What’s the worst own goal you’ve seen by a company in pursuit of a few extra quid?
Posted by DylanClegg23@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 571 comments
Vinted have come up with a genius idea - Just gone to print off my label to send a parcel and there is now an unremovable full colour advert (for Readly) taking up a 3rd of the page that I am forced to waste incredibly expensive printer ink on. Either that or I now have to work out how to go and edit this out using a 3rd party app. Whoever came up with this needs to be sacked immediately. I am now never going to use the advertised service as they are forcing me to pay to print out an ad for something I don't want. Who are Readly? I don't care as I now hate their company with the passion of a thousand burning suns! I'm selling an item for a few quid and now have to spend that in time and/or printer ink just to get the label. Amazing own goal! Would love to hear some more!
AIpersonaofJohnKeats@reddit
The enshitification of everything. Every company just seems intent on destroying quality.
Saw_Boss@reddit
YouTube is pissing me off at the moment.
I haven't watched any "Shorts", I've not played any games through YouTube. Why the fuck are these constantly at the top of my page despite me clicking the hide button until they took that away.
I just want normal videos. Without 3 hours of adverts per 15 minute video (at least I can block these).
AIpersonaofJohnKeats@reddit
It’s taking a lot of effort to not upgrade to premium to avoid ads.
Large-Fruit-2121@reddit
Firefox+unlock.
Newpipe or vanced.
Smart tube now
Never seen ads now
IBringTheFunk@reddit
Just in case anyone is looking for plugins and are getting confused, I think your phone did you dirty;
it's Firefox and uBlock. uBlock is so good that google banned it from chrome.
Justboy__@reddit
I still use it on Chtome? Still blocking ads for me
IBringTheFunk@reddit
My bad I meant uBlock Origin, forget uBlock is still there
Large-Fruit-2121@reddit
Yeah it did. Will edit the comment too!
AtomicYoshi@reddit
and if you're weary about modded/patched apps, you can even simply use a VPN set to Russia. No adverts.
ddraig-au@reddit
Smartube is excellent. Much more than just blocking YouTube ads
jibasic@reddit
I've found just using Brave to be very effective on mobile, although I've never actually tried Revanced.
micromidgetmonkey@reddit
Check out revanced.
Baconmancy@reddit
r/revanced
Fucked if you're on an iPhone though.
The_Growl@reddit
Video lite, or Brave for iOS.
elmo298@reddit
That's actually part of the tactic, to make free just insufferable enough that you use it, but are so frustrated you're more likely to subscribe to premium
NepsHasSillyOpinions@reddit
I just use adblockers and if I really like a content creator, I'll give them money via Patreon. Screw YouTube.
ddraig-au@reddit
Same. There's a few people I support via patreon
AIpersonaofJohnKeats@reddit
Well yeah
ddraig-au@reddit
Run Smartube, it's awesome
pelvviber@reddit
I'm with you on that. The only thing stopping me is the enormous cost.
AIpersonaofJohnKeats@reddit
I honestly think the cost would be worth it for me. It’s the principal though.
pelvviber@reddit
Good point, payment for reducing adverts is borderline evil in my book and the way Metro online has started to charge me to reject cookies is another level!
Xaphios@reddit
On the left just under the Home option is Subscriptions. Gets rid of most of the crap and only shows you stuff from channels you're subscribed to. Still a band of shorts near the top but easy to skip.
I'm not defending YouTube, just trying to help get round the shitty home screen.
ddraig-au@reddit
Yeah but then you miss out on new stuff, and after years of liking the right things, YouTube is awesome at suggesting great music. I listened to a great track last night - it had 4 views when I watched it
Sewishly@reddit
Somewhere in the options (personalisation? I think? I'll look in a minute) there's a way to stop them showing Shorts on a desktop; I don't know about mobiles/tablets, though.
Serenaa12@reddit
Commenting on What’s the worst own goal you’ve seen by a company in pursuit of a few extra quid?...
Along with “Shorts”, my problem is if I want to listen to a particular song, and it then playing jukeboxes after. No I don’t want 3 hours long videos.
PraterViolet@reddit
Adverts are now weaponised punishment for not paying for ad-free. The aim is no longer to persuade you to buy a product by being witty, cool, or funny - the aim is now to be as irritating as possible so that people will pay to not constantly have to sit through them.
sayleanenlarge@reddit
And you can't search anymore. You search and it returns bollocks
TentativeGosling@reddit
I watch most of my YouTube viewing on the TV, would love for someone to definitely not tell me a way of installing an adblocker through my WiFi or router, as I really don't want to do that accidentally
Yolo_Swagginson@reddit
Smart tube beta
investtherestpls@reddit
Pihole is the easiest/most comprehensive way I think..
https://pi-hole.net/
Necro_Badger@reddit
"Capitalism creates innovation across the board by encouraging competition!"
Except that the competition is "see how much shit the customer & staff are willing to put up with".
PriorityInversion@reddit
Duolingo is the latest for me, going to bin it once I reach 1000 days in the coming months.
Remarkable_Battle614@reddit
Na mate, it's decreasing the manufacturing cost of the product while elevating their retail pricing point to increase shareholder dividends.
The CEO's obligation is to the shareholders, not the customer. Once the company tanks, they move on to the next company.
AIpersonaofJohnKeats@reddit
Yes, that’s absolutely the cause.
lungbong@reddit
M&S outsourced their IT to TCS to save a few quid on staff and now their website has been down for over a month costing them £300m.
Justboy__@reddit
Wasn’t it social engineering that got them though?
GrandDuty3792@reddit
Pub near me (always packed) tried charging entry for New Year’s Eve. I think about 6 people went and the other 3 locals pubs were rammed.
Back-fired
giblets46@reddit
Previous company I worked for had lots of rules on expenses. I did a day trip to Edinburgh, looking at the return flights, the 6pm flight was >£300, the 10pm was <£50. Trying to be mindful, I booked the 10pm and spent £15 on dinner at the airport ( at airport prices that’s good value!) Needless to say following a grotty e-mail from my manager I picked whichever expensive flight, hotel, etc suited me best.
Justboy__@reddit
Reminds me of the policy my old work had. I used to buy just a coffee on a morning and expense that as breakfast. After a few months we got a snotty email from accounts reminding us that coffee doesn’t count as breakfast and would no longer be approved.
After taking a quick glance at the policy I noticed that you were permitted a hot drink WITH breakfast which meant going forward I had to spend more on breakfast I didn’t want, just to get a coffee. I pointed this out to my manager who didn’t care as long as I was in line with the policy.
gavco98uk@reddit
Myself and a work colleague were doing a long term project working away from home. It was initially forecast at 6 months, so they rented a house for us, rather than payign for hotels (it was also expected that some other colleagues might be needed up there now and again, but that never happened).
Given that we were in a house, we were cooking our own meals. The first week, we went to the supermarket, and bought about £50 worth of shopping to cover the both of us for the week (this was about 15 years ago). We also bought a few cans of beer in there too.
Accountant had a fit at us buying beer - and told us we couldnt do that anymore. Instead, they would pay us £20 per day in entitlements, rather than us sending back the receipts.
Now it was costing them £200 a week!
I made a fortune out of that job. It ended up lasting 4 years!
Drunkgummybear1@reddit
That sounds a great set up lol. Don't think I'd be able to get through £200 worth of food in a week if I tried lol. Our MD always throws us a £30 beer fund per person when we travel for work.
moubliepas@reddit
The sort of employee who, unbidden, looks at the options and thinks 'I'll take this inconvenience for the greater good, however minor it is, although nobody will ever find out or thank me' is just maybe, possibly, not worth pulling up over a single meal purchase, even without any of the wider context
s1ravarice@reddit
One of my colleagues had to fly to the US for business, they said they didn’t care about economy so just use that. Company said no policy is business class.
£8000 vs £800 at that time of year. Was during some penny pinching too.
mata_dan@reddit
Yes! I've been through that BS. I quipped I never had any issues with it when I was self employed... and now I don't get sent away anymore so win win.
Speedbird223@reddit
There is so much shortsightedness when it comes to business travel in this regard. Primarily because those who dream up business travel policy never travel for work and see it as a holiday…
For a brief period my father worked for a company where some accounting bod decided flights above a certain amount needed sign off by another Managing Director. All the MDs travelled a decent amount and often at short notice and in the day or so it took the other MD to sign off the ticket could increase by a grand or more.
This was all because one MD decided to abuse the business travel system to help subsidize his personal flights. (He’d organise unnecessary trips to corporate offices or client sites in cities where he wanted to visit and would literally walk into the office and out again so they’d pick up the business class airfare tab). However this new policy probably cost their small group alone a six figure sum annually. A better system to avoid the nonsense was devised by the group but accounting didn’t like it.
Other dumb things such as hotel caps in cities meaning you have to stay further afield but then the cost of getting to/from the office client site means you should have just paid for a more central location and saved money 🤷🏻♂️
Lazyscruffycat@reddit
Every Reach owned newspaper. Interesting looking story? Oh well let’s make it nigh on unreadable with adverts that don’t load properly, take up 90% of the page, auto playing videos etc etc. now if I click on a link and it takes me to one of their pages I just don’t bother and immediately close it. Enshittification to the max
visiblepeer@reddit
I use uBlock and Reader Mode to even consider opening a Reach newspaper website
No_Atmosphere8146@reddit
Adverts disguised as news stories.
"{local_town} woman discovers secret to shiniest toilet bowl"
DeinOnkelFred@reddit
/r/compoface is all the local news you need in one spot!
(PS Kent are winning, by a (unofficial) fucking landslide.)
Alas_boris@reddit
Kent Man / Kentish Man is the UK's Florida Man
SiteRelEnby@reddit
What about Newcastle?
ThatFilthyMonkey@reddit
I hope it’s using a hack from Mrs Hinch that costs 7p!!111
BizteckIRL@reddit
12ft.io
Copy and paste the newspaper URL into that website.
And comeback and thank me 👍
a_boy_called_sue@reddit
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Nebulousdbc@reddit
Cheers for making me scroll for ages you absolute bell. Brave is awesome but you're still a bell
a_boy_called_sue@reddit
Your tears taste good
Nebulousdbc@reddit
Your mum tastes good x
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Oh my god I don’t know how this is still a thing - I haven’t been able to read a single local news article for years so now don’t bother. It’s like the old days of the internet where you’d receive a billion porn pop ups every time you visited a web page
kumquat_may@reddit
Local news is a thing of the past, all the (county) Live pages are shit.
shesmykeylimepie@reddit
Because journalists work at a handful of regional hubs and know nothing about the area they are reporting on.
sjw_7@reddit
Our local news site lets you filter by town so you can just see what was happening where you live.
It used to work well but now when you filter it shows stories in a thirty miles radius so a bit pointless. Plus its badly written and can take them several days to get the stories online so you end up finding out about stuff elsewhere.
The final nail in the coffin is that the muppets have gone and put it behind a paywall now so want you to pay for something that ended up having almost no value in the first place.
Gutternips@reddit
https://www.thestar.co.uk/
Luckily for Sheffielders the Sheffield Star is still readable.
pinkthreadedwrist@reddit
Firefox with Privacy Badger and uBlock Origina will help with some of that.
rynchenzo@reddit
Brave browser gets rid of all that shit.
MoesLackey@reddit
4.99 adblocking app for my phone and iPad is best money I’ve spent in ages. Works on YouTube and dailymotion too! And if it misses an ad, I can still manually block it which probably does nothing except give me some grim .
Daggerbite@reddit
these are abominations.
I've taken to dropping the url into chatgpt and getting a summary from there
auto98@reddit
Not sure if it is Reach, but one of the ones that owns loads of local papers (well at least their websites, I assume it is the same company between site and paper) you can google headlines and they will come up in multiple of their sites with just the place name altered!
"New govt policy to cause X in [TOWN]" kind of thing - but clearly not given any thought specific to the town, because the article is an exact c&p
pburgess22@reddit
I think the adverts intentionally don't load properly so when you are trying to scroll or click or something it then appears so you click on the add accidentally.
blozzerg@reddit
This plus the fact they get more money from showing Sheila several ads at once than they do from Sheila simply reading one of their stories.
endoflevelbaddy@reddit
And not forgetting, to reject their cookies, they force you to pay
ThatFilthyMonkey@reddit
Wikia (site where people make their own wikis for games, shows etc) is the same, add literally take up half the page so you’re left with a tiny view of the wiki page you wanted to look at.
colin_staples@reddit
Adblockers have been a thing for some time. Even on your phone / tablet
Remarkable_Battle614@reddit
I found a PiHole will take care of 90% of that crap. All you have to deal with then is the videos, but they can be blocked by browser settings.
Lazyscruffycat@reddit
I actually just get most of my news from Reddit now and hope someone provides a summary in the thread, which I’m not sure is a great thing. There are a few local based substacks which cover issues a little more in depth but I live in London so it’s not so bad. Fuck Reach though.
Remarkable_Battle614@reddit
You do you, but realise that you're creating yourself a bubble. You should try to diversify your news intake as it will give you a better perspective on whats going on
Craft_on_draft@reddit
Basically every company when they refuse to raise salaries, lose experienced people and then hire externally for the same if not more than the original person wanted.
The cost of hiring, the cost of training, loss of knowledge etc is massive compared to raising the salary of high performers.
In a previous company, the estimated the cost of hiring and training to be close to £10k. When taking into consideration the loss of productivity, giving someone a £15k raise to keep them seems logical
Sausagedogknows@reddit
The company I worked for wanted to make a saving of 92k, they implemented redundancies, compressed 7 jobs into 2, altered start times on shifts to create 2 shifts instead of 3, got rid of some of our vehicles and stopped paying fuel subsidy and cut overtime.
This year they say they are down 292k, so they’ve faffed it by an extra 200k trying to save 92k.
The biggest issue is that two shifts don’t have the numbers to effectively complete all the tasks. There aren’t enough vehicles to get staff to the places they are needed and the fines from the clients for breaching contracts have bitten them in the arse.
The mad thing is every one on the ground level could see it coming a mile away, the management just thought we’d all do the work of 2 people, use no transport to do it and be in two places at one.
Crazy.
littletorreira@reddit
I started my career in local government in 2013. So many restructures. My council offered an enhanced voluntary redundancy, 1 month of pay for every year worked, no cap. They lost a huge number of middle manager types and had to pay out 12-20 months pay to do it. One guy I knew did 25 years and got 2 years of wages. They lost so much knowledge they had to hire some back as contractors.
ThatFilthyMonkey@reddit
We gave two main products, one has small but constant profits, the other has huge profits but can be very ‘spiky’ in how it does, so let’s focus entirely on the one that gives huge profits.
Oh wait, last year was quite volatile, let’s look at expanding the slow and steady one, what’s that? We let go all the engineers and testers who worked on it and can barely do much more than maintain it? Excellent!
It boggles the mind that we also all saw this coming, yet people who so say understand business better than the rest of us pliéed ahead anyway.
SiteRelEnby@reddit
I had a job that did the exact same thing. They then sold the steady product to another company, and everyone remaining involved in it left, including me.
Splodge89@reddit
This is EXACTLY what my company does. The “bread and butter” product lines which provided slow and steady work have been neglected for years and the market has moved on and we’ve seen this products sink in orders over the last 10 years. To the point that the profits from these are now barely registering
Meanwhile, the “spiky” stuff has had shed loads of resource pumped into it, massive investment in equipment and staff. Then it sits unused for three months while the sales team chases their tails trying desperately to get an order. When they do land one, hurrah! The best thing to ever happen to us! Then it sits unused for another three months…
We’ve gone from a stable company with a stable and reliable production schedule to lurching from profit to loss with overstock of materials to massive run outs of materials due to the volatile nature of what they’re chasing - with nothing to cover the lean times.
