IPhone contacts and notes won't sync with either the Macbook or iCloud?

I have an iPhone 5 and recently wanted to sync all my contacts and notes before I switch to an iPhone 6. Little did I know how awful that process was going to be. The old iTunes would sync everything to your laptop but with apple forcing iCloud down our throats it's been an absolute nightmare. I've scoured hundreds of posts with no solution. I've made multiple calls and spent hours with their tech support on the phone. They don't know what the hell is going on either. They suggested resetting all my settings and promised that only my wallpaper and Wi-Fi password would change. Nope, here I'm having to change a gazillion settings back to what they were. Did it solve my problem? Nope. They gave up on trying to sync my notes. After the hours spent with them the contacts won't sync either.

How hard is it for a tech giant like Apple to do something as simple as take data off the bloody phone and transfer it to a laptop or iCloud? Apple is going down the drain and I'm unbelievably frustrated. Is there some third party software that can just take the god damned data off the bloody phone so I don't lose years of contacts and notes? I can't deal with the incompetence of their phone support.

Two weeks ago I changed from an iPhone 5s to an iPhone 6.

I just connected the new phone to my computer with the Lightning cable, waited for iTunes to recognise the phone and then followed the prompts to restore my last iPhone 5s backup (made immediately beforehand) onto the new phone. Job done. No fuss or bother, nothing lost, and I didn't have to use iCloud. No changes to my Wi-Fi password either.

A few passwords for particular apps had to be manually entered afterwards but that's as inconvenient as it got.

So I'm not sure why you had so much trouble: perhaps your iPhone 5 is jailbroken as you mention wallpaper changes which non-jailbroken phones don't have? If so, you can't blame Apple for not supporting something they're not responsible for.

It's not jailbroken, I bought it from an apple store so don't make ridiculous assumptions. I've been on the phone with apple tech support for hours over the last couple of weeks. After countless times of turning off iCloud, turning it back on, rebooting etc. The contacts or the notes won't transfer from my iPhone to my Macbook. I was transferred to a "senior" apple tech support agent who told me to reset the phone. I asked multiple times whether that would change the setting to which she replied that only the wallpaper and Wi-Fi would change. Not only did the wallpaper change but all the settings were gone. This is obvious since that is what a reset should do but the fact that a senior tech support agent doesn't know this is appalling.

Now should I just backup my iPhone 5 and trust that my contacts and notes will be transferred over? I don't think so. Even after the backup the contacts and notes don't show up on the Macbook. Earlier versions of iTunes had simple options. You could select what you wanted to backup to your computer - notes, contacts etc. Now they are limiting the options in iTunes to force people onto iCloud. ICloud will only backup data from when it was turned on and everything before that will not be backed up. Its just ridiculous how difficult Apple has made things post Steve Jobs. It is very disappointing as a long time Apple user. It has gone from everything just works to nothing works.