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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JeenLeen
I work with data at a state agency, and (less now than in the past, thankfully) I'd get questions about data we put out. One common thing was an entity calling us to say the data about them is wrong.
Now, that is perfectly within their rights to do and, at least in policy, we appreciate that as it gives a double-check on our work. However, it's annoying when they are rude and antagonistic about it, especially since, of the dozens of times I've had to recheck from the raw individual-level data, its processing through my programs, up to the final deliverables we publish... I think maybe just once in about 10 years was there actually a mistake. Most often it is the entity did something off in their check, either misreading our data or screwing up something in Excel filtering or sorting.
I'm generally pretty good at putting on the polite face, but it is frustrating to go through all the motions (which can take an hour or so up to a day of productivity) while being about 99% sure that I'll find nothing is wrong and am just wasting my time.
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And while I'm editing this to fix a typo: I did work at Sears for a few years, as a stockboy. I do admit it was refreshing to be able to tell a customer who I could not help, "My apologies, but please let me get one of the salesmen who are more familiar with this product."
Me: What is your best guess at your 2019 taxable income?
Customer: $X
Me: The estimator shows that you qualify for a tax credit.
<We spend ~30-minutes filling out the form>
Customer: Oh I make some amount a lot more or a lot less than $X.
Me: You do not qualify for a tax credit.
Customer: I don't want the product then.
It amazes me how many people do not know how much money they make, and/or cannot figure it out.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
...because you don't understand the concept that there's more than one person with your last name.
The degree to which people can be unconsciously self-absorbed is amazing. At one of my previous jobs I would often have to give directions and I would get calls like "How do I get to your place?"
Pause.
Pause.
"Where are you coming from?"
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Re: Customer service rants
Literally minutes ago, lady comes in to get a cushion. Pays with a fifty, I put it on the cash box, count out her change, hand it back with a receipt, and say she's good to go. She responds, "no, you forgot to put the fifty up! Make sure he doesn't pocket it, ha ha!" No, lady, I didn't forget crap, that's a handy trick I learned way back when to make it so people can't say "well I gave you a [bigger bill]!" Bill ain't left either of our sight, so that scam now never works. It's a security feature.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
Literally minutes ago, lady comes in to get a cushion. Pays with a fifty, I put it on the cash box, count out her change, hand it back with a receipt, and say she's good to go. She responds, "no, you forgot to put the fifty up! Make sure he doesn't pocket it, ha ha!" No, lady, I didn't forget crap, that's a handy trick I learned way back when to make it so people can't say "well I gave you a [bigger bill]!" Bill ain't left either of our sight, so that scam now never works. It's a security feature.
When I was working fast food, and somewhat new and very naive, someone came in, bought something, and paid with a 20 or 50. I gave him change, and he asked for it in a different way. Did it as requested, and he made another request. Repeat a few times.
After he left, the person training me essentially said, "Count the money in the drawer and make sure nothing's missing. If it is, it's coming out of your pay for falling for that scam."
Fortunately, I was apparently good at keeping track of the right money amounts, and he didn't manage to con me into giving him extra change. But it definitely made me more aware of such things in the future. (Though I don't think that exact thing happened again.)
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This goes more to where I worked than the actual customers, but I saw a potential robber's eyes light up when the drive-thru window fell out of the window pane while I was serving him, and he asked if that happened often or easily. I responded that it did sometimes, but it could only fall open due to something happening on the inside and we had a special bolt for it (or something like that.) Which was true... but it was interesting and a little frightening to see a customer planning robbing the place in front of me.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JeenLeen
When I was working fast food, and somewhat new and very naive, someone came in, bought something, and paid with a 20 or 50. I gave him change, and he asked for it in a different way. Did it as requested, and he made another request. Repeat a few times.
After he left, the person training me essentially said, "Count the money in the drawer and make sure nothing's missing. If it is, it's coming out of your pay for falling for that scam."
I love when people blatantly say "hey I'm gonna break the law."
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
I love when people blatantly say "hey I'm gonna break the law."
I love when the guy who is supposed to be training me decides "Eff that, lets let this guy screw up with a scam I saw a mile away then punish him for it."
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tyckspoon
Probably not intentionally, at least, for what it's worth. Thermal paper receipts fade over time and the POS system in question likely had its limits on what information to hold and how long to hold it set long before the chain decided to try and get in on the warranty upsell thing. I'm guessing the various warranties were just in the system as additional SKUs, too, because adding a new module to make them a distinct thing with their own storage record would have cost too much to put in a change/feature development request with whoever made their POS suite.