Durzo_Blintt@reddit
It's so fucking annoying. How is this self inflicted issue is so common is beyond me. All it takes is some common sense and looking at the facts before making a decision and you can avoid almost all of this type of mistake.
getoutmywayatonce@reddit
What hit the company I used to work for so hard was the guy who owned it insisted on being extremely hands on. His talent was the businesses offering, not the concept of business itself. Anyone else in head office was a personal friend of his, who was employed on that basis. I left when they started the “we’re a family!” nonsense to try and distract everyone from multiple jobs being rolled into one and they rejected my request for a salary increase. Seems like they’ve been on a downwards spiral since then losing key locations, several more senior staff have left and made competing businesses in the same industry that seem more successful (lol) and their glassdoor reviews are getting progressively worse.
I wonder how many small to medium sized businesses are a victim of similar circumstances - outgrowing the skills and knowledge level of the original owner who’s had a 10-20 year decent run, mistaken a borderline fluke for them personally having infallible business acumen, and letting their own ignorance run it into the ground. Pride comes before a fall type of situations.
Goregoat69@reddit
This is pretty much textbook Founder syndrome…. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder%27s_syndrome
getoutmywayatonce@reddit
Well that gave me a chuckle thank you, this whole wiki could’ve been written about him.
ShinyHappyPurple@reddit
I worked at a company that wherever possible filled positions with family and friends and only hired outsiders if they had to. That said a few of the professionals there had no personal connection to the owners.
A particular low point was when they set the 19 year old boyfriend of their daughter on as a business development manager.
getoutmywayatonce@reddit
Goodness me that’s the exact type of thing I’m grumbling about! Although I can offer a matching level of stupidity - the director of mine was the owners neighbours boyfriend. He had no experience, but was just a bit posh and “caused no bother as a neighbour.” Apparently this was worth a circa 100k salary…
PartyPoison98@reddit
All it takes is talking to anyone that works on the ground. The problem is that high level decision makers think they're fundamentally above the workers and know what's best.
MoesLackey@reddit
Years ago for a smallish company that offered employees a small cash bonus for coming up with cost savings ideas that were implemented. Cheaper for them than hiring a consultant, the ideas were actually practical/useful and I felt like we as employees had some buy in.
Mean-Attorney-875@reddit
Our company just makes these ideas a numbers game and makes it either part of the bonus or a goal for everyone as part of their PDR.... Yeh no that's not how ideas work.
Ze_Gremlin@reddit
I worked for a huge company that did that. It was in engineering so there was big money to be made from it if an outside company came up with the idea, so a small cash bonus kept their costs down and us creative..
You had to submit your idea via your manager to be approved, and then it would be taken to the higher ups..
Except our manager only ever took his "own ideas" to the board.. "what do you mean YOU came up with this new toolbox design? Nah, you must have heard me talking about it son.. I've been on about this idea for years, well before you even got here, so I doubt you could have came up with it before me.. besides, you're just a kid, been here 5 minutes. I doubt you'll have the experience to even understand half of these plans.."
Mysteriously, all submission paperwork with your name on it has been misplaced, and he's denying all knowledge of you handing it in. If you had a copy, well you clearly backdated it, which is a very serious offence.
That prick scammed some good workers out of a lot of money doing that, and thry wondered why people were leaving by the hundreds each week (very big company). Of course, you couldn't complain, cos all the paperwork was in his name and you had no proof, and all the people you'd submit a complaint to were his mates..
I saw him years later on LinkedIn, he added me as a contact, had some big fancy title job next to his name.. yeah right.. do one, ya knob...
Spencer-ForHire@reddit
The problem is, directors are never held accountable for fuckups. They will be paid off rather than sacked and just walk straight into a director role at another company.
YSOSEXI@reddit
Yep, worked as a Sales Manager in the UK, in 10 years we employed 4 Directors, all wank, they all went into new Directorships. Fucking nuts.
Nolsoth@reddit
I feel like being a director is where it's at these days, all the pay none of the responsibilities and all you need to do is spew out corporate word salad.
Youutternincompoop@reddit
AI agile innovation crypto dynamic
can I have 50 quid please?
YSOSEXI@reddit
Nah, you didn't say Bluesky or Helicopter.....
Impressive-Chart-483@reddit
Blockchain. It must involve the Blockchain.
We sell shoes? Blockchain is the answer.
Fossilhund@reddit
The further away management is from having actually been in the trenches the more disconnected their concepts of how a company actually functions will be. I worked for a government forensic lab where upper management, sitting in an ivory tower, routinely told us how many cases we "should" be producing. What, there's not enough time during the work week to meet the quota? Just stay late and come in on the weekends. Simple!
shesmykeylimepie@reddit
Same in NHS labs.
"We know your workload has doubled and we have hired no extra staff or extra analysers to help process work faster, that is still no excuse for turnaround times being one minute slower than expected though."
PermanentMoodSwing@reddit
Sounds like the same lab where I’ve handed my notice in to 😂😂
MoesLackey@reddit
They hire some over paid fresh out of Uni “consultant” whose never worked a real before to come up with these brilliant cost savings. Then when things go awry they blame the consultants and take no responsibility.
Brunel25@reddit
One thing my old boss used to say is, the problem with common sense is that it's not very common!
Broccoli--Enthusiast@reddit
my work has this coming trying to move our central MES (Manufacturing Execution System) from a 3rd party system (costs about £100k/yr) to an in house system the have hired 2 "developers" to make, without involving the IT team.
its a massive system, with hundreds or bits of hardware connected to machines for monitoring etc, databases etc
they are gonna bin all that and replace it with random shite, raspberry pits etc. i need to be gone before they try to roll it out, its gonna collapse the company.
Sausagedogknows@reddit
Years back, a very large bakery bought a robot system that would replace 70 percent of its staff and cut costs massively.
Unfortunately the robot was incredibly buggy, had all the care and finesse of a sledgehammer and would shit itself and stop 4-5 times a day.
The bakery ended up ripping it all out, rehiring people and about 5 years ago, went under completely.
Take as old as time.
notouttolunch@reddit
On the other hand, Lyon’s developed a system to help their bakery and it turned them into the countries largest computer manufacturer.
Thomas Cook who started out selling train tickets on the previous private railway routes diversified into overseas travel and package holidays.
Virgin sold records, turned into an Airline…
Amazon sold books. Now sells everything and is one of the world’s largest suppliers of web services.
General Electric makes trains, healthcare equipment, aerospace parts.
It’s not a unique story, it’s a tale as old as time. Companies diversify. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Impressive-Chart-483@reddit
At my last firm, we were looking for a new email marketing platform. As one of the lead developers, I attended multiple meetings with suppliers to determine capabilities, and possible system integration as it had to coexist with a number of other systems. Getting it right was critical, as it was primarily a tech media marketing company.
We had ruled them all out except for a couple providers, when one of the "definitely not" pile called one of the directors and offered a massive discount if he signed there and then, as they were reaching the end of quarter, and they wanted to push it though in time to bump their quarterly reports.
He of course signed up right away, without consulting anyone, leaving us with a platform that took 3.months to implement, was basically unusable, and had us repeating the process a year later.
I stopped giving a shit shortly after.
eggrolldog@reddit
We went from a shitty ERP to an in house MES (paying a developer maybe 80k 10 years ago!) to SAP ERP. Was probably a good move, but we desperately need an MES as well, however it's just too expensive, so we're basically mackling our own out using power apps and teams. Same thing though, we won't stunp the cash for a proper product when we have probably millions on quality issues that something like this could help solve. So we still spend loads of engineering time of SOP's but do not give OPs a good way to use them.
Pure-Ad-4036@reddit
lmao thats crzy frr
glasgowgeg@reddit
And that's before accounting for illness or annual leave.
If someone takes a weeks leave, they're effectively left with a single employee, what if they're then sick?
widdrjb@reddit
If my colleague still has an injury tomorrow, we're fucked for a week. We have at best a seven hour window for two full delivery routes. I can manage the B2B stuff, just, but the residentials will get left off. I've been asking my agency for two years to get someone else qualified (high value, heavy and fragile building materials), but the customer says no. Why? They don't want to pay for the week's training that the supplier demands. Next week we have only four days, so the first redelivery will be Wednesday. By then the bookings will be piling up and I'll be overwhelmed.
Sausagedogknows@reddit
Exactly the issues we’ve been dealing with for months. Nowhere near enough staff.
redsquizza@reddit
Does management have any hands on experience at the coalface? Or they're the types that have never gone down to the shop floor and just wank themselves silly to numbers on spreadsheets all day?
Ravenser_Odd@reddit
They might have started off in the real world but once people reach the management-sphere, where all they do is have meetings with other people in the management-sphere, they develop a massive aversion to leaving the bubble and speaking to ordinary staff.
I think they're afraid of us telling them things they don't want to hear.
SarkyMs@reddit
They were expecting you all to muck in and make it work.
gundog48@reddit
This was my old job, I understood it because ultimately we went bust which I knew was coming, but it was a depressing few years, just more work piled on to me as people left, went from dream job to miserable. I stuck it out because I knew leaving would have pulled the plug for everyone, but ultimately it became a excersise in ticking over as cheaply as possible and hoping for a break that never came.
ooooomikeooooo@reddit
If £10k is a one-off cost and £15k is a recurrent cost then it isn't an extra £5k it is £5k in year plus £15k x the number of years they stay in the role. If you get someone in the previous salary then they've made their money back in year 2.
I agree with your sentiment but people not understanding one-off Vs recurrent costs makes these kind of decisions look worse than they are.
SiteRelEnby@reddit
Lost productivity for training a new person for that role and loss of knowledge absolutely takes 2-3 years to be 100% resolved, unless you're talking about someone flipping burgers or stacking shelves or something.
ooooomikeooooo@reddit
Depends on the role and who you bring in. I've had new staff come in and be a big improvement and others that aren't and can take a while.
My point was mostly around the numbers in the example though rather than any assumptions of the specific people or role.
smellycoat@reddit
I hate it as much as you but the fact is that giving someone a 15k raise to keep them is almost never going to happen. Extremely difficult to justify to upper management, they'll either blame managers below for creating a key person risk, or they'll be terrified that others will find out and demand an equally massive raise and end up with either a massive promotions bill or a mass exodus.
On the other hand, finding an extra 15k "to match market rates" is very easy to justify, and in fact recruiters will be happy to help explain to your boss why it's worth the money. Everyone can pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
I know it's utterly fucking ridiculous but that's the way a lot of companies operate. Once you've got a foothold in an industry the best way to increase your salary is to change jobs every couple of years.
SiteRelEnby@reddit
I was offered a bigger one than that 2 jobs ago when I gave notice. Didn't take it (because that company was just a general shitshow and my manager was a transphobe, and already had a better offer lined up), but IIRC they offered me ~£17k extra.
Jlaw118@reddit
Happened to me in my last job. I managed my whole department for a few years but wasn’t officially contracted to it because “the job role itself doesn’t exist in HR’s system but we will sort it out.”
Then one day they put a job advertisement out for the official management role of my department, and basically said they were only taking on external applicants for it, disallowing me or my supervisor to even apply.
Kick in the teeth was that when the new manager came in, I had to train him up on everything 🤪 he was unbelievably shit at his job and I still did everything whilst he took the glory for it, and any problems he’d blame on me.
Two years later I quit cause I was sick of it. He was sacked a few months later because they realised how incompetent he was without me propping him up. I never went back though.
I hear these sort of things happening everywhere now. I rent my business premises from a storage unit facility, and there’s a guy on reception who’s worked there for nearly 20 years, he’s just applied for a management role and knocked back to give it to another manager from another site who just wants to move cities. The receptionist’s colleague has also worked for the company nearly 20 years and doesn’t even apply for the management roles anymore because he’s been knocked back so many times
Goose-rider3000@reddit
I managed a department for 7 years, then the MD decided he’d let guy he was grooming to succeed him ‘cut his teeth’ by running my dept and one other. 6 months later he had run both departments into the ground to an extent that it took over a year for them to recover. He then got made MD and I carried the can for everything that went wrong. I would add that every failure was a result of him going against my advice because he thought he knew better. When I pointed this out, I was accused of making excuses and not taking responsibility for my failings as a manager.
DukeRedWulf@reddit
"Cover your arse, and always keep the receipts"
Goose-rider3000@reddit
I definitely took some life lessons away from the whole experience. First and foremost was that most people in a professional setting will shift the blame to someone else, if they can. Safeguarding yourself against this is key.
Leapimus_Maximus@reddit
"I'm sorry, if I'm not qualified for the job then I'm not qualified to train the person who is doing the job."
Nearby_Cauliflowers@reddit
I used this before, it causes a beautiful concerned look when they realise you're serious.
IEnumerable661@reddit
I spent some time as a contractor doing various roles. Some support tasks, some development, some hardware either board or occasional infrastructure.
The amount of those jobs where I and others like me were brought in to cover bodies which had been made redundant and now they were spending 600 quid a day on me was amazing. And most of the time, I was back tracking existing code trying to decipher what knowledge had walked out the door that would have solved it in 5 minutes flat.
Youropinionhasyou@reddit
I left my previous employer for a 66% raise. They then hired a new production manager and a H&S manager to cover the workload I was doing, as well as spread among other managers. Cost them a lot I imagine.
Tasty-Ad8258@reddit
Absolutely nailed it. So many companies shoot themselves in the foot trying to save pennies, then end up burning thousands fixing the fallout. Retention should be common sense, not an afterthought.
Confident-Lie4472@reddit
Exactly! It’s wild how short-sighted some companies can be. Keeping good people isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s way more cost-effective in the long run. Penny wise, pound foolish at its finest.
Careful-Swimmer-2658@reddit
That used to happen all the time where my wife worked. Experienced people asked for a rise, were refused and left. They were replaced by people with no experience, usually on more than the experienced person would have been receiving if they'd given them the rise they asked for.
TealHemp@reddit
exactly pay the people good and tbh youll just make more
premgkar@reddit
lmao exactly
devster75@reddit
I’d love to get a £15k raise, that would help with my house move.
xerker@reddit
The civil service is the worst for this
AvocadosAtLaw95@reddit
Preach.
Civil service: we want to retain our talent and attract new talent, reducing our reliance on contractors.
Civil servants: how about a decent pay rise?
Civil service: not like that.
kestrelita@reddit
I'm local government, but same here. I've just had my performance review, I got the top score in every area. Do I get anything for this? Do I bollocks.
jonewer@reddit
I'm also public sector. Last year senior management complained that too many people were getting high scores in their performance reviews, so now we don't even get that
arrpix@reddit
Used to have performance related pay at my old job. First too many of us got highest marks so they were told to stop giving so many people the top grade. Then they decided it was still too much and they abolished it, which in theory was good, only they replaced it with everyone getting the same pay rise every year - of 1%. The top pay rise in pro was only 5% in the first place, and the lowest scores didn't get pay rises.
xerker@reddit
It's because they're not beholden to the people, but rather to the daily mail and the sun. If the civil service got industry matching pay rises then Rothermere and Murdoch might start vibrating.
Potential_Cover1206@reddit
Having dealt with senior civil service types before. About 80% are not worth industry level pay and frankly are more interested in the petty marks of their pay band than their actual work.
Content_Display_1328@reddit
Ive just had to complete a travel survey that informed me I should be walking or cycling to work due to the distance of my commute. No issues with this in theory.
Problem is I have a contracted response role with expected arrival times of 2 hours and need to transport a bootful of gear with me.
