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The Worst (Large) Customer Service Companies On Earth
Some companies have truly mastered the art of making their customers feel invisible, with customer service that’s as helpful as a broken pencil. Whether it’s mind-numbing wait times, clueless representatives, or a complete lack of care for their customers’ issues, these businesses have taken incompetence to a totally unmatched level.
If you’re looking for a crash course in frustration, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s a rundown of the worst customer service companies on the planet – where your problems will be ignored, and your patience will be tested to its true breaking point.
Phone
1-855-424-7262
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X Handle
@Airbnbhelp
Other Contacts
1. Airbnb
Extremely long response times, repetitive copy/paste answers, terrible refund policies and an eye-rolling playbook are just a few of the reasons that ABB reigns King on this hellish list, and there's certainly no shortage of customer service terror that they've inflicted on their 150 million+ users. They've been pretty bad at the Support game for a while now - most notably since the company canned a lot of its staff back in February 2020 after deeming them "non-essential to core business functions" - and they've gone steadily downhill ever since.
Their list of grievances is long and disheartening, but let's showcase some of the major red flags:
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Ignoring people for days on end, regardless of the severity of the complaint
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Denying full refunds to almost anyone, even if it's because of Covid or a natural disaster.
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Letting hosts cancel at the very last second and leaving guests stranded in a foreign city. We're talking about family vacations, graduations, anniversaries, etc. that are just totally ruined because of this, and the worst part is that they don't help anyone relocate.
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Letting bad-acting guests and hosts decide if they want to compensate the other party for their bad behavior. Not a typo folks. If you're a host and a guest ruins your stuff, you almost never get compensated for it unless the guest says it's ok to take it from their security deposit. You can imagine how well that goes.
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Canceling or suspending accounts on a whim without telling people why (including loyal superhosts, who generate the most money for them). When users ask Support about it, they often tell them that they are not obligated to provide them with a reason.
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Copying and pasting around 90% of their messages from a script, regardless of the situation, which is often tone-deaf.
And when I say they deny refunds to almost anyone, I wasn't exaggerating.​​​​
Remember when those wildfires were ravaging Maui? No refunds for that either.
As hinted above, their @Airbnbhelp Twitter handle is nearly useless even in the midst of emergency situations, so your best bet is to call them if you're willing to stomach 1-2 hours of hold time. Don't count on that to help much either though since they'll typically put you through an endless maze and give you canned responses in an effort to get you to give up. Often the best (and only) solution is to dispute any questionable charges with your credit card or to sue them in Small Claims Court - the latter of which may be helpful if you have damages inflicted on your home.
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CEO Brian Chesky has known about this problem for a very long time and has swept it under a rug despite numerous pleas for change. Even he admits that "reliability is Airbnb's Achilles Heel" but has chosen to purely focus on product design and new features despite that. That's certainly a losing strategy for any service platform, and it makes you wonder how long he can keep this charade going without feeling the consequences at some point.
Hotels are a much more reliable (and safer) option these days, so if you run into problems then take it as a sign from the short-term rental gods that it's your time to move on and don't look back. If you do need to use Airbnb as a guest though, maybe for a large group, then you absolutely MUST book with a Superhost to effectively minimize your chances of disaster.
Phone
1-800-266-2278
X Handle
@xfinitysupport
Other Contacts
2. Comcast (Xfinity)
You don't have to look very far to find the biggest Customer Service offender in Telecom, and this company has worn it as a badge of honor for nearly two decades now. That's because Comcast - or their mess of a home/TV/internet service called Xfinity - is often the only cable provider in many parts of the U.S. and tons of helpless people are pretty much forced to stomach their lack of timely and/or helpful service.
There are a long list of issues that plague this company's 32 million broadband customers, but the most common ones are below:
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Service outages that last for days or even weeks, with little to no communication or expectations given to Customers in the interim.
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Incredibly poor and disorganized phone support that make it difficult to speak to someone to resolve even the most basic issues.