That might be reasonable for a product that the store just sells and has a reasonable expectation of never having to deal with again. The entire purpose of a warranty requires the ability to deal with the customer who bought it at a later time, however. The ability to confirm who has a warranty, what it covers, and for what time interval, is not an optional feature. I would not be surprised if a company doing something like that would be legally considered to be conducting fraud, even if by negligence rather than intentionally.
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Re: Customer service rants
Given that the English are meant to be notorious for this I found this one more amusing than irritating (mostly). But a customer once asked me a question, in Dutch I think. And when I pointed out I didn't speak Dutch she proceed to repeat the exact same question, only louder and more slowly. And when she got the same response from me again, she repeated the process over and over, getting slower and louder with every repetition
After failing to spontaneously get me to learn Dutch. She stalked off, actually thinking about it I must have picked u something because I'm definite her parting shot was a insult in Dutch
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
Literally minutes ago, lady comes in to get a cushion. Pays with a fifty, I put it on the cash box, count out her change, hand it back with a receipt, and say she's good to go. She responds, "no, you forgot to put the fifty up! Make sure he doesn't pocket it, ha ha!" No, lady, I didn't forget crap, that's a handy trick I learned way back when to make it so people can't say "well I gave you a [bigger bill]!" Bill ain't left either of our sight, so that scam now never works. It's a security feature.
To be fair toward the lady, she probably didn't know that or even considered the prospect that people would try to scam you by saying they gave you another bill. She probably thought you might legitimately be forgetting it, and wanted to alert you in a joking manner.
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Re: Customer service rants
Two examples of happy endings, both from a job I had in 2000-2001.
My manager handed off a batch of his accounts to me one Monday morning. I haven't had time to even go through the list when one of them calls, gets me, and lights off in a rant about the problems we're having with his project. I know nothing about his project at all, but that's okay because he's on a roll, not stopping to listen, and about 30% of his rant is profanity. "You [bleeps] did this [bleeping] wrong, and you [bleeped] that, and I [bleeping] can't even get this [bleep] to [bleeping] load", and on and on.
When he finally paused for breath, I said "Joe, quit beating around the bush and tell me how you really feel."
Incredulous pause, then he burst out laughing and calmed down. I tripled out business from him that year.
Another account asked us for a bid, which I submitted. A few days went by and I didn't get a contract, which was unusual, so I called him up to check.
Charlie: Well, I have to get three bids, and yours was 19k and the other two were 23k and 24k.
Me: Okay, but I'm not clear on why that's a problem.
Charlie: We're concerned that your bid is too low. We're afraid you might have missed something, and we don't want to do a contract revision to cover it if something comes to light.
Me: Charlie, we've done your projects enough that I'm sure I didn't make a mistake on the bid, and you know that if we did miss something, we'd eat the cost....
Me: (Eureka)
Me: But if you prefer, I can put in another round of quality control so you're sure you're covered. That'll increase my bid to, ah, 22.5. Would you feel more comfortable with that?
Charlie: Okay, here's your purchase order number.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Laserlight
.
I just want you to know I saw your username, got all excited about how awesome it was, and then realized that was an L, not an F, and was suddenly deflated.
Imean, it's still a good name and all, but still.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Laserlight
Two examples of happy endings, both from a job I had in 2000-2001.
My manager handed off a batch of his accounts to me one Monday morning. I haven't had time to even go through the list when one of them calls, gets me, and lights off in a rant about the problems we're having with his project. I know nothing about his project at all, but that's okay because he's on a roll, not stopping to listen, and about 30% of his rant is profanity. "You [bleeps] did this [bleeping] wrong, and you [bleeped] that, and I [bleeping] can't even get this [bleep] to [bleeping] load", and on and on.
When he finally paused for breath, I said "Joe, quit beating around the bush and tell me how you really feel."
Incredulous pause, then he burst out laughing and calmed down. I tripled out business from him that year.
You were clearly talking with a certain pop-business-psychology book trending last few years would call a "Red person".
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Re: Customer service rants
on the subject of customer scammers...
My store is closing up shop for good(We're not losing our jobs, just being moved to other stores) and since we're having a closing sale everything is on sale at a reduced price. Because of this, not only is our store not doing returns, but other stores from the same chain in the area also are not to be returning merchandise from our store. Because of this, we've been clearly instructed by coorporate to put a marker line or X through the barcode. It's so that someone couldn't buy an $80 product at our store for $60 and then return it at the store across town for $80.