Asked for confirmation that my response time could be extended by 30 mins to walk home for my car and kit and was told no.
Mesa_Dad@reddit
Having dealt with ~~~senior~~~ civil service types before. About 80% are not worth industry level pay and frankly are more interested in the petty marks of their pay band than their actual work.
Possiblyreef@reddit
Pay peanuts get monkeys then
Thomasinarina@reddit
I'm not sure how many more 'talent attraction' or 'recruitment do-overs' I can sit through while the pay remains exactly the same.
Inevitable-Plan-7604@reddit
The civil service can't fire people though so its swings and roundabouts. It's staffed full of incompetent people that are cycled through departments because nobody wants them
jonewer@reddit
Also known as Treasury Brain - The UK is run by a clique of accountants who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing
pingusaysnoot@reddit
They wait until its too late, too. My husband asked to be transferred into another team for the experience he'd been looking for, for like 2 years. They kept saying no, he was really unhappy in his team so he found a better job, in the sector he wanted in the first place, and handed his notice in.
And they threw offers at him like it was the first they'd heard of it. Here, we'll move you to that team. We'll match your new salary. We'll let you do some more management roles, too.
He walked away without even needing a second to consider. They proved to him he wasn't valued, it was only when they realised they'd pushed him over the edge they offered the world.
zedexcelle@reddit
My old boss didn't like to train people. He said, what would be the point they'd get trained and go to a competitor. He was asked - 'what if you don't train them and they STAY!'
Virtuous-Patience@reddit
Shhhh, there is a whole consultancy world that would really rather people did’t realise this😉
do_you_realise@reddit
Exactly. Ours used to be known for paying relatively generously (it's how they were able to attract the best people!) but now they're telling their longest serving staff members "sorry - you're out of salary band, so you can't get pay rises any more unless you go for a promotion". Even though 1. those people have done nothing wrong, they've just been employed at the advertised salary, followed the published performance framework and been rewarded for that based on the system you implemented? and 2. if you're going to suddenly invent new salary bands (that they won't share) surely those bands should increase by inflation every year?? Otherwise it's just blatant wage suppression year after year.
jlb8@reddit
That's more about making employees feel like they are not valuable, it's a game where the company assumes its an overall benefit.
shedbastard12@reddit
I left my last job because of this, my own department manager had a grudge because I don't have a science degree despite knowing more about the job and science behind it than everyone else, he kept giving me smaller payrises than everyone else so I ended up being 4k behind my nearest colleague. It built up to being a huge point of contention between us, and then after they totally mishandled the death of my father I didn't even pretend to be interested, just stopped showing up on odd days and not doing anything that wasn't the core part of my job until I found another job and left without notice. This was all to save about 8 grand to them despite the fact that I was making them about 100k every 2 days. They emailed me to say I owed them money for it all too but I just ignored it.
South_Leek_5730@reddit
Welcome to the world of accounting. A salary sits on a different line to training and hiring costs. One is a one off the other is an ongoing cost. I have a company worth 200 and my salary costs are 60. My company is worth more if I have a salary of 60 and costs of 10 rather than a salary of 70. Costs are a tax write off. Companies also pay tax on salary even though it's a tax write off.
The second reason is to keep salaries low. If you pay one person more then others will also ask for more.
Sucks and explains why wages are stagnating in the quest for profits. Management will never understand or ever be able to quantify the lost profits from getting rid of someone. If sales or customers go down there will always be another reason than losing staff. Also a good explanation why everyone outsources.
Inevitable-Plan-7604@reddit
i think a lot of the time it's a way of forcing people and departments out. If you replace someone with a new hire who costs more, that person is also risk free for two years as you can cull them at the drop of a hat, and as a bonus you've probably forced out somebody who managers didn't like
torashies@reddit
the hr at my company has verbatim said ‘if you want a pay rise, you have to leave’
and then they wonder why morale is so low and turnover so high
Craft_on_draft@reddit
Don’t get me started on HR
TheDawiWhisperer@reddit
i worked at a place that told me i didn't quality for a pay review as i'd only worked for the company as a permy for 11 months and 1 week and i needed to have done a full year.
i'd been there as a "temp" doing the exact same job working for an agency for almost three years beforehand.
i was only earning about £15k at the time and a 2% payrise would've been absolutely fuck all, barely even worth the time on my part tbh but it amazed me how much a company was willing to piss someone off to save a tiny little bit of money
whynotthissunday@reddit
Agree and with all the comments. It's not just the time and money spent advertising, interviewing, hiring and retraining. It's the lack of experience and loyalty.
The Civil Service closed offices aplenty, making redundant very experienced loyal staff who gave a proper old-school service. Now customers can't get through on the phones. Not everybody is online. What are they supposed to do?
In the meantime there's too many new staff taken on to train properly and not enough experiences staff to train them.
t3rm3y@reddit
£15 raise? Where? I'm lucky if can squeeze couple hundred. Got nothing this year..
Craft_on_draft@reddit
That’s the point, companies cost themselves long term by refusing significant raises
volster@reddit
... Don't forget the morale hit to the rest of the team, and resultant further increased turnover for not promoting from within!
AnonymousTimewaster@reddit
This literally happened to my old company. My colleague left, and they never planned to replace him, so after 2.5 years of no payrise or sniff of progression, I asked for a couple extra grand.
The response was shocking, borderline humiliating, and downright insulting. They told me to stay in my lane, that I don't deserve any money, and laid into me for over half an hour without giving me any time to justify what I was asking for or argue against them.
So I looked for jobs that night. I almost just quit on the spot it was so insulting, but I couldn't afford to have no job.
Found one after couple weeks, for over 50% more money, more responsibility, working from home (didn't get that before), and a good company ethos.
After I left, they hired two people to replace me, and one of them quit within the first month. No idea if the other one is still there or what, but for the price of two (well three now) new employees, they could have just pacified me with a couple extra grand. They'll have spent tens of thousands in costs replacing me now.
Isgortio@reddit
This reminds me of my old workplace, always said they didn't have the money to give me a pay increase but they hired 4 people to replace me when I left lmao
AnonymousTimewaster@reddit
I always knew they had the money despite them telling everyone they didn't.
They'd say there's no money but take one of the teams down to London to stay in the fucking Savoy.
Then they'd give a £10k increase to a junior, along with a promotion, because she had a tribunal case waiting to happen.
Oh and of course you'd see the directors rocking up in their daughter's brand new Mercedes.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Totally agree! It’s the loss of knowledge that’s almost unquantifiable. I think half the time it’s spite because the raise would then end up making the employee better paid that the manager. Had this in a previous role where high performing employees were managed out of the company slowly due to green eyed monsters in other departments
maceion@reddit
This is incompetent managing. In my company the service engineers used to be paid about twice the managing director's salary. They were 'essential skilled folk'; managers as managers only without the skills or tools to do the lower order's jobs were 'ten a penny'.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
100 percent agree. Unfortunately the title manager often goes to some peoples heads and attracts power hungry people like flies round a wet shit
Comfortable_Copy_815@reddit
Absolutely spot on. Companies love to trip over pounds to pick up pennies. I’ve seen it too—refuse a decent raise, lose a key employee, then scramble to replace them at a higher salary and eat the cost of training and lost momentum. It's not just bad business—it’s short-sighted and demoralizing for the rest of the team too.
vikingraider47@reddit
The company I work has around 800 employees at my site. They've gone through over 40,000 people
DISCIPLINE191@reddit
Brb, going to show this comment to my boss.
No_Atmosphere8146@reddit
They've crunched the numbers and found that losing and replacing 3% of staff is cheaper than giving a 5% raise all round. It we want to change this behaviour, we have to tip the scales by moving on from our mustn'tgrumblism and actually leaving underpaying jobs.
R2-Scotia@reddit
It's over £50k all in for a software developer
TURBINEFABRIK74@reddit
So the solely cost of training and lose of productivity would still be cheaper than giving a raise… is all the knowledge and experience lost that cannot be replaced and priced
Other_Exercise@reddit
That's what is happening to me right now - I'm leaving, but to fair I'm leaving for so many reasons it would take literally thousands to keep me!
Chance-Risk7442@reddit
I screen shot, crop and then flip and print out two to page format so it still comes out somewhat regular size. Don’t know if that helps, but your thoughts here were mine this weekend and it really gave me a petty rage 😂
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Haha! Thanks - I don’t want to curse it but since this post hit number one in this forum yesterday the adverts have suddenly vanished on mine…
Away-Ear9315@reddit
Hoover in the UK offering return flights to New York when you spent £100 or more in 1992 has to be one of the worst marketing ideas ever.
g0_west@reddit
Landlord upped the rent, we told them no and handed in our notice, they listed our flat, nobody took it, they had to lower the price below what we were intially paying. Now they're locked into a year of taking in lower rent because they got greedy and tried to squeeze us further (we were slightly overpaying but were fine with it to save the cost and hassle of moving, but we always said if they try increase it even £1 more we're out). Satisfying conclusion that
gavco98uk@reddit
I was looking for an office to rent. I found two offices more or less next door to each other - one needed an internal wall knocked down in it, but was about £3,000 a year cheaper than the one that didnt. The owner even offered 3 months free rent as compensation if I did the work myself.
I tried to negotiate with the more expensive one that didnt need the work done, but he wouldnt budge on the price, so took the cheaper one. I was in there 4 years, and all that time the other office sat empty.
g0_west@reddit
Just proof you can be the worst businessperson ever and still be a successful landlord. I've looked up my landlord for the flat were about to leave, he's owned all 18 flats in the block for decades amongst others in his portfolio and takes in between 1 and 2k per month from each. Mortgages will be long gone, it's just pure profit less agency fees (which is a dodgy flat south of Brixton with 2 people doing everything. His handyman is a lovely man but comes with his tools in a sainsburys bag and bodges every job lol)
MrBenzedrine@reddit
Cookie popups with multiple toggles.
If I can't hit "reject all cookies" within 2 clicks - and it really should be 1 - then I close the site.
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
Worse is the multiple news sites that outright block you from rejecting any cookies unless you pay for a subscription. How they've not been sued yet is beyond me.
Ok-Salary3550@reddit
I'm actually fine with that.
End of the day they are providing content and want to make money. If you don't want to give them anything valuable in exchange for the content they're offering, why should they give you it?
MrBenzedrine@reddit
Go look at imgur.com - their popup has 2 scrollable pages of toggles and if you want to disable them all you have to do about 15 on page one and about 50 on page 2... one at a time.
Mister_Mints@reddit
The thing is, sites should legally be giving you the option to reject all cookies as easily as it is to accept them all.
I spent about a year working on my company's PECR compliance project which was an absolute ball ache to get our website compliant (and we were already close to having a design that met the PECR and GDPR requirements anyway)
I don't know how lots of websites, and UK based ones at that, are still asking people to manually reject individual cookies types and having dozens of different cookie types instead of the 4 it should be. I'm always tempted to report the site to the ICO but then never do and instead just go elsewhere. Should do really, as the fine for non-compliance is huge! (Up to £17.5 million or 4% of annual worldwide turnover, whichever is higher)
germansnowman@reddit
There was just a legal decision about this exact issue in a German state. I hope it becomes national and international law.
Big_Construction_925@reddit
Deliveroo refused to refund me for a £2 missing item so I meticulously went through all the times this had happened and filed a Money Claim Online (small claims court).
Ended up getting them to settle out of court for several hundred pounds so it didn’t get heard.
theloniousmick@reddit
I never understood this with delivery apps. How someone can say "you didn't deliver the thing I paid you to deliver" and they just go "yea shit isn't it" and that's the end of it. How in any other industry would this be acceptable without heavy punishment.
bacon_cake@reddit
Because nobody ever bothers following it up. We have pretty good consumer protections in this country but we're also a bunch of damp squibs when we whine about stuff.
foofly@reddit
The best is when they tell you to take a photo of the food that didn't arrive.
bartread@reddit
It's because companies go out of their way to wear you out over a long period of time and many interactions hoping you'll just give up.
It took me months to reclaim thousands of pounds that British Gas had overbilled me, for example. Months. And I had to escalate *all* the way to the top and threaten legal action against them to make anything happen. And I went fully Rambo on them: 1 star reviews everywhere, the works. That last bit of the process took basically an entire weekend. Overall I must have spent 5-7 working days over that period pursuing the issue.
It was worth it, because the amount of money involved was in the thousands of pounds.
Understandably, for a £2 missing item, most consumers will shrug and move on because they know full well it's not going to be worth the hassle to get it back. £2 is not much more than 10 minutes work at minimum wage these days and you know damn well it's going to take a lot more than 10 minutes effort to get it returned. It's not about being a damp squib: it's about how you value your time and your sanity.
Companies know this and so, although it's beyond scummy and should be illegal - even criminalised because it's basically a form of fraud - this is the exact calculus they perform that leads to these shitty customer service experiences and outcomes.
Yaff1e@reddit
I argued with Groupon for 6+ months as I'd been given a gift voucher that was valid for 3 years. It didn't work when I tried to use it and when I chased up with Adidas it turned out it had been spent days before they'd even sent it to me. They refused to help me as I'd not purchased it saying that the purchaser would have to contact them. The problem is they refused to help her as well. After a lot of arguing I was offered worthless Groupon Credit which I refused I they couldn't refund cash. I spent months replying negatively to every post by / to them (GB / US / Australian versions as well) on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, every review site going. I kept publicly messaging their CEO on Twitter. Eventually the purchaser got a refund out of the blue. All for the grand total of £35!
bacon_cake@reddit
I get what you're saying - I had a 9 month battle with an energy supplier. But these days I won't put up with it.
I've just had a company claim delivery on a parcel that didn't arrive, after two days of waiting for a reply they said they'd need to "investigate" further. I simply told them I want a refund or replacement now or I'll open a charge back. They persisted so I contacted Amex, got my money back immediately.
dunzdeck@reddit
Amex is great for this kind of thing. I'd never give up mine
Undrcovrcloakndaggr@reddit
Holy fuck... I once tried to raise a complaint with Paddy Power as the £2 'free bet' I qualified for was said to involve 'just click here'... only they debited my account the £2, claimed I didn't follow the T&Cs properly and then in order to complain to the regulator you need to get to the point they say the complaint is closed and give you a reference number. Their chat function is Kafkaesque, takes ages to reply, ignores what you've said and repeats the same bollocks time and again. I resorted to caps lock in the end and it took about half a day, which still didn't resolve the matter... all for £2. It's very obviously a classic example of what you've identified and if you multiply that by the number of people they've robbed with this bullish*t it's probably making them thousands. In summary, I'd just like to remind everyone that Paddy Power are thieving c*nts.
jflb96@reddit
Not just thieving cunts, cunts in general. I’m assuming they’ve still got the same people in charge as when they did an ad campaign letting people know the odds they were offering on Oscar Pistorius’ trial.
moubliepas@reddit
And because it's generally something like £7.28p.
If it was a large amount, of course people would fight it. But it's petty numbers every time, from people who are obviously not that strapped for cash (or they wouldn't / shouldn't be using food delivery apps).
That's how they get away with it. The reason they do it is because, for every 4 people who get swindled a couple of times and then decide not to use those apps any more, there are people like OP who add the illegal micro-scams to the cost of convenience, and just keep paying.
Everybody's got their limit for what they'll put up with.
But generally the Crusaders For Consumer Rights types don't keep using the shitty apps long enough to lose a remotely actionable sum, and the ones who lose and keep using are the likeliest to just quit when they've lost enough, or at worst, put up enough of a fight to get back most of what was stolen.
It's win-win-win for the unethical.
