IRRITATING and misleading practices that leave customers of household-name companies seething are listed in a new report by a consumer watchdog.

The National Consumer Council (NCC), funded mainly by the Department of Trade and Industry, accuses high-street chains and everyday brands of casually alienating customers by being sneaky and dishonest, impersonal and robotic, and incompetent and ineffectual.

It singles out “robotic call centres, hard-sell extended warranties, missed appointments, poor after-sales service and being put on hold, never to emerge” as the gripes guaranteed to get a customer’s goat.

And it identifies Dixons, Currys, Comet, Sony BMG, Halifax, Ikea, McDonald’s and Kellogg’s among a litany of big-name culprits.

In the report, due to be published tomorrow, the NCC labels the worst offenders — firms that “over-promise and under-deliver” — as “stupid companies” that ignore the most clear-cut warnings that consumers will no longer put up with their tricks.

The “stupid company”, the report says, “is obsessive about making a sale” and “believes it can succeed by misleading customers”. Large companies are the worst offenders.

They “appear distant from consumers and deal with them in a clinical and sometimes uncaring manner” and are “slow-moving, patronising and apparently incapable of getting the easy things right”.

McDonald’s is criticised for making misleading advertising claims about the health credentials of its chips, and Kellogg’s for similar offences involving Tony the Tiger, the Frosties mascot designed to appeal to children.

“Time and again the same sectors are mentioned,” the report says. “Financial services and the telecoms sector — including mobile phone companies — are cited as industries characterised by systemic poor service and a chronic lack of transparency. The utilities are also said by consumers to operate in an opaque way.”

The report continues: “Electrical retailers and garages are both highlighted as sectors that systematically rip off customers — staff in the former are most commonly said to be incompetent, while garage staff are characterised as patronising.”

The big electrical retailers, including Dixons, Currys and Comet, are singled out for their hard selling of unwanted extended warranties.

One unnamed consumer quoted in the report complained that “they put so much pressure on you when you go to buy a TV or whatever . . . they send you loads of leaflets through the post . . . they’re just like hyenas”.

The NCC questioned six focus groups, called 2,000 people and consulted its regular panel of 200 consumers to draw up the report, Stupid Companies — How British Businesses Throw Away Money by Alienating Consumers.

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