Despite this, whenever we start crossing out barcodes and explaining why we are crossing out barcodes; the customer tends to get super defensive. "I would never do that." Some even get angry at us and this is with us not even marking off the barcodes on things like clothes and food(so we don't damage them)...even though we should. Then we have to explain about how it's not personal and why we're doing it. For whatever reason these people don't understand that it's not personal, we're doing it to everyone and not singling them out.
I don't know if people just don't understand that there are scammers out there or if they don't understand that theoretically anyone can be a scammer whether you're a nice old grandma or an ex-felon. One could even dupe the company accidentally if they didn't bother reading the "the products at this store cannot be returned" sign and we didn't mark the barcodes somehow. I've already concluded from the dozens of people that I've had to explain that we don't accept checks anymore as they write a check on the stand that says we don't accept checks and from the people who come up and hear someone talk to us about closing and ask us "are you closing? I didn't know" as they stand in the storefront full of signs that say that we're closing.
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Re: Customer service rants
The only people getting upset are the ones who were planning to return it elsewhere to make a profit. Congratulations, you now get to see exactly how many people would do that.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
The only people getting upset are the ones who were planning to return it elsewhere to make a profit. Congratulations, you now get to see exactly how many people would do that.
I'm sure one or two were planning to try the product to see whether they liked it before they returned it.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
darkrose50
This is a minor one, but often makes me think that the caller is prone to tangents (I should pay more attention to this to see if it is true). I suppose I want to ask for the spelling if I want it. It seems presumptuous to think that I am taking notes on anything this early . . for all I know the caller called the wrong number. 9/10 times I do not need spellings as I look up customers by SSN or member ID where everything is already spelled out.
I admit I do this, because I have a name that is not spelled how most people think it is spelled. But most people think they know how to spell it. So I have had way too many calls go something like this:
Worker: "And can I have your name?"
Me: <-provides name->
Worker: "We don't have anyone in the system by that name."
Me: "How are you spelling my name?"
Worker: <-common but wrong spelling->
Me: <-correct spelling->
Worker: "Oh, there you are!"
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
I just want you to know I saw your username, got all excited about how awesome it was, and then realized that was an L, not an F, and was suddenly deflated.
I mean, it's still a good name and all, but still.
Autocorrect thinks it should be "Watertight".
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Laserlight
Autocorrect thinks it should be "Watertight".
Nothing is watertight after a laser fight.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
Nothing is watertight after a laser fight.
Um... what lasers do you use? Because anything outside a research lab shouldn’t be making holes.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JMS
Um... what lasers do you use? Because anything outside a research lab shouldn’t be making holes.
I used to have a full watt laser. Lit a cigarette off it back when I used to smoke. I hear that place now sells up to 2 watts, but importing to the US became even more of a hassle, so I haven't tried. My jackass brother stole and broke it not long after I got it, sadly.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
The only people getting upset are the ones who were planning to return it elsewhere to make a profit. Congratulations, you now get to see exactly how many people would do that.
You would be surprised at how many people legitimately consider any sort of security feature that targets them as a direct insult on their honesty and integrity, and respond as though you have specifically accused them of theft to anything like that.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JeenLeen
When I was working fast food, and somewhat new and very naive, someone came in, bought something, and paid with a 20 or 50. I gave him change, and he asked for it in a different way. Did it as requested, and he made another request. Repeat a few times.
After he left, the person training me essentially said, "Count the money in the drawer and make sure nothing's missing. If it is, it's coming out of your pay for falling for that scam."
Fortunately, I was apparently good at keeping track of the right money amounts, and he didn't manage to con me into giving him extra change. But it definitely made me more aware of such things in the future. (Though I don't think that exact thing happened again.)
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This goes more to where I worked than the actual customers, but I saw a potential robber's eyes light up when the drive-thru window fell out of the window pane while I was serving him, and he asked if that happened often or easily. I responded that it did sometimes, but it could only fall open due to something happening on the inside and we had a special bolt for it (or something like that.) Which was true... but it was interesting and a little frightening to see a customer planning robbing the place in front of me.
At my store, we cannot break change more than once.
If they get $15 change, they can say "Hey, can you give me three fives instead of a ten?" and we can do that, but if they change their mind, they have to go to the service desk to get it exchanged. Just for that reason.
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Re: Customer service rants
Me: "Thank you for calling <insurance company>, my name is <name>, I am an insurance agent, and we are on a recorded line. May I ask who is calling?"
Customer: <Honest to goodness absolutely flummoxed as to why an insurance agent would be working for an insurance company . . . to the point that she asked me 4-5 times>
This is like getting confused by seeing a fire fighter at a fire station, a police officer at a police station, a grocer at a grocery store . . ..