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Persistent billing discrepancies that are hard to decipher. Often it takes multiple agents hours to figure out why a certain price changed or how to remove a certain (unsolicited) charge.
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Agents that make it notoriously difficult to cancel or downgrade the service. This was famously highlighted in a 2014 phone call where an agent was oppressively denying a refund request, and amazingly, it hasn't gotten much better almost 10 years later.​
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A noted lack of empathy among Agents. This is coupled with the fact that the company outsources a lot of its Support staff and trains them to read directly from Scripts for almost all of their responses, much like Airbnb does.
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Their @xfinitySupport handle on Twitter is somewhat responsive to complaints, but unfortunately it's a facade since the rest of the process from there on is a convoluted mess. On any given day you're bound to see hundreds or thousands of frustrated people complaining about the same, repetitive problems:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
And that's just about what you would expect from a Monopoly that has absolutely zero incentive to change. Even more frustrating is the fact that they had the nerve to raise rates across the board in December 2023 citing "rising programming costs while investing in our network to provide the best, most reliable Internet service in the country". Not only does that reek of corporate buzzword PR spin, but it couldn't be any farther from the truth.
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This company hasn't cared about Customer Service for as long as their Internet and Cable service has existed folks, and it's obvious that they never will. If you have any other alternatives - including Starlink internet - you will be SO much better off for it. Avoid this company at all costs.
Phone
None. Seriously.
X Handle
@Uber_Support
Other Contacts
3. Uber
If you love getting terrible Support from sharing economy platforms then you're in for another treat, because Uber virtually uses the same head-scratching playbook that Airbnb does. Like ABB, the company has no shame in leaving their customers in the dust, and you're bound to see hundreds or even thousands of unresolved complaints against them on X on any given day. The bulk of these pertain to cold/undelivered food items, faulty ride cancelation charges, and ongoing months-long driver background checks, but I've literally seen it all from this company so the madness doesn't end there. As far as I can tell, it's been this way for a long time and it continues to get worse, to the detriment of their 75 million+ global users. And even more discouraging is that CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has no plans in sight to fix this whatsoever, so the future doesn't look any brighter.
Bots and canned responses are a staple from their extremely unhelpful @Uber_Support Twitter handle (another uncanny similarity to @AirbnbHelp), and since the company's been "ramping up phone support in select locations" since October 2019, you can't even call them even during an emergency, which people tend to want to do, ya know? It's just a total nightmare whether you're dealing with a ride or a food issue or a background check, and you're better off with Lyft, Via, Seamless, DoorDash or Delivery.com because of it.
On top of that, it's also extremely difficult to get refunds even if the fault clearly lies on them, a driver or a restaurant, so you'll often need to dispute these with your credit card company. Here's what their generic response typically is in this situation, which I've dubbed the Refundless Message of Doom™:
Apparently Uber thinks that we should just pay it forward and rate the restaurant instead of giving a hoot about getting fair compensation for this. This is one of the laziest cop outs you'll ever find from a Support Department and it just goes to show how things are run over there.
They don't really fight credit card disputes very often so you'll probably get your money back, but why should you have to go through that hassle in the first place? There are plenty of better options out there (especially for food delivery), so make sure to use them.
Phone
1-877-227-7481
X Handles
@ExpediaHelp
@TravelocityHelp
@OrbitzCareTeam
@HotelsComHelp
@Trivago
@Hotwire
@Egencia
@vrbo
@ebookers
@CheapTickets
Other Contacts
4. Expedia Group
If we combined all 13 of Expedia Group's support-deficient companies and reviewed them as a conglomerate, they would potentially be #1 on this list. But for simplicity's sake let's just use Expedia as the shining beacon of despair.
