Don’t Void Your Warranty

I work in a security monitoring call center. A coworker called a customer to inform them of an AC loss for their security system. We usually just say “hey your power is out” or something to that effect (but more professional sounding obviously) because most of our customers don’t know what AC means (alternating current) and they’d get confused if we said “AC loss means your security system or alarm panel has stopped receiving electricity from its wall outlet and has switched over to its internal backup battery”.

Well, this coworker said “AC loss” on the customer’s voicemail for some ungodly reason despite knowing better. The customer returned the call a few hours later. I picked up.

Me: “Can I help you?”

Caller: *Panicking, sounding on the verge of tears.* “Oh, I hope so! I got a call that there’s an AC loss at my house!”

Me: “Okay, I can—”

Caller: “I’m out of town, and I was having trouble with my air conditioner before I left—”

Me: *Seeing where this is going.* “—Well, ‘AC loss’ just means—”

Caller: “DOES THIS MEAN THERE’S NO AIR IN MY HOUSE?!”

I was able to calm her down and explain what AC loss really meant, and reassured her that her house had not become a vacuum.

What made it funnier was I had to put a note in the system and wrote something like:

Note: “Reminder to call center workers: please don’t tell customers “AC Loss” when “hey, your power is out” is more effective. Customer had to be reassured her house had not become a vacuum.”

Coworkers left replies to the note:

Coworker #1: “Advise customer not to return to house. The Void lives there now.”

Coworker #2: “Note from Legal: Please warn customer that if they do enter the void that voids may cause respiratory distress, unavoidable and unrelenting existential terror, and an overwhelming feeling that all that you formerly held meaning and worth in is trickling away out of permanent wounds in the collective psyche of mankind, and that we cannot be held liable.”

Coworker #3: “If customer enters the void, are they still customer? Or are they forever… something else?”

Coworker #4: “There is no customer, only Zuul.”

And so on…