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JMS
Um... what lasers do you use? Because anything outside a research lab shouldn’t be making holes.
I beg to differ. Lasers that cut through things are expensive and typically not man-portable, but they are very much available. Like the (relatively small and cheap) CNC laser my shop uses for engraving projects which can, with the right settings, cut sheet stock into any shape you please.
Speaking of my engraving shop, it constantly boggles my mind how nobody - NOBODY, not even repeat customers - can understand that no, we can't put these things together while-you-wait. Even if we have the stuff on-hand to do it, the work takes time; and since we're the only engraver/trophy shop in the county, there's at least a half-dozen people ahead of you, aside from the very slowest times of year. This is not that time.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Random Sanity
I beg to differ. Lasers that cut through things are expensive and typically not man-portable, but they are very much available. Like the (relatively small and cheap) CNC laser my shop uses for engraving projects which can, with the right settings, cut sheet stock into any shape you please.
Speaking of my engraving shop, it constantly boggles my mind how nobody - NOBODY, not even repeat customers - can understand that no, we can't put these things together while-you-wait. Even if we have the stuff on-hand to do it, the work takes time; and since we're the only engraver/trophy shop in the county, there's at least a half-dozen people ahead of you, aside from the very slowest times of year. This is not that time.
I find a CNC machine for like 5 grand on Craigslist once. I thought if I only had the money, time, knowledge, and skill, I could turn a profit off that.
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Re: Customer service rants
Oh, the stories I have for this thread...
For some background, I work for a company that, among other things, provides over the phone financial planning service to the employees of corporations that have contracts with us. Now, I understand that my having a rudimentary understanding of financial planning essentially makes me a wizard in the eyes of many of our clients, and I never have any issue with clients who need basic concepts explained to them (that's why I'm here in the first place). That being said, I have learned through experience that there are, in fact, stupid questions.
For example, a client asked me what she would receive if she changed from one type of retirement plan to another.
Me: Your opening account balance would be $329,000 (note; not the actual number)
Client; And how do you write that out?
Me: Pardon? Are you asking how you would write 329,000?
Client: Yes, please.
Me: *losing what remains of my faith in humanity* That would be Three, Two, Nine, Zero, Zero, Zero
Client: Thank you
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Alabenson
That being said, I have learned through experience that there are, in fact, stupid questions.
Honest to god question I got once while working as a photo tech: "How long does your one-hour photo take?"
Ok, to be fair here, the person clarified their question, which was actually a decent question in the end. It was pretty dead, and they were asking roughly how long it took to develop the pictures; they were going to be in the store for a bit, and were wondering if they needed to kill a whole hour. She was really nice about it and there was nothing in the queue, so I told her I could have it done in 11 minutes.
But yeah, the guy she was with literally fell down laughing when I just stared at her and said, "....an hour."
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Re: Customer service rants
Hat tip to all of you on that side of the fence. Customers can be hard work. I am lucky, I only have to deal with corporate customers who seem a bit easier.
Sometimes it can be... curious on the other side.
A number of years ago I was having problems with my internet so called up the phone company.
"OK, we need to check if your phone line is working - can you pick up the phone and listen to see there is a dial tone"
"I think the phone is working... I am speaking to you on it"
"I am sorry, but we need to know if there is a dial tone"
This was the same company that cut me off because someone else cancelled their contract and someone mistyped a customer ID. The phone company then reconnected us... then disconnected us again because we hadn't paid the bill. The wonderful customer services representative had reconnected us by creating a new account - of course without telling us. The direct debit was set up to the old account so the new bills were not getting paid. Not that they stopped billing the old account either.
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
Honest to god question I got once while working as a photo tech: "How long does your one-hour photo take?"
"How big are your five by seven photos? [...] No, not how tall they are, how big are they? [...] I'm not asking for like, their dimensions, I just want to know how long they are. [...] No, not like, no, how big are they? [...] Like, a five by seven, how big is that? [...] is that bigger than a four by six? [...] No, like, how big are they?
The answer being searched for was, "$2.99, plus tax." :smallsigh:
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Re: Customer service rants
Quote:
Originally Posted by
OracleofWuffing
"How big are your five by seven photos? [...] No, not how tall they are, how big are they? [...] I'm not asking for like, their dimensions, I just want to know how long they are. [...] No, not like, no, how big are they? [...] Like, a five by seven, how big is that? [...] is that bigger than a four by six? [...] No, like, how big are they?
The answer being searched for was, "$2.99, plus tax." :smallsigh:
Awkward, but I'm sure I've been on the other side in France&Germany...
(also my speech is pretty bad anyway)