For those of you who are curious, here's their whole list of grave Support offenders:
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Expedia
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Travelocity
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Orbitz
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Hotels.com
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Trivago
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Hotwire
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Egencia
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VRBO*
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ebookers
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CheapTickets
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CarRentals.com
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Expedia Cruises
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wotIf
*still better than Airbnb
I don't know why the heck this company follows a "Marketing 100%, Support 0%" mantra, but if you didn't know any better you'd guess that Thanos took an unexpected trip over there and decided to wipe out their entire Support organization one day and they just kept it that way. The common complaint against them on Twitter is these insane call wait times, which you really have to see to believe. We're talking 2, 3, 4 or even TWELVE-hour wait times here folks, which just seems totally unfathomable to me for users in a time-sensitive travel bind. What could this team be doing to keep somebody in a queue for over 720 straight minutes, and does that mean that hundreds of other people are actually waiting that long? It's scary to think about, and it's been this way for a long time now.
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Twitter isn't really helpful at any of their companies unfortunately, as you would expect from a firm that spends next to nothing on Customer Service. At Expedia in particular, the @ExpediaHelp Customer Service account is usually an unresponsive mess and takes an eternity to get things resolved (if ever), and it's nothing short of maddening. Thankfully they did spend a lot of time and resources to run a very expensive commercial during the Oscars, work on a sponsored campaign with Joe Jonas and sprinkle Captain Obvious hotels.com advertisements all over the NFL and NBA Playoffs, so I guess that's where their priorities lie.
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I totally feel for all of the people who are scrambling to change their travel plans or get a refund from this company or any of their sister companies, and I hope you all succeed at some point. If you're one of the lucky ones and you do not have anything booked with Expedia Group at the moment, avoid all of their companies at all costs and use a different service like Kayak instead. If you're not so lucky though, then be prepared to go the credit card dispute or Small Claims Court route if you must, because your other options are severely limited.
Satan Score:
5.0
TrustPilot:
BBB.org:
Phone
1-866-570-6466
X Handle
@AmericanAir
Other Contacts
5. American Airlines
We're all well aware that the Airline industry has been considerably bad at the Customer Service game for a while now, as is often the case with Oligopolies. And there's certainly a good chunk of the crew that deserves to be shamed for it. But some of these companies are just a little bit better than the others (or in the rare case of Virgin, a lot better) while others just feel like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel and doing the bare minimum for their customers.
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In American's case, it's the latter. Not only do they have one of the worst Trustpilot and Better Business Bureau scores out of any major US airline, but the self-proclaimed "world's largest airline" is notorious for delayed flights and mishandled baggage - both of which they rarely compensate people for even when it's their fault. In the case of the first scenario, which happens a lot, you'll rarely get a food or hotel voucher from the airline and you're pretty much on your own, especially if they force feed you "weather" as the reason for the delay even when the optics are questionable. Every time this has happened to me - including one time where they only gave me 45 minutes notice and forced me to book a hotel room - they refused to give any details on the weather-related issues and kept it completely hush hush. What is there to hide exactly?
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And on top of that, as if this wasn't bad enough already, I discovered that the company recently trained their Customer Service Agents to not escalate anything because "frontline agents are now given the authority to make these types of decisions." How fun!
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Here it is in writing after I thought I must have misheard it on the phone.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
I guess there's a first time for everything, but even the worst CS offenders will at least escalate you to a Supervisor at some point (often to no avail, but still). The fact that AA won't let you do that even for serious time-sensitive issues is troubling at best and just pure evil at worst.
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For those of you who know Yours Truly, you know that I wouldn't just accept that at face value and give up. I eventually did get begrudgingly escalated to a Supervisor after a lot of back and forth, but that person ultimately sounded annoyed that I had foiled their company's grand plan to avoid these from happening. She told me that Management was "100% onboard with letting frontline agents make all of these decisions" and actually asked me if I escalated this because I thought I was going to get her to cave. Then she hung up on me and that was that.
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Bottom line is, this airline has very little incentive to change and they're certainly one of the worst at Customer Service. If you can fly Delta instead I would choose them in a heartbeat, but if you're stuck with AA then make sure you book the trip on a credit card that has travel insurance. That's what saved me with them multiple times and it may very well save you too.
