I hope the converse “don’t buy this European product” is okay too.
[The original title “My Smartbox Group complaint, not posted on LinkedIn” didn’t seem fitting enough for this community.]
Bongo is basically a gift to… Bongo.
I don’t exaggerate when I say 3/4 of my friends that got such a voucher never used it in the end. It’s a business model built on people’s lazyness.Can we normalize giving a Euro banknote in an envelope and ditch gift vouchers all together? Vouchers always have strings attached, limitations… I find them always annoying. There’s an amount, just give the amount with a note “giving you this so you can buy a (intended present)” et voilà!
Vouchers suck, they really do.
It is always great to warn people against bad European companies too. We have plenty of people and companies who are as bad or worse than in the US.
Nestle is objectively one of if not the worst companies in the world apparently devoted to almost exclusively doing evil. Spotify is also terrible, Unilever had done some bad shit apparently, our many of our auto companies are also not good, etc… Many of our companies would literally kill to get American labor laws here and have spent billions Union busting and lobbying/bribing against workers.
Yeah once I got to know of what Nestlé does I stopped buying anything related to them. The longer I live the more I become convinced that it is indeed the sociopaths who rise to the top and pretty much run “everything”.
And fuck Stérin. He’s a very dangerous man, a Musk, Trump and Thiel fan. And he’s one of the billionaires trying to push French politics to the far-right.
Trying and succeeding unfortunately. However, I’m glad women aren’t as susceptible as I’ve heard in Patrick Boyle’s latest: The UK is a Warning to the Rest of the World.
Always sad to see a service enshittify that much
Wait, that means this was ever not shitty? I’ve no previous experience with them, but I cannot imagine this being anything other than horrible.
I gifted Bongos to family members around 20 years ago. They all had a good time, and the experience was much simpler than what you describe
Fortunately. I gave mine, a gift from work, to my parents at first because I didn’t want to choose restaurants or events and stuff, not my thing. Then they emailed me what horrible experience they had trying to activate it, even though I had already explained to order first and only then insert the code. The customer support said they would have to pay extra and stuff, asking where they bought the ticket yada yada; I was pissed I caused them stress. Had I known I would’ve never. I wonder when and why it all went wrong with that company.
Sorry to hear
It always was.
