SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - The Better Business Bureau of San Diego has compiled a list of the local companies with the most unanswered customer complaints.
According the BBB, the companies include: Archival Albums & Photo Pages with a postal box in San Ysidro; Morgann Hill Design Center in the North County; Gentle Breeze Online and GreenStream Lending, both paycheck lending companies located on an Indian reservation in Boulevard; and Western Towing with offices all over San Diego County.
On its web site, Western Towing promotes itself as a “no problem” towing company, but don't tell that to some of its customers.
“These people were horrible,” said San Marcos resident James Anneblo.
“Every time we would call they would hang up or blame us by saying, ‘Hey you shouldn't have parked on the red,’” he said.
Anneblo admits he parked his Toyota pickup on a red curb in a Vista apartment complex in 2014, but with the permission of the apartment manager.
He said he parked on the red curb so he could load up a refrigerator he had purchased on Craig’s List. He was inside the apartment for less than four minutes and his truck was towed, according to Anneblo.
“The Western Towing grabbed the truck and got air along the speed bumps around the corner, quickly getting out of there,” he said.
After the manager called Western Towing, the company eventually did give Anneblo his truck back, free of charge. However, he had to wait five hours, he says, and the truck was damaged when he got it back.
“The fender, the wheel well, there's a big dent and I never had that dent,” said Anneblo.
The damage was never fixed, he said.
Western Towing has an "F" grade from the Better Business Bureau, which said the towing company simply fails to answer many complaints.
“You cannot refuse to answer complaints and get a good grade from the BBB. We won't allow you to be accredited with any unanswered complaints whatsoever,” said Sheryl Reichert, CEO of the San Diego BBB.
Western Towing failed to return our phone call so a CBS News 8 producer showed up with a camera at the firm’s office on Pacific Highway.
“We do answer but if the person that made the complaint doesn’t consider it resolved, then it stays on (the BBB web site),” the unidentified manager told us.
He also said complaints are common in the towing industry.
“We impound a lot of people's cars, which makes people unhappy. But we provide the services legally. People are going to complain so that's our only response,” he said.
Another company with a lot of unanswered complaints is Morgann Hill Design Center in the North County.
Customer Mark Wiles ordered a cutting board online from Morgann Hill in 2014, which was supposed to arrive at his home in Michigan in time for Christmas. Instead, it showed up in June 2015, and only after Wiles sent repeated emails to the company, as well as Groupon.
“The fact that I had to send probably 20 emails to two different companies to get (Morgann Hill) to respond and send what they promised me, that's just not good service,” he told CBS News 8.
Morgann Hill's online promotional video depicts owners Ann Morgan Delaney and her husband Kyle Hill making the items they sell online in a small craft room.
We spoke to Kyle Hill via telephone and he promised to get back to us with a statement, but he never called us back.
When a CBS News 8 producer showed up at the couple’s La Costa mansion, Kyle Hill was home but he declined to comment.
Since our contact with the company, Morgann Hill contacted the BBB regarding their list of unanswered complaints. The BBB issued us this update via email:
| The company (Morgann Hill) has just started responding to a number of the complaints file against them, I assume prompted by the story you are running. Because of this, they have No Rating (NR) because updates are being made to their file. Currently in our system they have 82 unanswered complaints, 8 unresolved complaints and a delayed response for 113. |
With all the complaints filed with the BBB, Wiles has this advice for potential customers. “I would never tell anybody to use this company.... It just wasn't worth the hassle,” he said.
The local company with the most unanswered complaints, Archival Albums & Photo Pages of San Ysidro, emailed CBS News 8 the following statement:
| We have made tremendous progress in responding to the BBB complaints. We just acquired the factory and now control the timely delivery of our orders. In terms of communication, all of our customers have access to our email, online chat, and 877 contact information where when they call to follow up on the order, we provide information including tracking numbers, estimated shipping dates, and refunds. Over the past three weeks we have shipped out over 1,000 orders and many of these were in relation to these complaints. We will be updating the BBB web site by the end of this week with current data. |