Satan Score:
4.9
TrustPilot:
BBB.org:
Phone
1-888-908-7930
X Handle
@CoinbaseSupport
6. Coinbase
If Bitcoin is the future as many people have projected (and some would even swear by), then get ready to hold your horses folks. Because the Customer Service at one of the world's largest Cryptocurrency exchanges is even more volatile than the security itself, and it's by an insanely bad margin.​​​​​​​
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Here are some of their glaring issues, just to name a few:​​​
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Making users wait forever to get in touch with someone (typically over 5 hours, but could be much longer)
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Unhelpful responses or no responses at all from customer support.
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Account Restrictions and Freezes without clear reasons, making it impossible to access funds or perform transactions.
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Security Problems that lead to accounts being compromised or hacked, with many users expressing frustration over the lack of assistance in resolving these security concerns.
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Difficulty in Closing Accounts, with those efforts being met by a lack of communication, inability to access their account, or unresponsive support channels.
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CEO Brian Armstrong is at the helm of this mess, and he doesn't seem to mind this very much. In 2021 he told the Twitterverse that Coinbase was going to ramp up their Support Team by 5x and, like his counterpart Brian Chesky (see Airbnb, above), essentially blew hot air at us since it did nothing.
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In fact, he didn't mention his Support Team at all for another 3.5 years, until he recently admitted that this department is essentially AI:
I'll let his Customers' responses to this tweet do the talking here since they can vouch for this better than I can:
You get the point. Who wants to speak to a bunch of robots whenever you're dealing with time-sensitive trading issues?
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Did I mention that some people have had cases open for two and a half years and have resorted to tagging Brian as a result?
Shameful folks.
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There are plenty of other Crypto exchanges out there to choose from and you should spare yourselves from having to deal with this one if you can avoid it. Because when push comes to shove, the last thing that you want to have to do when you're dealing with tens of thousands of dollars is to get stuck in a loop with a poorly trained bot.
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Don't be fooled by the TrustPilot score either. There are thousands of 5-star reviews that are less than a sentence long and are obviously being planted there by the company itself (unsurprising to say the least).
Phone
1-800-247-9297
X Handle
@British_Airways
Other Contacts
7. British Airways
We've all seen at least one version of the story of Cinderella, where a young girl living in awful circumstances is flanked by a hideous stepmother and two terribly evil stepsisters.​ Well, take those stepsisters and turn them into airline companies, and you've basically got American Airlines (see above) and British Airways.
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​Both are the largest airlines in their respective countries and both of them have absolutely failed miserably at Customer Service on a large scale for decades now. If you didn't know any better, you'd think that they copied each other's systems and processes and just ran with it.
​It's tough to sum up all of BA's hefty list of grievances but here are just a few:
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Long wait times, poor communication, and unhelpful agents alone earn this company a spot in the top 10.
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Difficulty getting refunds for downgraded services, canceled flights, or damaged baggage.
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Failure to take responsibility for flight issues or system errors. It's a common tactic for airlines to use "weather" as an excuse to avoid paying the tab, and AA and BA are both very guilty of this.
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Delayed, lost, or damaged baggage with inadequate follow-up. (Sound familiar? Another one of AA's major issues).
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Lack of compensation or alternatives during flight delays/cancellations, of which there are many on this platform.
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Hidden Fees for unexpected charges for seats, baggage, and upgrades, taking a page from their Irish counterpart Ryanair.
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CEO Sean Doyle is pretty aware of this mess, and in this 2022 article he actually issued the following statement in regards to the company's failing Customer Service efforts:
"I’m not seeking to make excuses for things that should have gone better. What I am doing is making a personal commitment to you that we will build a better British Airways."
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Spoiler alert: He didn't.
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But don't just take it from me. All you have to do is a simple search for the company on X and you'll find dozens of people complaining about them on any given day.
