Popular Apps with the Worst Customer Service

From games and social media to food delivery and streaming services, we have more apps available for download than we know what to do with. But while some apps are on millions of phones around the world, it doesn’t necessarily mean all users are happy with their experience.

At Solitaired, we know how frustrating it can be when you’re playing your favorite game or watching your favorite show, only to come across an issue with the app. You put your entertainment on pause as you seek out customer service, but sometimes you are left with little to no response.

With this in mind, we set out to understand which of the most popular apps are causing Americans the most stress when reaching out to customer service. To do this, we analyzed millions of reviews across more than 90 popular apps to determine which have the most complaints about their support. Using this data, we then created a bad customer service score on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 representing the worst support. Read on to learn which apps topped our ranking.

Key Takeaways

• Uber Eats, Bumble, and Hinge rank as the top three apps with the worst customer service.
• Dating, food delivery/order, and vacation apps rank as the top three types of apps with the worst customer service.
• Paramount+ ranks as having the worst customer service among streaming apps.
• Bumble ranks as having the worst customer service among dating apps.
• Uber Eats and Lyft rank as having the worst access to customer service.
• Uber Eats and Uber rank worst for the most unhelpful customer service.

Top Apps with Customer Service Complaints

Smartphones tend to make our lives easier. From instant internet access to phone calls anywhere, anytime, technology has become more advanced than many of us ever imagined. While some platforms are practically seamless, others have their fair share of issues.

These days, most people understand that glitches and outages are bound to happen from time to time, but what matters most is how the customer service team helps you during an issue. When analyzing apps and their online reviews, we found it’s the customer service team for Uber Eats that receives the most backlash. Ranking first overall with a bad customer service score of 98.60 out of 100, Uber Eats received the most negative comments in regard to bad or unhelpful service.

Next up on our ranking are two dating apps with Bumble (88.55) and Hinge (74.51) ranking second and third, respectively. In addition to a high mention of negative keywords in reviews, both apps have an overall rating of less than three stars on the Google Play store with Bumble at 2.59 and Hinge at 2.74.

Coming in fourth place is Cash App (72.59) with a majority of customer service complaints relating to access to help. This is followed by Vrbo Vacation Rentals (70.37) as most negative reviews were in connection to customer service providing no resolution.

The Worst Customer Service by App Type

In addition to our overall ranking, we also grouped apps by category type to determine which types have the worst customer service on average. Leading the way with a score of 97.97 are dating apps where users are left without support about as often as they get left on read by their matches.

Up next are food delivery and ordering apps with a bad customer service score of 59.47 out of 100. From forgotten items to cold food, ordering delivery on an app can offer convenience as you sit at home while someone else sits in a drive-thru, but our data found when something goes wrong, customer service may not be too helpful.

Coming in third place are vacation apps with a score of 54.26. Whether you’re renting a property on Vrbo or Airbnb or booking a hotel through Expedia, we hope you don’t need to reach out to customer service or else your vacation may not be as relaxing as you had hoped.

Play Solitaire While Waiting for a Response

Waiting for anything can be difficult, but one way to make the time pass quicker is by finding something to occupy your attention. So the next time you find yourself waiting around for a customer service representative to help you with a troublesome app, let the team at Solitaired keep you company.

With a variety of free online games like Classic Solitaire, Golf, Spider Solitaire, Addiction, and more to choose from, you are sure to find a game you will enjoy. Get started today and discover a new game that you can play anywhere, anytime.

Methodology

In this study, we set out to learn which popular phone apps have the worst customer service. To do this, we collected more than 120 million reviews across 90+ popular apps on both the Google Play and Apple stores. We then analyzed those reviews for mentions of 20+ keywords related to poor customer service among four areas: lack of access, bad or unhelpful service, no response/long wait, and no resolution.

We then added all keyword mentions by app and divided by the total number of reviews to calculate a percentage of bad customer service mentions. Next, we adjusted those percentages on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 representing the worst customer service. We then ranked apps accordingly.

In addition to our overall rankings, we also analyzed scores by the area of customer service and type of app to create additional rankings.