And I don't think that's the average consumers fault, or the average business owner. At some point in recent history, the UK was in global news every other week for some form of 'British Powers That Be accused of willfully breaking rules for personal gain sentenced to - oh no, no, apparently it's ok if you promise you didn't mean to lie and cheat, heard that one before. Tune in next week for more of the same' and after that it became very difficult to say things like 'cheaters never prosper, you know!' or 'hey, we follow rules in this country!' with a straight face.
So, you know, having sat through the Sloth Eating People's Faces Party stuffing themselves full to rapt applaud, I am not too surprised that a bunch of leopard companies have followed suit.
boudicas_shield@reddit
They absolutely count on you just dropping it because of the effort involved. My husband’s pal and him shared a flat once rented from a scummy landlord who shafted them out of the deposit. Clearly thought they wouldn’t chase up the £400 or whatever so could get away with it.
Husband’s pal was taking a year off work for family reasons and decided to make it the principle of the thing and fought it all the way to the top. He obviously won, and it was emotionally satisfying to score the point and have justice served, but it’s a real shame that it took as much time and effort as it did. Most people don’t have that to expend, so the scummers win by default 9 times out of 10. (Colloquially speaking; I don’t mean that as an actual statistic or anything). They count on people just letting it go.
LongLostFan@reddit
That's why I always select cash on delivery.
denjin@reddit
Delivery apps are inherently exploitative businesses, they're built from the ground up to take advantage of their drivers, muscle out independents and force restaurants into using them and then exploiting that relationship too. It's really no surprise that they'd exploit their own customers too.
daniielrp@reddit
I’ve given up basically every food delivery services. As far as I can it benefits nobody. Restaurants get shafted by fees and poor reviews, consumers get late orders, wrong food, missing or cold items. Drivers get paid basically nothing. Everything they were meant to solve is ruined.
And the apps are shite, most are full of Nisa corner shops or some bollocks. Who the fuck wants this.
anomalous_cowherd@reddit
People who pay Deliveroo prices don't really value their money as much as the rest of us, so they don't typically fight for it.
Mavericks7@reddit
Just Eat messed me about, got a "delivery attempted". I watched on CCTV as the driver pulled up, knocked on my neighbour’s door, didn't deliver the food and then drove off.
The houses are clearly numbered. My order was for 62. He went to 64, looked confused, then left.
I contacted Just Eat. They wouldn’t call the driver and made me wait 35 minutes. The restaurant closed in the meantime. I ordered at 7:20, it shut at 8.
Their offer? A £5 voucher. My family was hungry, I just wanted the food I paid for.
That was it for me. I’m done with Just Eat.
Sewishly@reddit
A couple of years back I the same issue. I had a JustEat order go missing, so I got in touch and got it refunded. Then two weeks later, the same thing happened again. I contacted them, and they said, "Oh dear. We aren't refunding you, though. Thank you for your understanding," and I went ballistic. I told them that I didn't in fact understand, and would never understand how you can just say "Tough" when not providing the service you've been paid for.
I got a reply to that, saying, "Yeah we know it's bad. Sorry." So I escalated it to a manager after telling them I'd never order from them ever again. They credited me and gave me a £3 credit to my account and a, "Oops" message. I replied to that with, "Thanks, but there's absolute no way that £3 will get spent, so I hope you enjoy it because it's the last you'll ever get from me."
I'd been regularly using JustEat for about 5 years by that point.
Bloody hell, it got my temper up again. haha!
Mavericks7@reddit
I 100% get you.
The worst thing is, you're meant to deal with this whilst hungry too. So that's not the time to fuck around with the customer.
Sewishly@reddit
Damn straight!! Both time, I had to re-order, which meant I'd basically spent double that night and had to wait to get the money back.
I do admit I was hangry-typing at them that night haha!! Their own fault! xD
Aiken_Drumn@reddit
Does this happen? Every time I have complained its been immediately refunded.
Defaulted1364@reddit
They will only refund once in a given period, no matter the amount.
Poddster@reddit
What was the original MCOL? £20?
Big_Construction_925@reddit
I can’t remember the exact amount but it was about that, maybe slightly less.
Wonk_Majik@reddit
I was missing 2 pints of milk from a deliveroo Co-Op order.. They asked me first send a picture. Like, wtf? Never did get a refund.
steb2k@reddit
I'd say you're the 1 in 1000 that would go that far, and they're still in profit.
prof_hobart@reddit
Amazon clearly has many bad business practices, but (at least in my experience) this is something that they're really good at.
I rarely have a major problem with an order - in the past 10 years, it's probably been 3 missing parcels and a couple of broken items. Every time I've contacted them, they've gone through a couple of basic questions and pretty much instantly given me a refund. I'm assuming they check for accounts that are trying to abuse this, but seemingly unlike Deliveroo they've worked out that the occasional refund more than pays for itself both in improved customer loyalty and less admin from their side.
ElBisonBonasus@reddit
Had a week trial of hello fresh, had no idea I had to check everything on the day of delivery, to make sure it's all there.
What's the point of putting things in brown bags, and taping the bags, if I have to spend an hour checking everything? Might as well get my groceries from Tesco.
After the 3rd day of me complaining, they said I had to contact support and they weren't the most helpful.
Don't think I'll get hello fresh again.
roxya@reddit
Any time I've requested a refund by Deliveroo it's automatically accepted, instantly, in the app. I wonder why not for you?
UnbalancedMint@reddit
I've only ever asked for a refund once for missing items and they agreed but only refunded me a fraction... It was 2 meals for £30 or something like that.. And they would only give me back a fixer for a whole missing meal. Since then I have never used it again.. The vast majority of places I ordered from have their own websites you can order from... Or I call like we all used to.
Big_Construction_925@reddit
My guess is there were items missing a lot, their algo kicks in and stops it based on previous volume.
IBringTheFunk@reddit
You're actually my hero for this. It's gotten so bad with these delivery apps now, most of them are fully automated for complaints and you have to jump through so many hoops in an attempt to speak to someone.
ShinyHappyPurple@reddit
Well done.
I will now be boycotting Just Eat out because they refused to refund me the cost of my missing drink and dip for a meal. It will be better for my health and bank balance but given I had fallen into spending £20 on it at least once a week they probably should have given me £2 back.
bamfg@reddit
how did you prove the absence in past deliveries?
Big_Construction_925@reddit
I had chat transcripts sent to my email. It was settled out of court anyway so I didn’t really have to prove anything anyway. They have the data.
6425@reddit
Did they ban you from the platform?
Big_Construction_925@reddit
Amazingly, no they haven’t.
TheMusicArchivist@reddit
Just rent an account from someone unbanned, that's the Deliveroo way
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Haha! Fabulous result
DuoDriver@reddit
Me, 74 and my wife 86 have rented our house for 20 years. Our landlord's agent informed me today that they are thinking of selling it. Where do we stand - what are our rights?
Spencer-ForHire@reddit
Pretty much every European car manufacturer, especially the Germans. Once renowned for over engineering and high build quality, in the mid 2000s they started cutting corners and reliability went through the floor.
They also paired with Chinese manufacturers to sell cars in China, the Chinese manufacturers then pulled the rug from under them.
Also instead of heavily investing in EV technology they spent money lobbying governments to allow them to sell petrol and diesel cars for longer.
Add to that dieselgate, wet-belts, discontinuing small hatchbacks and ever increasing prices and it's not looking good.
kongclassic@reddit
I watched a video recently and a vw pickup was all ford stamped parts underneath.
Spencer-ForHire@reddit
The new Transit and Transporter are exactly the same too.
Sharing designs isn't new though, the Galaxy and Sharan were the same car in the 90s probably dozens more examples.
kongclassic@reddit
I know but i always think of vw as a premium brand and ford no so premium. seems like a bait and switch
SiteRelEnby@reddit
Look at the US and you'll see badge engineering everywhere. It's been a thing since at least the 60s.
David_W_J@reddit
My daughter used to drive a VW Golf GTi, Mk4. It had a number of annoying faults that I found out later were well-documented in the public forums. These included the driver's window glass dropping into the door, wet carpets in the rear passenger area due to leaks from the rear wash-wipe system, and a glovebox that wouldn't open. All were due to penny-pinching in manufacture (cheap inappropriate materials that would only last a couple of years). Later on a Seat came out based on this VW model - and it had exactly the same problems.
Even now, with their ID electric vehicles, software problems abound and they're slow to fix them.
Yaff1e@reddit
I had the drivers window problem years ago. Came as a bit of a shock when I tapped the brakes and there was an almighty thump as the glass disappeared! Also had the spare wheel well on a Mk7 fill up with water. Apparently they had a couple of issues. Either the boot vents behind the bumper developed a fault and let road water in or, as in my case, the rear washer pipe failed over time so when you did the rear washer it sprayed a bit on the window and a bit into the wheel well. Destroyed quite a bit of stuff I kept under the false floor.
Jlaw118@reddit
VW have been the worst for this. Especially after their emissions scandal in 2015 and the huge fine they had to pay, they’ve massively cheaped out in all of their cars since, and that goes for Audis as well as part of the same group
Ok_Analyst_5640@reddit
They weren't good even before then tbh. Reliability has nosedived since the early 2010s. Fixing things that would be easy jobs on any other car became expensive and lots of man hours because of how they build them. Mundane parts can be expensive because the "peoples car" company seems to have it in their head that they're at the lower end of luxury. They're in the same ballpark as the french manufacturers nowadays and they don't realise it yet.
garryblendenning@reddit
What are the more reliable brands now?
r_mutt69@reddit
Tbf vw did have a bit of a reputation for making things a bit more difficult and expensive to repair for a while. Things like clips to hold trim on that couldn’t be reused when refitting them etc. always been a headache and some of my favourite cars have been vws
two_beards@reddit
VW did am advert recently about the company history, conveniently skipping the 30s and 40s...
CDHmajora@reddit
Which is funny, because they invented the Volkswagen beetle in 1938 (admittedly the war delayed production of it until 1946. But the car had prototypes and advertising models already made and functional, and orders for it were already taken), which became the highest selling car in the world by the 1960’s (iirc it’s beaten now by the toyota Corolla. But that car has had so many different body styles. 12 generations iirc, that all count towards the same sales figures. The beetle truly was the same car for all those sales. Same shape. Same platform. Same engine. Just small changes and additions to improve it through the years).
Conveniently ignoring that car’s history really is kind of… jarring. It literally MADE them the juggernaut they are today.
Bohemka1905@reddit
Most German companies hide their 1930/40's history.
The Volkswagen factory was actually saved by the British Army. Major Ivan Hirst of the REME worked to save the factory and consequently the Beetle.
Wiltix@reddit
I look forward to these companies innovating away from the awful SUV bollocks and back to proper hatchbacks, maybe even a few more options for those of us who like an estate car.
shesmykeylimepie@reddit
Only if customers demand that though. SUVs are the fastest growing car market, for both ICE cars and EVs, so manufacturers are not moving on from those for a while.
Izwe@reddit
It seems that the Skoda Enyak is about as close to the only estate car that you can buy these days
sideone@reddit
VW id7 and Audi A6 are both big electric estates
phatboi23@reddit
my dad's not long got one of those.
damn thing is ROOMY and the boot is massive too.
helps not having a hump etc. due to it being an EV.
captain_seadog@reddit
Skoda Octavia and Superb as well
Aiken_Drumn@reddit
eh?
Spencer-ForHire@reddit
Basically very unreliable engines. Some suspect it's built in obsolescence.
paintedpolkadot@reddit
Basically a cam belt submerged in oil, but they’re extremely crap and unreliable
jonathananeurysm@reddit
There really wasn't any rug pulling. Anyone who wants to do business in China knows the score: a portion of their business will belong to the state and they don't recognise patents. Every one of these multi billion dollar companies is very much aware of this before they earn their first penny in China. I just don't accept that massive companies are constantly being duped by the crafty Chinese.
Spencer-ForHire@reddit
You're right. Rug pulling isn't the correct term VW knew what they were getting into but favored short term profits over the long term health of the business. Almost every company is the same however.
paintedpolkadot@reddit
Getting rid of the fiesta is the worst thing ford could have done and I think they’ll be regretting that in years to come
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
God no! That and their attempts to add subscription services to things that shouldn’t have them - like heated seats and how fast the car can go!
early_midlifecrisis@reddit
This really boils my piss. One of the most obnoxious things I've ever seen a company do.
DeinOnkelFred@reddit
You can't even boil your own piss in the new Braun smart kettles! HTF am I gonna prank my work colleagues now?
early_midlifecrisis@reddit
You'll have to shell out another £50 for the Braun Pissmaster 5000.
justbiteme2k@reddit
This was the biggest miss ever. They had an ideal opportunity to say they got it wrong and are now focusing on electric. With their might, they could have turned VW into an all electric brand over night and allowed Audi to continue to sell petrol for an extra 10 years. They even could have proposed this environmental green turnaround to the governments who were issuing the fines and clawed some back for new jobs or R&D. Was a total old school mistake of arguing, denying and objection, rather than proposing a positive way forward.
yorkspirate@reddit
Audi and the early 1.8t oil sludge issues are a great example of this. The fact they doubled down and tried to blame so many failures on the customer lost them a lot of the American market
stoufferthecat@reddit
I'm pretty sure Barclays did an advert with Anthony Hopkins about being big, and bigger is better etc., but it was in the middle of a recession - so the backlash was less than favourable.
They also tried a new catchphrase, ' Opportunity is now here', but when they launched it as a hashtag and removed the spaces, you couldn't help but read it as 'Opportunity is nowhere'.
tripalon9@reddit
Hah, reminds me of Susan Boyle’s album launch party, hashtag susanalbumparty
Millefeuille-coil@reddit
Bum party, backs to the walls.
Brutal-Gentleman@reddit
Anal bum party no less
SiteRelEnby@reddit
Seems sus.
devster75@reddit
This isn’t just any bum party, this is an anal bum party. They’re very particular about cleanliness and accuracy.
mofohank@reddit
Su's anal bum party. She should have just leant into it
Brutal-Gentleman@reddit
I think you mean 'pushed back against it'
devster75@reddit
You can do it, put your back into it
SnooMacarons9618@reddit
That is the funniest thing I have seen is a long time.
siziyman@reddit
that one was IIRC a hoax, still a funny one though
Far-Sir1362@reddit
Sus anal bum party.
Nice
wasdice@reddit
penisland.net
JohnCasey3306@reddit
Reminds of the Metro Bank logo redesign, around 2008 when all the banks were collapsing, Metro Bank changed their logo so that the 'M' looks like a line graph for share price crashing into the red.
trcr3600@reddit
I'm currently in the US (through no fault of my own) and I'm getting ads for the Cadillac Escalade with a strapline of 'Never stop arriving', which is ironic as the car is about 63 feet long...
Parma_Violence_@reddit
🤣
DeinOnkelFred@reddit
expertsexchange.com!! A classic from ye olde internette of yore. Also penisland.com
They sound like memes in 2025, but they were legit. Maybe some proto-"viral marketing", though?
Forgetful8nine@reddit
Or the Therapist finder.
HeartyBeast@reddit
Don't forget Pen Island
No_Simple_87@reddit
Powergen Italia was my favourite one of those cock-ups.
Debtcollector1408@reddit
Santander's current please is "Make the customer's better happen", which makes my brain shrivel every time I see it.
Opening_Succotash_95@reddit
Using adjectives or verbs as nouns and nouns as verbs seems to have become a big trend in advertising and I despise it.
I blame whoever came up with 'shop' meaning 'browse', in the sense of 'shop the latest bargains'.
wasdice@reddit
Verbing weirds language
Calanon@reddit
Shop as a verb is hundreds of years old.