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And if that's not bad enough, their @British_Airways handle on X is even more useless than Sean's promise to fix this. Most companies train their agents to give the ole "we're experiencing high call volumes excuse", but in this particular instance below in a lost luggage case they were STILL using that line after 3.5 months.
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You almost have to see it to believe it.
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I cannot stress enough that the Support Operations alone making this airline a huge risk to use, especially during peak season (e.g. holidays, summer vacations, etc.). And even with all of this, they're still one of the most expensive airlines out there. Why should you even bother if they don't care about you?
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Avoid them if you can folks.
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8. Ryanair
A lot of companies try to discreetly hide the fact that their customer service is a dumpster fire and pretend that it's fine.
But others - like Ryanair - have no problem telling you, to your face, that they literally just do not care about you.
Phone
+3-531-255-5212
X Handle
None for Support
(How convenient)
This would be cute and cheeky if it was some snarky Social Media intern who wanted to bring some awareness to an otherwise meh brand, but since they actually don't care and people have been losing their minds over it for years, the joke becomes...well...a lot less funny in the end.
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Their social media team is the least of their issues though. Want to talk to someone about a problem? Good luck, since Ryanair doesn’t have a support handle on X and makes that process as difficult as they possible can. There’s no real email address, no live chat with a human, and often, no hope of resolving any time-sensitive issues. Your best option might be screaming into the wind or sub-tweeting them and hoping for a meme in response.
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​Here's a quick glance of this from some recent reviews on pissedconsumer.com:
Baggage lost? Flight canceled? Charged $60 for printing your own boarding pass? Ryanair’s answer is usually "you should’ve read the fine print" or "maybe try paying more next time." Their entire business model is built around nickeling and diming people and removing every single human interaction possible, unless it’s a flight attendant yelling at you about your carry-on dimensions.​ They’ve taken budget airline energy and weaponized it into a complete lack of accountability. Most airlines at least pretend to try, but Ryanair would rather tweet a minion meme and call it a day.
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CEO Michael O'Leary has been at the helm of this disaster for 31 years and seems totally fine with it. In 2014 (20 years into his tenure), he actually admitted to the Daily Mail that Ryanair should've been better at Customer Service sooner, saying, "As I said myself if I had known being nicer to our customers was going to work so well I would have done it years ago." And yet, 11 years later, here we are with one of the least customer-friendly airlines on the planet. Unsurprising, but really sad more than anything.
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The only thing sparing them from being higher on this list is the fact that their prices are cheap and their operations are smaller than AA and British Airways - though that is hardly an excuse to provide this kind of negligence on a daily basis. Especially considering that their profits were nearly 2 billion euros last year.
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Any company that avoids the Customer Service game is certainly one that you want to avoid, and this one is no exception. If you absolutely must take them then please make sure to read all the fine print first, because dealing with any issues after the fact with them is a major pain in the behind, to say the least.
Phone
1-800-331-0500
X Handle
@ATTHelp
Other Contacts
9. AT&T
I grew a little suspicious last year when AT&T had a major outage, bungled the communication, and then offered everyone a mere $5 for it. Five dollars. That's not even enough to buy a latte while you wait for your cell service to come back from the dead.
The cherry on top? Only certain customers got that $5 credit. If you were on AT&T Prepaid, Business, or Cricket? Sucks to suck. No credit for you.
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But after diving deeper into the company, I discovered that this wasn't just a one-off fluke. AT&T has been treating customer service like an optional feature for decades, and if you’ve ever had to call them, you probably already know the pain.
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Some of the biggest reasons they've earned their ticket to Hell:
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The Great Hold Line of Doom. You’ll sit on hold for 45 minutes, only to be transferred to someone in the wrong department. Bonus points if they hang up right after "accidentally" disconnecting you.
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Gaslighting the customer is a core strategy. Whether it's about your mysterious data charges, throttled speeds, or that random international fee, they'll blame your device, your settings, or just flat-out deny it happened.
