help you with tonight?”

”Yes, I have one final question for you. Do you feel like you have accomplished a good day’s work and have satisfied a customer?“ And with that, I hang up.

Jeers to 7-11. I am working on finding the time to call the Better Business Bureau and the State of Florida Regulatory Commission.

ISSUE: Failure to deliver on free promotional item. Corrective action also failed.

RESOLUTION: Weeks of email and phone calls have yielded no solution. Update 3/17/08...now resolved

COMPANY RATING: One star (out of five)

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Wow! This is where a company takes a bad situation and makes it worse...

I purchased two ReadyNAS NV+ units in 2007 Q4. I did so partially because Netgear was offering a great promotional gift...a free matching Seagate Barracuda hard drive with each purchase. Here is the rebate form:


In late January 2008, I started making calls because it was well past the promised due date to receive the drives. I encountered my first issue when the phone number on the rebate form was for a 3rd party call center which wasn’t even handling this promotion! After speaking with a manager at that call center, she told me that Netgear had made a mistake when producing the promotional form. After some more prying, she were kind enough to give me a direct contact name and phone number for the person at Netgear who was responsible for the promotion.

On January 28, 2008 I made first contact with Netgear and was told the drives were late to arrive at their offices, but they’d be going out early next week and since I had called, they’d send mine in the first batch as an overnight shipment.

Three weeks later, after many unreturned emails and phone calls in the interim, I pushed enough to get another contact name of a Netgear manager in Los Angeles. As I had grown to expect, he never returned my emails or voice mails either.

I spent the next two weeks making calls and sending emails to the whole group at Netgear with no replies from anyone.

Finally, with the arrival of two DHL packages at my door in early March, I thought the issue would come to a close. Excited and hoping to put this consumer experience behind me, I opened each box only to discover they had SENT THE WRONG (AND INFERIOR) DRIVES!

Another three days of trying to contact Netgear and again silence...

...Until March 6, when DHL delivered two envelopes containing the following letter:


Finally, I thought, Netgear had seen the error of their ways and this would soon be over. In the letter, it clearly showed that they had made a mistake and they were going to correct it as quickly as possible. Wrong again. Despite me following the letter to a "T", Netgear failed on every point. They didn’t use DHL Next Day, didn’t reply to my email (ever) and only sent one drive!

I now sit here waiting once again for a promotional drive that was supposed to be delivered 9-plus weeks ago...

This is how to irreparably lose customers, piss people off and thus get top billing in my hall of shame. JEERS Netgear. No matter what you do at this point, you’ve already lost this customer.

Update (3/17/08):
The Los Angeles-based manager finally called me and apologized. He said several people were no longer with the company based on the failures of this promotion. Here is his final letter to me.

Hal,

Again my apologies for the lack of customer service. Attached is your tracking # 263718xxxxx. I’ve requested Sat delivery but it is 50/50 %. You can track tomorrow.

I took the liberty of sending you 2x750gb drives instead as you will probably need the space.

Please let me know if you need additional support.

Best regards,
[name removed]
NETGEAR


I received the drives on Saturday, and, despite the months of bad customer support and contact, consider this issue to be resolved.