No_Atmosphere8146@reddit
I saw a billboard for a Twix the other day. The tagline, which someone was no doubt paid more than ten times my annual salary to come up with, was "two is more than one". Brilliant.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Oh wow!
Only-Weird-4519@reddit
I'm old enough to remember the Hoover free flights promotion. Spend £100 on their products and get £600 worth of flights to the US. They didn't expect so many people to be interested...
clicketybooboo@reddit
sort of on the same idea. Ever read about the guy in the US who bought a shit load of chocolate puddings : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur)
chonklove@reddit
I had never seen this before and it's made my day! Cheers
Only-Weird-4519@reddit
I did read something about this a long time ago. He's a smart guy.
OkClass@reddit
My parents did this! They had to fly from Manchester at the crack of dawn (and they’re Londoners) but it was the best £100 they ever spent as they had a lovely holiday in Florida that they wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise
justbiteme2k@reddit
Plus a new hoover!
paulmclaughlin@reddit
We got the flights, and a week in a motel in Orlando came with a camera from Jessops.
No chance that we'd have been able to visit Disneyworld etc otherwise.
Particular_Tune7990@reddit
Ha, yes this was legendary. Got them on telly with Watchdog on multiple occasions.
DISCIPLINE191@reddit
Company I'm at now. We had a guy who was fantastic at his job. Knew the products inside out, encyclopedic knowledge of part numbers, what was compatible with what, etc. Great asset. We are all below average salary in our roles at this company compared to what we would get elsewhere. So he asked for a pay rise and was told no by the MD. A month later he was head hunted by a competitor company who offered him WAY more than he asked for as a pay rise.
When he handed in his notice the MD immediately backtracked and offered him the raise he asked for, which he obviously turned down.
To replace him they hired a guy with no knowledge or experience in the industry. But because our salaries are lower than with competitors they had to offer this guy MORE than the previous guy asked for. And he couldn't keep up... so they had to hire a second guy at the same salary to support the department.
In an effort to avoid paying someone valuable £3k a year more, the company now pays 2 people £40k a year to do the same job.
freeeeels@reddit
That's so insulting lol
Like, it's not even "we can't afford to give you a raise", it's straight up "we could have given you a raise all along but I didn't think you deserved it until a competitor confirmed it".
devster75@reddit
It’s like how women don’t pay attention to you until you’ve got a girlfriend. By then, you think “what’s the bloody point?”.
ddraig-au@reddit
I asked about that, and was told "it's because you look happy"
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
And he would have likely ended up down the road within a year or two.
boldstrategy@reddit
40k is still low, tbh
DISCIPLINE191@reddit
I mean, you have no idea what we do so not sure how you can decide that 😂 40k is pretty common for the roles they do
oni_nasu@reddit
This happened to me! Well, similar. A colleague and I worked out we were doing 80+ hour weeks as a matter of routine yet still miles behind, and our pleas for assistance went unheard. We put together a resource model to demonstrate that their expectations of us in workload terms equated to 100+ hours each week and used it to lobby for an assistant.
This was refused and we both left. They ended up having to recruit a team of four, all on higher salaries, instead. Had they just given us the assistant we asked for, they'd have saved a packet!
DigitalStefan@reddit
May last-but-one place mucked me around and it was one of those “everyone should be proud to work for such a fine institution” type of places. They thought the sun shone out of their backsides.
When I left, I handed my notice in on Christmas Eve. I shortened my notice period from 3 months to 1 month and they couldn’t hire a replacement for months. Eventually hired one person for 50% more than I was on and then 2 other people to help cover the other responsibilities I’d been covering.
Sucks to suck!
__Severus__Snape__@reddit
I dont understand how companies are so short-sighted on these things. People aren't loyal to companies anymore, they're not going to stay unless you incentivise them to, and that incentive needs to come before they hand in their notice.
Suburbannightmare@reddit
can you screenshot the label and then crop it to then print out? :) that's Bs, btw...do we not get inundated ENOUGH with bloody advertising???
kenjithetiger@reddit
The company I work for used to pay £1 above minimum wage. It’s a pretty basic retail job.
However, we now pay minimum wage or just above if you’re higher up the chain. Staff are leaving all over the place and we are now spending a fortune on recruitment, going from one person running recruitment to 4 people doing the job. It takes months to fill a position. This means we are always understaffed at all stores.
They also got rid of the music licence so now all our stores are quiet aside from the hum of refrigerators, this also led to people leaving.
The only reason I stay? I work in our offices and get a pretty decent mileage payment that essentially means i get the equivalent to about £15 an hour. I got this because I handed in my notice and they didn’t want me to leave.
Don’t know why our boss decided to do all these things. We aren’t short of cash, all the higher up managers have great company cars and get a new one every year. We have record profits.
SaltTyre@reddit
Read your last paragraph again. The management are doing well because of these savings in wages, not despite them.
kenjithetiger@reddit
They’ve always done well.
They’re spending £120000 a year on salaries for recruitment. Add in tax and national insurance, and an enhanced pension instead of the basic best pension other staff get. I believe it’s 12% employer contribution.
4 cars for the recruitment staff and all the fuel, insurance, etc..
To pay all our staff an extra £1 an hour? £130000.
They’re spending more money than they were two years ago.
SaltTyre@reddit
I’m saying the fact your company has record profits has been helped by lowering labour costs and driving existing staff into the ground. Of course that’s not sustainable, but helps explain why things can seem confusing
kenjithetiger@reddit
Have you seen my employers accounts?
Our takings are at record highs due to our stores being the busiest they’ve ever been since lockdown and also price increases (our purchasing costs are up approx 5-10% and sale price up around 10-25% depending on the item).
Year on year sales are generally up 25% with some stores as high as 40%. Not because of cutting wages. As I’ve said before they’re spending more on recruitment staff and wondering why staff have been leaving after being in the company for 20 years to work at aldi and Lidl etc.
SaltTyre@reddit
You said there were record profits, so I assumed you had or had some knowledge
MrBenzedrine@reddit
I would 100% shop here. A shop without repetitive god awful pop music or elevator musak sounds amazing.
kenjithetiger@reddit
We have a ‘radio station’ that is actually pretty decent. Barely any repeats. Our franchise no longer plays it to save money. I get jealous whenever I visit other franchises that still have it.
MrBenzedrine@reddit
It would have to be rock & metal to get my full seal of approval!
Jlaw118@reddit
My last job used to pay about £2 above minimum wage, £4 if you were a night worker. Then the unions agreed a three year pay deal, and two years ago before I left, the company had to further increase wages up to minimum wage as their pay deal hadn’t caught up to it.
But they made out to everyone “we care about you, so we’re increasing your pay rise even more!”
IR2Freely@reddit
My partner was told her company wqs introducing pay bands to make things "fair and transparent". She asked to see the pay bands and was told that she couldnt because theyre private. Big, circa 1000 employee company too.
kenjithetiger@reddit
Yep, this year we got our pay notification and they dressed it up as if they are going above and beyond…
I’m going for a management role and the only reason I’m doing it is because you get a company cars, it’ll be a Renault 5 and I really want one. If I don’t get it I might start looking elsewhere.
RoadkillUKUK@reddit
Last year I was on above minimum wage, this year it's minimum wage. I'm up £305 for the entire year. Like i told them, I could go anywhere else and not lose out, why should I stay?
I'm still there, but looking around.
RummazKnowsBest@reddit
I knew someone (friend of a friend) who was selling his company.
The value was based on the profits from the last eight months (or something, can’t remember all the specifics) so they kept everyone on the absolute lowest pay and slashed everything they could so they could increase profits.
He and his business partner made a few million each from the sale the staff just got a new boss and continually low pay. They were already making hundreds of thousands each as directors for years but didn’t ever want to share the success with the people actually doing the work.
Pure greed.
(I’m sure this is normal practice but I’d never seen it up close before)
TeHNeutral@reddit
Not a famously green one is it
kenjithetiger@reddit
Nah, it’s a regional chain
No_Atmosphere8146@reddit
I bet the sound of refrigerators humming is a blessing around Christmastime.
Eastern-Move549@reddit
You know that the rich dont get rich by spending their money. All that matters is hoarding ever more of it and stopping as much of it as possible getting to the little people.
kenjithetiger@reddit
Obviously. However, this recruitment is costing the business more than paying us how they used to. 4 people dedicated to recruitment earning 30k a year vs one person doing it about 10hrs a week...
no_regards@reddit
Why don't you use "Snip" (if using Windows) to snip the actual label, paste it into Word and then print from there?
SignNotInUse@reddit
Cancelled their site office 365 subscription.
phatboi23@reddit
fuckin' jesus that's a BAD idea, it'd require months of prep moving everything etc.
SignNotInUse@reddit
They didn't use onedrive, and the owner heard about all the free MS office alternatives and thought it would be a really good way of saving money.
Tea_Fetishist@reddit
Office alternatives always have just enough things missing to make them unsuitable. I think it was Libre office that has no option for superscript and subscript text, makes writing certain things very irritating.
phatboi23@reddit
still a fuckin' terrible idea.
i've tried the office alternatives, they're alright but if your staff is trained on office moving over is going to be more of a pain than it'll ever save you.
farts-are-funny-af@reddit
Can't you screenshot the label on your screen, crop it and print it?
FordZodiac@reddit
Bud Light
MysteriousTelephone@reddit
How did I have to scroll down this far for this comment?
Literally had to shell out squillions in UFC promotion to undo the absolute firestorm they got themselves into, and get working class males drinking their beer again.
BizteckIRL@reddit
Calling Bud ..'beer,' is like calling a pencil a super computer.
Mammoth-Ad-562@reddit
Has to be Werthers Originals.
At some points some marketing execs say in a room and said ‘we need people to feel like these aren’t just sweets for granddads, we have to make it more attractive to children too’.
Someone’s said ‘shall we get the granddad to get the kid to sit on his knee and he can give him a Werthers’
Everyone clapped and they all left the room completely unaware that they’d just consigned their product to forever be associated with paedophiles.
Erivandi@reddit
One of my friends can't get sick leave or the option to work from home. Result? Her office is a festering pit of disease and everyone gets sick all the time, especially her since she has issues with her immune system. If the company just gave her decent sick pay or let her work from home then it would be so much better for them as well as her.
Nikolopolis@reddit
Come on mate, get a grip.
BizteckIRL@reddit
My former employer. Not to go into too many details but asked us to stop using an air conditioning unit to save running costs. So we spent a year being too warm or too cold. Pissing off customers and employees.
Well 1 year later it turns out the company's maintenance contract with the manufacturer was based on a minimum number of uses (cycles) and since we didn't use the AC enough they sued us for MILLIONS for breach of contract.
Penny wise pound stupid.
ChokedPanda@reddit
This one is more own goal by governments and it definitely has to be the privatisation of England’s water sector.
Saved the tax payer money at the time due to the large investments needed… but did those infrastructure improvements ever actually happen? Nope.
Now it’s likely going to fall to taxpayer burden plus metered customers charges increasing. The cost of taking these companies and their infrastructure back into public ownership is going to atrocious.
Kind of makes you wish they had never privatised it on the first place.
fizzy-good@reddit
This is small fry, but an office I used to work for decided to stop buying milk from the overpriced cornershop that was literally just over the road. So instead someone whose hourly rate was around £50 would spend 20 mins going to the local Aldi. Absolute madness.
Mjtucker91@reddit
Company I know likes saving money. 1p cheaper is still good but obviously multiplied they love more. The one that sticks in my mind is drill bits. Someone high up decided that we were spending too much on drill bits so cost cut them.... We asked for more expensive ones but nope management went for cheaper on paper. Unfortunately cheaper isn't always better and for the tasks we need them for they snap very easily/wear out very quickly. We therefore end up using alot more drill bits than previously with the more expensive ones. Yes per item it is now 1/2 the price of the older ones but we are now using 4 times as many... Basically actually doubling the cost per year of one particular item.
Bael_thebard@reddit
My company has a very high persistency rate with a specific sector in the UK. At present they are ramming through non stop price increases to that sector on the assumption that they won’t cancel. I’ve already lost a lot of those customers (30+ years) due to pricing. They (the company) are adamant the pricing is right and the market will react eventually. Total bullshit and forces me to feel like I’m taking advantage of my customers. I specifically told one this year just to move his product as I know he could save 10k. I lost money out of my own pocket, a loyal (great to work with) customer all because some bean counter thinks they know pricing better than the front line.
Responsible-Drive627@reddit
Store sllocatio you head office's who don't have a clue like Scottish co-,op who allocated 50 pallets of oranges, when we were lucky to sell one maybe two boxes per week
Quick_Creme_6515@reddit
Mcdonalds went through a stage of not including the sauces that came with a meal, like the selects, so whenever the sauces didn't turn up, something in that delivery just happened to go missing. For the sake of a pot of sauce, I always got a refund of a few quid.
The meal without the sauces was trash, though, so I started ordering extra sauces, and magically, I'd get them most of the time.
CarobFamiliar@reddit
Online sites that have started using 'accept cookies or pay to remove' you don't get to have my data just because I'm poor!
Comfortable_Love7967@reddit
I worked for dfs, we paid an admin minimum wage to deal with most of the back end stuff.
We had 2 admin and 6 sales people. They decided to get rid of the admin without giving us extra people, bare in mind the admins where pretty much never sat around
MissCaldonia@reddit
You’ve only got to look at how EBay are running their own business recently as an example of an own goal!
Illustrious_Study_30@reddit
I was gobsmacked at the comprehension level of the managers when I worked at a large supermarket for a bit. I've never known such indiscriminate recruitment into management. It had absolutely nothing to do with ability and everything to do with who you got on with. They'll lose money, it's strikingly obvious that these people don't have the capacity for growth or change. This goes all the way up the chain. They want robots and they got them.
Mean-Attorney-875@reddit
Adblock?
JC3896@reddit
Company I work for. Without getting too detailed they had some fairly major repair work that needed doing to the structure of a building, got quoted £35k for the work.
CEO didn't like that cost so didn't sign off on it, then the Ukraine war broke out and the global price of steel shot up. The problem got worse so the structural work absolutely had to happen, re-quoted at £80k for the exact same work and had to sign off on it.
jonathing@reddit
Basically anything the NHS does. Any cost cutting/efficiency exercise always makes it worse for patients, at best only kicking the problem down the line. Getting rid of an excess of 'middle managers', great now we have clinical staff doing admin instead of seeing patients. Centralised procurement, fantastic now our new equipment doesn't do what our specific patient group requires.
jonewer@reddit
It's a symptom of British anti-intellectualism - Management and administrative staff bad, The Front Line (TM) good.
Like, when the US finally entered WW2, the most immediate and pressing need for equipment wasn't guns or aircraft or ships.
It was typewriters.
Bostonjunk@reddit
Tbf, the NHS can get a bit OTT with managers. To the point it feels like there 3 managers for every normal staff member - that's usually when there's a purge.
jonewer@reddit
The thing is, it's very hard to see how this perception can be true based on the numbers.
The UK spend on healthcare admin is below the OECD average, being a quarter of France or Germany's, and half of Canada's or Ireland's.
Admin staff saw far more drastic cuts than any form of clinical staff, and numbers still lag behind
happywhiskers@reddit
Efficiency=good. Inefficiency=bad.
I totally understand that, but are we holding the NHS to impossible standards?
I've never worked for the NHS, but companies I've worked for are ridiculously inefficient. Especially big companies.
I'm almost certain the NHS is more efficient than the FTSE company I currently work for.