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Trying to cancel? Welcome to the Thunderdome. AT&T will try every tactic to keep you roped in, including saying your cancellation didn't go through, pushing "exclusive" deals that somehow cost more than your current plan, or straight-up billing you after your account is closed.
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DirecTV Disaster. Their $67 billion acquisition of DirecTV is widely considered to be one of the worst corporate moves of the last decade, leading to years of customer confusion and support disasters. They eventually spun it off in 2021, but the scars remain.
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"Customer loyalty" means absolutely nothing. Long-time customers regularly get worse deals than new ones. In AT&T land, loyalty is rewarded with price hikes, hidden fees, and contract lock-ins.
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Their Twitter/X support is a total PR mirage. The @ATTHelp handle might respond to your tweet, but behind the scenes it's a time-wasting bot parade or a vague "DM us" loop that leads nowhere.
Let's also not forget that AT&T's CEO, John Stankey, pulled in $26.4 million in compensation last year. Meanwhile, their support agents are reading off scripts written by corporate AI that apparently never learned the phrase, "I'm sorry we messed up."
This company has had years to fix this folks, and they simply do not care. They've known their support is broken. And instead of improving it, they decided to cut costs, automate empathy out of existence, and pass the burden to you.
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And if you don't believe me yet, this TrustPilot user says that the service is so bad that they are willing to go BACK to Comcast instead (#2 on this list). Wow.​​
So yeah, the $5 outage? Just the tip of a very overpriced, underperforming iceberg. If you're looking to switch carriers, T-Mobile seems to be the best of the bunch, but do tread carefully since this industry is just terrible at this in general.
Phone
1-800-956-4442
X Handle
@Ask_WellsFargo
10. Wells Fargo
If customer service were a crime scene, Wells Fargo would be the repeat offender with priors going back decades. They've been accused of so many things that it's hard to keep track at this point (e.g. fake accounts, illegal fees, wrongful foreclosures, etc.) and the list doesn't end there. This is a company that doesn't just treat their customers like garbage - they monetize the trash and throw their users into the landfill while sporting a hearty grin on their faces.
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Back in 2016, the public learned that this wonderful bank had been secretly opening millions of unauthorized accounts in people's names. And that's not hyperbole folks - we're talking millions here. Customers were charged fees, their credit scores tanked, and some didn't even realize it was happening. The company blamed "bad incentives" and low-level staff to try and save face, but we all know where the pressure came from: up top. Welcome to hell, population: you.
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Despite firing thousands of employees and paying over $3 billion in fines, the mess didn't stop there:
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In 2022, they were forced to pay $3.7 billion more in penalties for mismanaging loans, overdraft fees, and even wrongfully repossessing cars and foreclosing on homes.
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Their fraud claim denial process is an absolute disaster. Customers who lost thousands through Zelle scams or forged checks were routinely told it was their fault, or that they missed some fine-print deadline.
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Their support lines are a maze of scripted apologies and transfers. And even when you do get a person, don't expect real answers. You'll often get a runaround and maybe a contradictory statement from the last person you spoke to.
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They are constantly changing execs and spinning PR about "earning back trust," but nothing actually changes.
Meanwhile, their CEO Charlie Scharf - who made $31.2 million in 2024 - testified to Congress in 2022 that Wells Fargo was turning over a new leaf, saying: "We must be customer-centric in how we approach our products and services." He even launched an "Office of Consumer Practices" to ensure fairness and transparency.
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Let's see how they're doing:​
Very customer-centric indeed!
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Despite endless fines, scandals, and lawsuits, the real punishment is always reserved for the person who just wanted a place to put their paycheck and pay their rent without being emotionally waterboarded every month. Wells Fargo is the bank version of a toxic ex: promising that they've changed, while doing the exact same stuff behind your back. Unfortunately I don't see them ever changing their tune, and for that any many other reasons you should stay the hell away from them if you can.
Honorable mention
