The customer is never right

Ok so as many of you know, I deal with people all day. I handle small business accounts for one of the nations largest wireless provider. I won't say which one, suffice it to say that we really like the color red. Anyway, I also work in the stores for a good amount of time per week. I love dealing with people. I love making them happy. Solving their problems and just making their life easier. I really do enjoy it, I think I have a problem. Anywho in between doing the best I can to help my customers I get the really stupid, mean, or really shady customers. A few posts back I said I'd start blogging about them, and I never did. I will generally post the experience on MySpace in a bulletin. Well on the off chance that someone who reads this isn't on my MySpace friends list (myspace.com/ohsocute add me!) I'm going to post all of the ones from the past 10 days here. Right now. In this one blog entry. Please enjoy and leave comments.

I'm just going to cut and paste from the bulletin posts.

Dear Jennifer
Body: aka bitchy customer of the day number 1.

I'm sorry that you dropped your phone and now want to exchange it. I'm also sorry that your receipt clearly states that we don't take phones back with over 300 minutes of talk time clocked on them. I'm also sorry that since May 20th you have talked a whopping 28 hours on this phone.

I'm also sorry that I'm not going to screw over my coworker by exchanging a phone he sold you that now has obvious physical damage and 28 hours of talk time on it.

I'm really sorry that you chose to come into my store instead of calling your friendly sales rep whose name was programmed into your phone. But I guess I could have just done the exchange and charged you a 100% restocking fee. Maybe I'll do that next time.

------------------------------------------

This is from an eMail I sent to my coworkers and then posted on myspace.

Subject: John Bec***r

Just came into the store. Wanting to return a bluetooth headset. We ALL know the policy on this. So I don't need to go there. So I tell him, normally we don't take returns on those items, but let me see what I can do for you. Also it was a Motorola HS815 and since I had never seen it I told him "it looks like it may be past the 30 day return window on normal accessories anyway, but let's look this up". Oh also he had no receipt and the package was smushed to hell. He starts in about how he's a great customer ported over 5 lines from AT&T blah blah blah.

So I pull it up and tell him unfortunately he bought the item MORE THAN A YEAR AGO. That's right 1/09/2007. So I inform him that there isn't anything I can do for him in regards to the headset. He starts asking about me giving him a credit for the headset, so I pull up his account and let him know that in September we will give him a credit on a phone, and by that I mean upgrade credit. So then he cuts me off and goes "So there's nothing you can do with this for me. Not even give me a $20 credit?! We've been good customers blah blah blah" So I ask him where else can he go and return a product a year and a half later, with damaged packaging and no receipt? He then tells me he's going to cancel and go to another company and I tell him "that's fine, we already got paid on it". I probably shouldn't have said that. But fuck him. I'm tired of grown fucking people in this country acting like pussy bitch babies b/c they've been coddled by big business. Where the fuck is personal responsibility.

So whoever dealer 170 is your customer from a year and a half ago needs a hug.

-------------------------------------------
Customer is in my store to re-sign his contract and get a new phone under promotional pricing. This is a bit of our conversation:

Customer: "I don't have my other phone, can you get the numbers to my new phone?"

Me: "No sir. Unfortunately we need to have the other phone here to do that."

C: "Are you sure you can't get them like off the network or something? That's what they did last time with my daughters phone."

M: "We can do that for you if you signed up for Backup Assistant."

Do you know if you did that?"

C: "I don't know, I got this phone three years ago."

M: "Ok, Backup Assistant has been out for a year now so if you didn't sign up for it after that time you don't have it."

A bit later

M: "Ok sir did you want to add insurance to that? It covers theft, loss, breakage, and water damage" (that's exactly how I say that every time to every customer)

C: "Hmm. Can I add that at any time?"

M: "You have seven days to add that sir."

C: "Does it cover theft?"

M: "Umm yes sir."

A bit later.

C: "Are you sure you can't get the numbers off the network?"

M: "Yes sir, I'm pretty sure. It's a common request."

C: "Well last time we came here we had the other phone and that guy did it...oh wait, that's right we had the other phone."

The best party of this whole thing is that he was in here this morning because his phone got stolen last night.

--------------------------------------------------------

This is from an actual coworker:

Me: Dude this phone rules.

Coworker: That phone's a piece of shit.

Me: You say that about every phone we have.

Coworker: (being completely serious) That's because I hate cell phones. They're all pieces of shit, even the good ones.

--------------------------------------------------------

Then a fresh one for today. A customer comes in and asks me to pull up her account for her. I ask her for her mobile number and the last four numbers of her social security number to access the account. When I enter that I'm notified that she has an account password. In my system it doesn't show me the account password. For obvious security reasons. Customers often forget their passwords and that is of course my fault. This happened:

Me: Okay ma'am and what's your account password?
Customer: Pfft! Why would I know that?
Me: Because it's YOUR account.



Ok, that's all for today. Hope you enjoyed reading!