Abacus_Mode@reddit
To book GP Drs appointment today required 3 days, 6 calls, 3 return calls, including a call from the surgery to tell me to expect a call, from the surgery. To finally have the Dr call me and suggest I need to be seen; something I’d tried to do for three days. How’s that in any way efficient?
Murderous_Nipples@reddit
GP practices are private companies that just contract to the NHS - bit of an oversimplification. But essentially their day to day running isn’t anything to do with the efficiency of the NHS.
Your experience there is entirely down to how that practice functions. I find the experience at my GP to be incredibly efficient. If you believe it isn’t functioning well (and you do raise some obvious inefficiencies), then you can give feedback to them about their processes.
DukeRedWulf@reddit
I remember the NHS before Thatcher brought in all those middle managers - things worked just fine, thanks.
There was never a need for multiple layers of manglement with their shiny new BMWs / Jags / Audis.
They were only ever put in place as part of "Privatisation By Ten Thousand Slices" where the Tories made the NHS modular in the style of US private healthcare, getting ready to flog it off.
mata_dan@reddit
Yeah my grandad spent his retirement ranting about that xD
Loooong career in the system and then just watched it be destroyed.
tombon3@reddit
I use to work for a well known online clothing company in the facilities management team, I started in a team of 8 doing shift work, 4 on, 4 off, then they cut it to 6, then they cut it to 4, then they decided to make us work Monday-Friday in a team of 3 to save paying for weekend work, but then all the jobs we used to do at the weekend couldn’t be done in hours so they wanted us in every weekend too. Needless to say I asked to be made redundant upon changing my shift, and the other two left not long after me.
wasntmebutok@reddit
Save the label to pdf rather than print, then take a snippet of the label itself. Save that as a separate file and print.
DoctorWhofan789eywim@reddit
Has anybody said eBay yet? This Buyer Protection fee shite has the double whammy of putting off both buyers and sellers whilst also making it so that the offer you send and the offer they see be completely different.
SammyMacUK@reddit
I loved eBay so much, spent thousands on there and listed loads of items. I used it how you are supposed to use it: looked out for good deals on music gear, played with it for a bit, and then after a while re-listed it on the same platform. Sometimes I made money, sometimes I didn't, and honestly I didn't really care. I've probably spent weeks of my life in total happily browsing all the weird stuff you used to be able to buy on there (militaria! old cigarette tins! fixer upper 1990s convertibles!)
Now the platform is too shit to do that, why should I use it? When I list things they get 0 views unless I pay for the listing to be boosted, and the prices are now no different to buying new or buying from Jeff Bezos' corporate hellscape.
LPresidantA@reddit
It’s a shit show, I’ve just stopped using it altogether, no more buying or selling. I doubt me as an individual makes much difference but I suspect I’m not the only one…
coventry-eagle@reddit
I'm down to about one thing a month, i used to buy and sell quite a bit on there.
chabybaloo@reddit
I have to "pay" everytime i make an offer
Just completely puts me off making an offer
Obviously its to keep your payment detials in their system.
I might just go back to ali express
bacon_cake@reddit
Yep ebay's fucked. Our trade is down on ebay but 70pc easily.
Careful-Swimmer-2658@reddit
My nephew's small company was taken over by a multinational. They went through the payroll and sacked the top ten highest paid engineers. It never occurred to them that those people were the ones who designed and built their product and why the company was successful.
Cheffysteve@reddit
Oh where do I start… I work in construction. Electrical engineer started as an apprentice and worked my way up. I’m now pretty senior and understand the Peter principle so I stay where I am. Happy. What I do see is abject waste by people who think they know better but have no experience. Example . One project we get a client instruction to add more access controlled door sets. This means a FA and BMS interface to the local controller. So I order the extra we need . Same make and model as what’s in as another interface even on same protocols can cause issues later. Bean counters who know cost of everything and value of nothing question my engineering decision and substitute for a different interface that is £2 cheaper per unit saving about £100. Comes to commissioning and as I said to them they don’t work as should and cause system errors. So we need to order the correct ones. The old ones can’t be restocked as they’ve been used . So in an effort to save £100 it cost us a weeks fees for 3 commissioning engineers , and the cost of the original interfaces and the correct ones. But what do I know as an engineer with nearly 40 years experience
Eastern_Bit_9279@reddit
Lol, I used to work for a up market gastro-pub it was in the Michelin guide and was really popular and did decent quality restaurant food.
At some point in time they decided they wanted to appeal to the wider public and cater for kids and families instead of being a special occasion place.
They extended the beer garden (we literally trippled our capacity in the summer)
There was very little investment in the kitchen to counter the extra numbers we would be doing in the kitchen, just a dumbed down menu
For obvious reasons the food quality dipped , they had 1 good summer with the bigger garden , the following year was dire, they alienated their regulars who treated the place as a special occasion place and lost them becuase it just wasn't special anymore , and they didn't get return customers from the families group becuase that first summer was such a shit show service was terrible and the food wasn't what they were expecting and you could get it just about anywhere.
2 years later they close after Xmas and don't pay the staff, keeping other venue they have locally open.
Turbojelly@reddit
Virgini Media, 2 decades or so ago. They reached out to an online forum that had a weekly photoshop competition in a bid to get a bunch of free advertising ideas. An hour or 2 later they were begging the forum to stop.
Maffers@reddit
B3ta?
Turbojelly@reddit
Yup.
Maffers@reddit
Ahahhaaha. Knew it. I was a very active /talk used back in the day
alan2001@reddit
Same! I used to love the "question of the week". I always loaded it up on screen then disconnected my dial up and read it at my leisure. And now we have Reddit which has the equivalent of a million QOTWs every day haha.
GabberZZ@reddit
Me too over 20 years ago. I got several of my 'artworks' on the front page. That was like winning a BAFTA to me at the time!
B3tans would be the last people I'd go to for adverts! We were a bunch of weirdo perverts!
Anxiousimposter@reddit
I personally identify as a b3tard
GabberZZ@reddit
Tbf, me too
vvvvaaaagggguuuueeee@reddit
Hek ye man, QOTW was awesome. They still got the photo contests and they're still great just not as numerous tbf
Maffers@reddit
I used to love QoTW and sometimes an image challenge.
GabberZZ@reddit
Every week I'd have a go at the image challenges regardless of what it was. I used Fireworks as my image editor. I could make that shit sing back in the day. Never got on with photoshop.
teedyay@reddit
AICMFP
MrFeatherstonehaugh@reddit
Was this before or after Joel Veitch's Crusha commercial? If it was after, then that's pretty scummy. I'm sure Joel got paid for his work.
ATSOAS87@reddit
What kind of things were made?
Bamboo_Steamer@reddit
Think: golden showers, the owner and various animals.
Turbojelly@reddit
Was a while ago. Think there were a lot of encouragement to commit crimes.
Ururuipuin@reddit
No comment on the question but if you open the pdf on mobile screen shot and crop this wil remove the ad easily
Apidium@reddit
Just take a screenshot of the appropriate part and only print that out.
Nuisance 10000% but not some end of the world situation either.
deathschemist@reddit
unity were one of the premier game engines for indie games. then in 2023 they started charging a runtime fee, basically charging devs for every time a game in unity was downloaded.
even though they ended that, trust was gone. it's no longer one of the premier game engines for indie games. now most of the ones i see are running godot.
ItsDominare@reddit
This was the one I thought of first as well. How nobody at the company realised it was going to make them about as popular as Covid is pretty amazing.
deathschemist@reddit
thing is i wouldn't be surprised if there was someone at the company saying "but wait, won't this literally turn away the very game devs we'd be relying upon?" and was summarily ignored.
ItsDominare@reddit
I'm sure you're right. I suppose I should have said "nobody senior at the company" because I certainly wouldn't bet against your theory given they have about 5k employees. There's bound to have been a whole bunch of them who thought either privately or openly that it was going to be a bad plan.
DiligentCockroach700@reddit
In the the last company I worked for before retiring, I was a member of a team of 5 doing IT. Management decided 5 was too many so "restructured" to 4 by changing the job descriptions and making us all re apply for our jobs. The alternative was to take redundancy. The whole team took redundancy so they had to recruit a complete new team. This cost them far more than it would have done to keep the original team of 5.
phatboi23@reddit
the usual
"Why do we pay IT so much" when something is broken
"Why do we pay IT so much" when everything works fine.
there's no real winning sadly because IT isn't a money maker in the accounts system they'll never get the funding to keep everything running 100%.
Firecrocodileatsea@reddit
There are multiple stories of companies deciding IT does nothing because everything works and getting rid of most of all of that department...only to be gobsmacked when nothing works anymore.
phatboi23@reddit
yup seen it a ton lol
offshwga@reddit
Well M&S being £300 million out of pocket because they offshored half of their IT to fucking Tata in India, or barely spending a fucking penny on IT equipment for a decade is going to prove to be a horrible example for other companies that cheaping out will eventually blow up in your face.
AllAvailableLayers@reddit
Jesus, how fucking naive to offer redundancy to everyone.
itsableeder@reddit
Thornton's used to be considered a luxury brand. Then the started putting offers for free boxes of Continental in The Sun and selling directly into TK Maxx, completely devalued their brand, and ended up having to close all of their shops because they completely failed to react to a changing market and instead continued to chase a customer base who wanted discounts and vouchers.
Firecrocodileatsea@reddit
The chocolate is now crap. My parents bought a box from the supermarket recently... it is now awful. And competing with all the other supermarket brands.
It used to be they were the default high street shop for presents for people you didn't know well. Get a box of continental, get them to wrap it for you, lazy persons guide to present giving. Done.
itsableeder@reddit
Yeah it went massively downhill the second Ferrero bought them unfortunately, but the writing had been on the wall for years before that point. It's a shame, they were a proper institution and they mismanaged themselves into the ground.
Shit to work for, though, so I'm not too upset about it.
BemaJinn@reddit
I worked for an NHS trust, they were having financial problems (as they all are).
They hired in and outside firm to figure it how they can save money.
This firm managed to save the trust about 500,000.
They paid the firm 500,000.
Firecrocodileatsea@reddit
You are a manger/business owner/senior civil servant and want to improve efficency.
Do you a) listen to the staff when they tell you where inefficencies are and work to solve the casues of them.
or b) pay a company stupid money to tell you you need to change your branding from military grey to ocean grey and spend more time (and therefore money but no one seems to factor in time being money) monitoring staff and making them more miserable.
They always choose option b.
7-deadly-degrees@reddit
Spotify firing all the "[year] unwrapped" people
Space_Hunzo@reddit
That one really broke my heart. It was so noticeable the year after they fired all the analysts.
itsheadfelloff@reddit
A company I used to work for put in an order to buy £400k worth of material as a gamble against a future price hike which would save the company £20k. We didn't have enough warehouse space, so most of it sat outside on pallets and got wrecked by the elements. Then the one customer who actually used it dropped it because it wasn't fit for purpose, it was so unfit for purpose the manufacturer stopped producing it. It was such a specific use material no other customer needed to use it. I didn't get a pay rise that year but the MD did get a new beemer.
Other_Exercise@reddit
Can I make a suggestion, OP? Get a black and white laser printer.
I have a workhorse Brother printer, and I can buy knock-off toner for less than £10. Wasting ink isn't really a biggie for me.
Abacus_Mode@reddit
I got an Epsom with an ink tank 4 years ago and bought a second set of ink refills at the same time. I’ve yet to open the refills. I don’t print much, but still print regularly, art, labels, drawings etc. granted not heavy use but 4 years with zero ink purchases vs HPs subscription shite and a brother laser that was cleaner to buy a new one when the toner run out prompted me to found the most sustainable option. Epson and ink tanks got my money.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Take your point - but why should I need to buy a new printer to save on ink that I shouldn’t be wasting due to an incredibly bad move on their part? How many people are now going to be spunking ink for no reason at all.
Serethe@reddit
Get an Ecotank printer. I've had mine for about 3 years and I've had to refill the ink twice. I print scripts and lyric sheets for 200 kids per term. The ecotank was a game changer.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Just googled that and must say that’s tempting. Didn’t know they existed - cheers for that!
Serethe@reddit
The one I have is the Epson ET2750. It has saved me so much money.
The only problem I've had with it is the yellow isn't working properly at the moment. There is a process to clean the heads properly, but it chews through ink to do so, so I'm just living with it.
But yeah, even so I really recommend it.
MrPatch@reddit
Print to pdf, use windows screen capture (shift+win+s) to select only the bit you need then print that.
batteryforlife@reddit
This, or screenshot on your phone and print image.
Aiken_Drumn@reddit
Doubtful. Nearly all these returns can print the label at the drop-off point. I've not printed a label myself in years.
Vladimir_Chrootin@reddit
If printer manufacturers charged a fair price for ink, the price for inkjets would start at £150-200 rather than £40; the current low prices are only sustainable for them by recouping their costs on ink.
People would complain about that at least as much as they do now for the price of ink.
The only way you can get out of this loop is to stop using consumer inkjets; ink tank systems can take some of the sting out of it if you print regularly, but you aren't going to beat the cost and reliability of a laser printer without buying a laser printer.
Other_Exercise@reddit
Because if you sell in any kind of quantity, a colour printer is going to be uneconomical - even if it was just a tiny of bit of ink used.
pinkthreadedwrist@reddit
Can't you just choose to print in greyscale?
Other_Exercise@reddit
Ink is expensive. Toner is cheap.
WanTwoThousand@reddit
I got a colour laser printer from Brother and it was really not massively expensive. Knock off toner is reasonable and lasts me years. I think I once went 6 months without using it and it printed perfectly regardless.
Electronic-Trade-504@reddit
Couldn't they just print in greyscale on their colour printer?
dogdogj@reddit
Second this, they also don't dry up like the cheap inkjet ones do, which is an issue unless you print weekly.
Pogipete@reddit
I second getting a Brother laser printer anyway. I suffered way too many years at the mercy of Canon and Epson ink jets. Now printing is a pleasure.
inevitable_dave@reddit
This was just before I joined, but it was a testing and inspection company that needed to go on a massive hiring frenzy after they'd royally screwed the pooch on a pay incentive.
They were at the lower end of the pay scale for the industry, paying around £40k for new engineers. End of year comes around and they've done insanely well through covid including some healthy new contracts. The engineers are told there's going to be a £8k pay bump across the board for the guys in the field, back dated 6 months, and a rather healthy bonus in the April payslip.
April comes around, and there's no bonus to found and the pay has gone up by only £2k on average. This is queried, and apparently the decision was reversed without warning. Within 48 hours, 30% of the engineers had handed their notice in.
A quick "oh fuck" moment, and suddenly they managed to find enough money for the bonus and pay bump but the damage was done and those that were going were gone. Replacements cost them massively in training, as the training cycle was nearly 6 months and involved a lot of hotel stays. Hell, hiring alone cost them nearly £8k a person through recruitment companies.
HoraceorDoris@reddit
Not saving money, but the biggest own goal was Ratners Jewellers. The owner/CEO (Gerald Ratner) joked in an after dinner speech that the Jewellery they sold was “total crap”.
Company stocks plummeted shortly afterwards.🤦🏻♂️
Stormy177@reddit
It wasn't in an after dinner speech, it was at an AGM. It's like he forgot that there was a media contingent, not just shareholders. IIRC it happened early enough in the day to make the lunchtime BBC News bulletin!
Abacus_Mode@reddit
Wasn’t an AGM, it was a speech at the Institute of Directors annual conference in 1991
Exact_Setting9562@reddit
He'd made the same joke plenty of times before in speeches but this time a journalist decided to make it a story.
lacb1@reddit
"Cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long."
Possiblyreef@reddit
Although the M&S best of prawn sandwich is something like £5.50 now so realistically you could likely buy jewelry from Shein and that comment still holds up
NotTreeFiddy@reddit
Fuck me it's good though. As is that epic egg mayo.
chabybaloo@reddit
Kind of surprised this hasn't really happened to Elon Musk
saludpesetasamor@reddit
Easily the NHS, hiring more middle managers instead of the extra ground staff they actually need. Seen it for decades. Expensive, idiotic, and just compounds the problem.
Mccobsta@reddit
Poundland starter to sell clothes and it's basically destroyed the business
mjosh133@reddit
Not sure if this fits the brief but i was planning to go wedding dress shopping tomorrow and had emailed a local shop asking if they had any appointments. They said she could do any time, so I requested 2pm. They then emailed back asking for a £25 non refundable fee. Straight away she lost my business as I know at least 5 other bridal shops in the area that don’t charge (sadly had no appointments tomorrow but I can book in for a few weeks time!). No wonder she had nobody booked in all day. Ironically, her google reviews say she is great at accommodating walk in appointments (with no mention of a fee!)
Hot_Photograph_5928@reddit
Bud light is up there
Thatresolves@reddit
Previous company I briefly worked at used to fail probations of pretty much everyone to get out of the “pay rise after passing the six month prob”
They made everyone keep it a secret, but I was a bit of a gobshite and didn’t keep quiet because I knew I’d been working above the entire time and told people, so a bunch of us just left immidiately because we were still in that period 😎
JohnCasey3306@reddit
Agree, that's shitty anti pattern design.
Other_Cap2954@reddit
I worked for a company where a saw broke and it cost £250 to get a new one next day, but no they thought they would cheap out on just replacing the motor for 50 pounds and it will take three days to deliver . Needless to it was much more complicated than plugging in a new motor, they fucked the wiring and misaligned the saw blade breaking that. A month goes by and the darn thing still isn’t working as another component fails from incompetent fixes. We only have one saw, all our projects got delayed and what’s worse is we missed on new work too. We lost thousands in revenue. I was tasked with helping develop the business on top of the project management and CAD drawings i was doing. I resigned after that month because they ignored my advice to buy a new saw. They just weren’t serious about running things properly
Historical-Car5553@reddit
Coca-Cola back in the Eighties.
Research showed that it in blind taste tests, people preferred the taste of Pepsi and so Cokes senior executives decided to adjust the CC recipe and relaunch the drink as New Coke.
The public went absolutely berserk at the company dropping traditional CC, and in the end original CC was brought back as Coke Classic. Initially alongside new Coke, but then as the sole drink when new Coke quietly slipped away.
CC came so close to losing everything in their bid to eek more market share from Pepsi.
gandyg@reddit
The conspiracy theory is that Coke knew exactly what they were doing with New Coke. The whole point of it was to renew interest and boost sales of the original one.
thatintelligentbloke@reddit
Many banks outsourced their IT overseas. This practice began around 10 years ago.
Seen many headlines recently and indeed over recent years about bank IT outages and hacks?
Yup.
A few of the specialist IT publications have reporting this scandal for years but it has never broken through to mainstream news.
Captain_Kruch@reddit
Coca Cola losing billions by trying to force people to have "New Coke". If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
trevpr1@reddit
Well we still have the new stuff here in the UK.
tmstms@reddit
Luke Shaw's own goal last night (technically credited to Brennan Johnson, but you can clearly see its an own goal) cost his company (=his club) a minimum of £100 million, which is what even a totally crap team in the Champions lEague now earns in TV and match revenue.
shesmykeylimepie@reddit
United were not trying to save a few quid there though. That was just bad luck.
tmstms@reddit
OP's post is entitled in pursuit of a few extra quid !!
zephyrmox@reddit
eh, it also means they don't breach their debt covenants through a funny clause, it's pretty hard to actually evaluate the financial impact!
Bob-Lowblow@reddit
Teams do not get £100 million just for qualifying for the champions league. That’s the max payout they’ll receive from Uefa if they win it. It’s about £15 million for qualifying.
tmstms@reddit
The estimated breakdown is
£70 million TV revenue
£25 million for matchday revenue (that will vary club to club, but clearly OT is a big stadium)
£? for mech, but the estimate for Man U is £25 million.
Sample link here, from Kieran Maguire, who is widelyrespected as an academic who reseaches and writes on the financialaspect of football:
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddevils/comments/1ksaotx/kieran_maguire_financial_impact_of_no_european/
Bob-Lowblow@reddit
No idea where he’s got that £70 million figure from. Liverpool made about £90 from the league phase last season, they finished top and got a lot of win bonuses. I think he’s guessed that £70 million on what he thinks they might’ve done in the CL. He does like to be dramatic.
tmstms@reddit
Quick google has this table after the league phase:
https://swissramble.substack.com/p/champions-league-revenue-202425-after
And both Villa and Man City are over the 70 million Euro mark, though cCity only just qualified.
Bob-Lowblow@reddit
So to go back to the original point, a totally crap team in the CL doesn’t earn £70 million? Worst team there looked to earn about £20 million. He’s picked that £70 million figure on what he thinks they’d have made. I don’t think this United team would have been doing as well as City or Villa did.
tmstms@reddit
I stand by what I say- I think the worst teams there are small teams, so they earned less by being small, not just crap.
I agree with you that I am using the word 'crap' in a loose sense.
For example, I would say that Man City were 'crap' in the league phase of the CL this year, although clearly they have performed very well once they got over the slmup that cost them any chance of retaining the league title.
I think that even an Man U that is crap by PL standards, would do OK against the Pot 4 teams. Maybe not even to qualify, but they would not have got nul points
PraterViolet@reddit
Lucozade for their recent utter dogshit ads - any possible inclination to buy their dumb sugary drinks gone in an instant, faster than you can say "twats sweeping the floor near Jude Bellingham".
jezmaster@reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/CorporateFacepalm/
iamnogoodatthis@reddit
Annoying yes, but you can print in black and white and make it a bit less annoying
BenjiTheSausage@reddit
Any company skimping on cyber security now days. M&S Apparently going to lose £300m, think it would have been cheaper to hire a decent cyber security team
DBv1@reddit
Mass produced items being sold on Etsy. Technically they don’t allow this but there are loopholes and I’d recommend doing an image search before purchasing anything.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Oh god yeah! About half of the stuff on there is from Temu. If you need a laugh though search for spells on Etsy. Whoever go in there first must be a millionaire. People giving £30-40 to someone to cast a love or luck spell via email
freeeeels@reddit
There's a girl who anonymously admitted online that she's a fraudulent "pet psychic' because she did it once as a joke but was then immediately overwhelmed by posting customers and now the money is too good to quit lol
singeblanc@reddit
It's not like there are other kinds.
pinkthreadedwrist@reddit
Oh, there are plenty that believe they really are.
justbiteme2k@reddit
Seen the same with Vinted. My wife thinks she's buying unwanted gifts (usually Nike trainers) and I keep telling her they're all fakes sold on mass. No one has 9 pairs of brand new trainers they bought but now don't need. The accounts last for one round of sales then bots create new ones.
b00g13@reddit
"loophole" in this case means no checks whatsoever. Drop shipped, mass produced shite with ai generated pictures. Etsy is working very hard to get rid of hand made goods.
smutanssmutans@reddit
A friend’s fiancé chucked his reliable tenants out of his rental property to cash in on the 2012 Olympics. Took them so long to get another tenant afterwards that he lost quite a lot of money. Oh how my heart bled for the greedy bar steward!
Emergency_Mistake_44@reddit
I know it's not the point as you shouldn't have to, but you can just crop the ad off the image you want to print in under 5 seconds.
Also, why don't you just enable the options that means you either don't print a label (Inpost lockers) or use shop printing facilities like Yodel, Evri, DPD etc.
I say this to help, not criticise, I'm a frequent Vinted seller too.
ShirleyKnot@reddit
I print my labels as well as I can get all dithery at the drop off point if I have more than one parcel, even if I’ve labelled what’s in what package, I get all overwhelmed so printing the labels at home takes away that pressure in the shop.
I recognise this is very specifically a ‘me’ problem but the printable labels are there for a reason and I wonder whether there are more weirdos like me than I would have imagined.
MoesLackey@reddit
I related to this 100%. I had to return a bunch of Amazon stuff & the thought of how flustered I get if there’s anyone waiting in line behind me as I go through the emails on my phone to find the right QR code kept me procrasting to the point I was almost outside the return window. Decided to use my little niimbot label maker to put the QR code on each package. Dude at the return place was baffled that I went to the trouble, but now I always do it unless I only have 1 thing to return.
ShirleyKnot@reddit
I feel vindicated!
DukeRedWulf@reddit
Yodel! A cursed name if ever there was one. Truly, an absolute chocolate teapot of a firm. After I got burned the first time, I wouldn't trust them to deliver the steam off my p!ss!
Emergency_Mistake_44@reddit
Shame that, I sell on Vinted and use them as they're local. Never had a problem myself!
chabybaloo@reddit
Virgin media kept messing up my install, i was owed compensation, didn't pursue it. End of contact, they wacked up the price hugely, and said i still need to give 30 day notice.
So i pursued the compensation. Got 2 to 3x back
I think their call centre were not actually bad, surprisingly.
TimboJimbo81@reddit
Screenshot the bit you want, print b/w…??
ikbenhoogalsneuken@reddit
(In 1991, Gerald Ratner gave a speech that changed his life for the worse.)[https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdhapokM/]
Gerald, who was the CEO of Ratner's Jewellers, spoke at the Institute of Directors Annual Convention, and his comments became well-known for the wrong reasons. During his talk, he jokingly said that his company's earrings were "cheaper than a prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long." This remark hurt the perceived value of his products and made it seem like he lacked confidence in his own brand.
The impact of Ratner's comments was immediate and serious. Sales at Ratner's Jewellers dropped sharply, leading to significant financial losses. Within a year, the company went from being valued at £1.2 billion to nearly going bankrupt. Ratner faced a huge public backlash and eventually stepped down as CEO in 1992.
my11fe@reddit
The company I worked for,
Would not allow us to use mobiles during work hours, even a quick check.
I left my mobile by mistake one afternoon.
I did not really need it then. I knew I was back passing later.
When I did pop back, the boss was doing the shift, and had a go and asked why I did not reply. I asked, "Give my phone a ring, and you find out.
She did, and she heard my phone.
She said, "That's your phone, that's keeps going off. I said yes I forgot it, and as I knew I did not need it, I thought I pop back now when going out.
Same_Grouness@reddit
Not exactly the biggest own goal here
Charming_Ad_6021@reddit
What?
Footner@reddit
Jagex ruining RuneScape because of real world trading
MoesLackey@reddit
Just an idea in case the printing of the label is more convenient/cheaper, could you screenshot it and crop out the ad before printing?
i-am-the-fly-@reddit
The problem is most finance departments have no idea how the actual business runs. They see cost of things, not their value
Ok_Advantage_8153@reddit
A company in South Africa that operated blast furnaces to smelt metal went on the usual restructuring binge where they would not only cut costs, but dramatically increase production at the same time...
No cut was too petty or dickish and they turned a workforce that could best be described as having 'militaristic tendencies' to one that was almost in open warfare with the company. Labourers there did a lot of dirty dangerous grunt work and they earned a fraction of the UK minimum wage. Manangement made some cuts to something pointless, a benefit that would never move the cost needle and it was the final straw.
One of the labourers (pre CCTV days) hooked up a fire hose and pointed it into the blast furnace. To say that cold water and molten shit don't mix is the understatement of all understatements. The damage from that act of sabotage in todays money would have been north of £100m and it took out one quarter of their production capacity for months
Don't piss off the little guy!
MMLFC16@reddit
I never print labels from Vinted, always do the digital ones!
krypto-pscyho-chimp@reddit
I worked for a public transport company that brought in "efficiency" savings over several years. Basically squeezing drivers pay, allotted time and conditions to increase profit. Staff retention went through that roof. 65% turnover. Other companies poached the drivers and didn't need to spend on training. Fighting for a 0.5% pay rise. They basically stole 2.5hrs at work travel time a week from most of us too. They then had to pay double for loan drivers, pay hotel and food, pay double for agency staff too. They have little training and make mistakes leading to a loss of service.
Newer drivers also have more accidents. Go off route. Costs go up. Services become more unreliable. Can't invest so much in newer vehicles as a result.
Staff from 2 depots went on strike due to very poor conditions and poor pay.
The unreliablility resulted in fines from the traffic commissioner.
More services cut. Contracts lost. Huge losses for years at one depot. Eventually leading to its closure.
Worked great for me as I got redundancy, notice pay, free bus passes for 10 years, another job the next day with a sign of bonus, massively improved pay and conditions. I paid off all my debts, my student loan and bought myself a newer motorbike.
I used to be a staff manager at the same firm but they cut back admin and management staff so much that I was often doing the job of 3 or 4 people, unpaid overtime for £35k a year. I was working up to 80hrs a week. Had a massive effect on my mental health so I resigned. As did the 2 previous staff managers.
My words to a Director before the closure were, if you can't run a profitable depot that values and invests in it's staff then sell up and give the routes to a company that can.
6 months later they did exactly that.
wotdafukwazdat@reddit
ublock origin is your friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
It's so effective that Google deliberately broke it in chrome, so you'll need a copy of the firefox browser to add it into (although the version for Edge may work adequately).
All the ads will be blocked including this one, you won't need to print it.
YourLizardOverlord@reddit
An oilfield services company I once worked for carried out urgent maintenance in resource cursed countries where downtime cost $thousands per hour. This involved engineers travelling at short notice from the UK with the relevant parts or replacement kit.
Own goal 1:
The genius accountants decided to unilaterally pay suppliers after 90 days. When the next urgent maintenance request came in, we tried to pick up the parts, only to be told by the supplier that our account was overdue and they weren't playing. It took several days to sort out, and the cost of the downtime more than eliminated the savings form the 90 day payment cycle.
Own goal 2:
We employed some travel specialists who knew how to get visas and travel to the resource cursed countries we operated in, knew what vaccinations were needed, could get extra passports where needed, and had a wealth of safety information. Genius management made them all redundant and replaced them with a generic tourist travel agency who could get discounts on major airlines, the ones that didn't operate in the countries we worked in. They hadn't even heard of even the most generic European destinations. I once passed their office and heard someone ask in a baffled voice: where the fuck is Bardufoss?
Own goal 3:
When operating in what we're all supposed to call the Gulf of America now, it was normal to lease a work boat. As I recall these were about 200' powered by diesel engines rated at around 5000 hp. Genius management decided it would be cheaper to buy a USMC surplus LCT that looked as if it was ex WW2. Cue one of the regular hurricanes and the boat was lost with all its expensive kit. By sheer luck the crew survived.
EVRider81@reddit
I only print boarding passes/labels in b/w to avoid this..
LobCatchPassThrow@reddit
Currently watching my employer do this.
We routinely take equipment to external test facilities. The equipment isn’t too heavy, a 40kg-ish box, and a 13kg-ish plate.
Now here’s the kicker:
Neither have sufficient hand holds, grips, or any lifting equipment.
I’ve recommended buying an engine crane and a lifting eye (that the test site uses with our kit).
All in? Probably £200.
We spend ~£3,000 per day for access to the test facility.
I’ve explained: “people drop knives. People drop shopping baskets. If we drop this equipment, 3 things happen: it’s fucked, someone will get injured, and we could end up with a long lead time before it gets replaced”
But no. £200 spent here isn’t worth it. But when someone injures themselves after dropping the kit, the company will be fucking begging to turn back the clock and buy the lifting equipment.
investtherestpls@reddit
Assuming you're using a web browser:
Press Ctrl-Shift-C
Click on the image or the area around it
Hit the Delete key.
It's great to remove shit from webpages - flashing shit, shit videos that autoplay even if you tell them not to, etc.
mata_dan@reddit
Oh my god, why have I not already been doing that for the longest time.
I mess about with display: none or using a ublock rule... could've just pressed delete and removed the node completely.
Pleasant-chamoix-653@reddit
eBay in 2014 tried to copy Amazon despite having their own niche. They tried to force out small sellers in favour of large sellers and corporates. They totally ignored FB local marketplace trying to muscle in
FormidableMulberry@reddit
Why didn’t you just print in black and white
Mysterious_Act_3652@reddit
Hotels.com had a great loyalty scheme - buy 10 nights get one free. I spent a ton with them. Since they’ve scrapped it all of my spend goes direct to the hotels, to Airbnb or competitors. I’m sure that’s a net loser to them even though it was a generous programme as it’s changed from the best net price to the worst overnight.
Kier_C@reddit
that was a MASSIVE failure. They lost so much business the paused the roll out after the US and UK. They are already making moves to bring something similar back
Classic case of not understanding why someone is using your business
XiiMoss@reddit
Why are you not just using the digital label option….
CongealedBeanKingdom@reddit
Screen shot the label bit and just print that out.
SmokyBarnable01@reddit
I used to work for Oddbins who were owned by a group of right shifty buggers called European Food Brokers (EFB). EFB got caught bang to rights by HMRC pulling a massive VAT fraud (essentially claiming that they were exporting booze to Europe but actually sending over empty lorries and then selling the booze in the UK but not paying VAT on it). They had their license to run a bonded warehouse revoked and Oddbins (plus suppliers and other creditors) ended up paying the price. The last shop closed in Nov 2023.
BaseballFuryThurman@reddit
EA when they made Star Wars Battlefront (or the sequel, I can't remember which) heavily pay-to-win. You had to basically put an entire working week in to grind enough to be able to unlock Darth Vader, or of course you could skip all of that and just pay more on top of the game you've already paid for.
They did an AMA and tried to claim that it was to give players a "sense of pride and accomplishment" as if their tactics weren't blatantly obvious, and I believe it's the most downvoted Reddit comment of all time. Literally hundreds of thousands of downvotes.
I'm sure it hasn't hurt the company in any meaningful way, at leaat not long-term, but their reputation took a huge hit. And for anyone who had forgotten about that, at least they're still selling the same half-arsed football game to people every year just to remind how much they love fleecing people.
pgh9fan@reddit
I downvoted that comment.
wasdice@reddit
I believe the downvotes broke their own record (from SimCity) in fact
TastyComfortable2355@reddit
A mate works for a fire alarm company where they carry out some early morning fire alarm tests at customers premises because they don't want to do the tests themselves.
Engineers would go in at about 6-30 and carry out the tests before the staff arrived and they would be paid two hours at time and a half and then carry out their normal days work.
His company decided they did not want to pay overtime but told the engineers to leave two hours early on test days.
The engineers refused to start early and instigated a "work to rule"
The company backed down
What is so stupid is that the customers were paying for the additional service and still the company wanted to screw their engineers
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
I used to work in the food industry, specifically beef from farm to fork. The main warehouse where cuts were aged was controlled by robotic pickers.
One day, the business hired a lady whose job it was to cut costs. One thing on her chopping board was the service contract we had with the company that supplied and maintained the robots. Think response SLAs in hours, resolution in a couple of days maximum. At the point they were getting on for 6-7 years old, and up to that point had been very reliable. She saw how much we were paying for that contract, decided it was too expensive, and terminated the contract.
Within a fortnight, a critical component on one of the robots failed beyond repair, taking the robot out of service entirely. In one fell swoop, all product in that robot's range was inaccessible.
We approached the supplier, they turned round and said that since we were now out of contract, we were now considered low priority and would have to wait for an available engineer.
The robot was out of service for over a month. £50k worth of product went out of date and had to be written off.
flashdonut@reddit
We used to hire 4 additional vans for one particular job. They were only required for delivering to our installing crews. So loaded on a Monday, on the road a day or so, unloaded Wednesday or Thursday.
So the genius bosses went 'Hang on, we are hiring a van for a week but only using it for four days? No way. Take them back and hire per day'.
So we now had two people per van doing a two hour round trip twice a week. Equated to 32 man hours. But the best bit is the hire company. I cant remember the details, but for arguments sake we hired the vans for £80 a week. Day rate was £30 a day. So we are now paying £120.
Genius.
moneywanted@reddit
Not an answer to your question, but can’t you just change from colour to black and white in your print settings? I’ve never come across a printer that didn’t allow this!
DukeRedWulf@reddit
Human: *tries to print something B&W*
Printer: NO. I AM OUT OF CYAN
Human: "Just print it in B&W"
Printer: NO. I DEMAND LIQUID CYAN AS TRIBUTE
What parallel universe do you live in where you've never experienced this?
Did they finally fix printers in the last 5 years since I binned mine for being so bloody annoying?
moneywanted@reddit
Yeah, my printer can bypass colour if it’s run out and just print in black and white… though that wasn’t my suggestion, it’s a real thing nowadays 😃
DukeRedWulf@reddit
Blimey! That's a result!
For decades printers were set up to hold your print jobs hostage until they got more ink, which is more expensive weight-for-weight than actual gold!
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
I absolutely can but I shouldn’t have to! Either way I’m paying to print an unsolicited ad. The environmental cost alone of this is huge. How many people don’t have the know how to do things like this (my mum for example) and will be forced to chug out 20 hi res copies of an ad on their aging printer just to sell a few old nick nacks.
space_guy95@reddit
Why do you print your own labels if this bothers you so much? Practically every postage option on Vinted offers printerless options where either the shop print the label or the courier does on pickup (InPost). There's absolutely no need to be printing them yourself.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
It didn’t exist 2 days ago but thanks for your input
moneywanted@reddit
You’re right, you shouldn’t have to… but don’t moan about needing to print in colour when that’s not right.
I don’t know how Vinted run, though… do they offer you a discounted shipping rate if you buy through their platform, or any other added value services? Maybe selling advertising space helps support that - though I’d be more inclined to say it’s an idiotic idea that will cause a grand total of nobody to sign up to or buy whatever Readly may be.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Ink is ink and they are forcing a digital ad into my physical space. Shipping is entirely at their control. The buyer pays a fee and you get sent the label. At no point can I decline the ad and can’t source postage externally like you can on eBay.
moneywanted@reddit
Golly, you’re getting very worked up about something that several people have said you can screenshot and crop…
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
Not at all I have a very justified complaint. You on the other hand are very quick to leap to the unwarranted defence of corporate profits and the continued enshitification of everything. Which for a supposed Red Dwarf fan is a very Arnold Rimmer thing to do. 🫡
moneywanted@reddit
I flat out said it was an idiotic idea…. And wondered if they were about to subsidise postage through this kind of agreement.
Though I will admit to having experience in cleaning the chicken soup nozzle on vending machines, I more resemble Lister. Physically, spiritually, and ethically.
Possiblyreef@reddit
You can just put the item in one of those lockers without even needing to print a label.
Eszharen@reddit
Snipping tool > Paste onto a page (or print directly)
Fuck printing that!
TheKnightsRider@reddit
Can you not screen shot and crop it?
Disgruntled__Goat@reddit
Why should you have to?
BuildingArmor@reddit
They don't have to, but it sounds like they have a problem that could be solved and that's one method to do so.
Disgruntled__Goat@reddit
Yes, and both things are true.
BuildingArmor@reddit
Yes but it's kind of pointless to say you shouldn't have to do something when you don't have to do that thing at all.
ATSOAS87@reddit
What kind of answer is this lol?
You're right, they shouldn't have to. But unless they want to stop using the company, or buy a new printer, they need a different solution.
Disgruntled__Goat@reddit
And what kind of response is this lol?
Right and that’s it, that’s all I said. Where did I say they should sit there not dealing with the situation and waiting for a shitty company to stop doing shitty things? The person above already gave the solution.
Imaginary-Hornet-397@reddit
Select the option to have the parcel shop/ post office print the label. They are not wasting their own ink then.
space_guy95@reddit
Exactly this, who actually prints their own Vinted labels? Almost every postage option has a printerless option available that is far more convenient to use, and you can easily restrict in your account which options are available to your buyers. I've sold dozens of items on there over 5+ different couriers and never once printed a label.
WernerHerzogEatsShoe@reddit
Got a drop box end of my street. Print a label and put it in there vs go further to somewhere that does printing.
J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A@reddit
Yeah, this is like complaining that you were walking 5 meters behind someone and they didn't hold a door open for them, and now they're mad at the person and making a post about what they should do.
Just open the door.
Crop out the ad and move on with your life. Not every minor inconvenience needs to be a thing.
Making mountains out of mole hills.
ClassicPart@reddit
Well they can either do that and have it now or wait an ice age for the company to sort their shit out and complain instead.
HoraceorDoris@reddit
Shouldn’t have to, but it would solve the printer ink problem 🤷🏻♂️
yorkspirate@reddit
Of course you can but that's the problem, it's supposed to be a one click solution not you the consumer having to mess about cropping and editing something to use their platform
thepoliteknight@reddit
I once worked at a laser quest that was taken under new management. The new managers thought that handing out free tickets to schools would drum up some new business. So they sent out a thousand tickets, on Easter week. The schools organised buses to take the kids in and turned up in huge numbers. Hardly any money was taken that week and our managers had multiple arguments with teachers demanding that we were legally bound to admit them all. Not only that but very large groups of kids congregated around the entrances and seemingly scared away customers because all takings were down.
lacb1@reddit
The funny thing? All they had to do was write on the tickets that bookings must be made in advance, subject to availability and just space the bookings out. The place looks much busier and more popular, the kids have fun and want to come back and you might sell some drinks/snacks while they're there. Easy win.
thepoliteknight@reddit
It was a long time ago, but I believe the tickets were literally just printed on a4 paper and cut out with scissors. No effort was put into them at all.
DarthNovercalis@reddit
Having worked at a Laser Quest this is the most quest sounding thing ever. I think they're all run the same
DigitalStefan@reddit
Anyone with an ounce of business sense isn’t looking to work for Lazer Quest, I suspect.
jtr99@reddit
What about as a money-laundering opportunity?
DigitalStefan@reddit
There are takeaway restaurants and hand-wash car wash businesses for that
jtr99@reddit
Noted, thank you!
jmabbz@reddit
Basically every housing association neglecting basic maintenance and repairs to their properties (especially the roof) only to be surprised when the problem gets significantly worse and ends up costing an order of magnitude more.
Cirrus-Nova@reddit
To OP
If you are on windows you can open the pdf of the label, open the snipping tool, copy the part of the label that you need and paste that on to a blank document (in Word or Google Doc) and print that instead.
Intruder313@reddit
Can you Preview - Screen Snip - Save to Paint or something - Edit?
I’m assuming you are on a PC of course
HMSWarspite03@reddit
Gerald Ratner rather famously called his products "crap" then his business collapsed rather rapidly.
TeHNeutral@reddit
Best part is he was just making a joke
HMSWarspite03@reddit
Didn't go down very well, i remember the headlines and newspapers going crazy over it, then his business imploding.
TeHNeutral@reddit
It sort of did, isn't it H Samuel?
paulmclaughlin@reddit
H Samuel, Ernest Jones, a load of other jewellers in the states...
All together the group is supposed to be the largest retailer of diamond jewellery in the world.
HMSWarspite03@reddit
H Samuel was part of the Ratner group, but after the " it's total crap" Ratner himself had to back out of the management.
Negative_Call584@reddit
If you are on a windows comouter you can use snipping tool to capture only the area you want and then print that, or if on a phone you could screenshot then crop the image to just what you need and print that 👌
Naive_Reach2007@reddit
Mercedes Benz UK
I had one used to pay over phone for service etc.. then informed no longer taking payment in dealers its all done online now
80% of people who use them are the older generation, I can see a lot moving to other brands because of this one idea from head office, it amazes me how removed people are from day to day business
I used to think companies would research ideas and change etc.. but now I know mostly its either knee jerk reactions or a way to save money which always fails in the long term.
Isawthat_Karma@reddit
Paying for flyers and distribution for new cleaning “company” (2 people start up)
Once is a while, I pay to get a ‘deep’ clean, so I gave them a go, you know help local business and start up, end result- left 5 mins before paid time, skimped on clean (like I would do for quickie clean- paid for ‘deep’ clean) smear marks, dirty cloth residue NEVER used them again
I can’t understand for your first intro to new customer, new startup, why would you do a below par job, is the business model just to do every house once!? No repeat customer
Isgortio@reddit
The care company I work for increased their fees last year and the council refused to pay the new fees, so they lost a large portion of their client base. They had a handful remaining, ones that were very disabled with complex routines and multiple long visits a day but were happy with the company, so the council funded those only. This April they increased the fees again, the council straight away refused to fund the clients if they stayed with the company so they've now lost their remaining regular clients.
The fee only increased by about £2 an hour each year, but it's enough that they've lost regular and guaranteed income. Do any of the staff see any of this increased fee? Nope. They've also lost long term staff because they have less work, so staff now had reduced hours (some going from 40 a week to 15!). So now they have lost decent clients and decent staff members, all for the sake of a few quid a day.
They've recently closed one of their branches and merged with another, so something tells me this fantastic decision is working out great for them...
Farscape_rocked@reddit
About 15 years ago, back when I was an askreddit mod (different account), Jewsons started spamming askreddit.
Caddy666@reddit
on windows: ctrl-win-s and just take a screengrab of the relevent bit
Plus_Sherbet460@reddit
Job I was previously at one of the higher ups decided he could save a few quid buying soil graded to 2 inch instead of 4. It came in and got spread on football and rugby pitches and then had 10 staff for the next 3 weeks picking stones, plastic and glass out of it. Net saving probably -£3000
JBB2002902@reddit
Can you screenshot the label and crop the image before printing?
one_sharp_cookie@reddit
Print to pdf, Crop the image to be just the label you want to print
Born-Ad4452@reddit
This is a corporate espionage attempt from eBay 😁
CowCompetitive2136@reddit
My favourite one is a large soft drinks manufacturer spent £3.5 million on a new production line to repackage large packs of cans into smaller packs (when demand shifted) once built, they rolled 1 pallet off the line, then shut it down because is was now not seen as environmentally efficient. 🤣
ShinyDiscoBallzz@reddit
Just a few examples
Bud Lite Nike Ben & Jerry's Gillette Disney
early_midlifecrisis@reddit
Can you actually explain the own goals without sounding like a bell-end?
ShinyDiscoBallzz@reddit
Can you actually comment without the abusive name calling?
BuildingArmor@reddit
You'd have to do the explaining first before they got to the name calling, because the name calling would be based on the explanation.
day__raccoon@reddit
Care to explain further?
zone6isgreener@reddit
Hoover's free flights is a legendary case that went on for years.
OK_GO_27@reddit
Doesn't sound like Vinted is benefiting from this at all?
Agitated-Tourist9845@reddit
They’re getting paid to place the ad.
DylanClegg23@reddit (OP)
They are being paid to place the unremovable ads on the postage label. They charge the buyer a fee to buy the item and now take a fee from the adverts served to their captive audience. It’s not just a bit of text either - it’s a full third of the page hi-res colour image
Tony-2112@reddit
Screen shot and crop the image is the easiest solution. Also use an ad blocker, it will generally vastly improve your browsing experience.
richs99@reddit
Luke Shaw last night
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