In Case You Needed A Reminder, Customer Service Sucks

I work in customer service for a magazine publisher. Simplified a bit, our invoices work like this: you get an invoice for your subscription period. If you don’t pay it in a month or so, you get a reminder with a reminder fee. If you don’t pay that, either, you get a second reminder with another reminder fee, but at this point, you’re only quoted for the magazines you’ve received from the start of the subscription period. You can pay that price and the reminder fees, and the subscription ends there, or you can pay for the full subscription and the reminder fees so the subscription remains. If you refuse both options, the bill goes to collections. We can credit the reminder fees if there’s an issue — most commonly, the invoice got lost in the mail and the customer never received it.

I’m actually used to doing back office work and only help on calls when it’s busy. This is the second day in a row that I’ve been helping for a few hours, and my shift is near its end. I’m exhausted and miserable. I dislike call shifts at the best of times, and it’s not been the best of times. I take what should be my last call for the night, possibly the second last if it is a really fast one. It isn’t a fast one.

The lady starts by joking that she just told her husband that if we record the calls, they should record them, too. She proceeds to tell me that she talked to a coworker earlier and even names the coworker.

Customer: “[Coworker] said that the invoice would go to collections. We’ll see if you agree.”

This is a red flag. It’s the “Dad, Mom said I can’t, but can I?” negotiation tactic used by elementary schoolers. But I let the customer launch into her story.

Customer: “We did receive the original invoice, but we had a busy summer travelling between two summer cottages and our home in [City], so it got lost in the shuffle. And then we received the reminder, which said that if we didn’t pay, the subscription would be cancelled. Since it was a gift subscription to our son and my husband has a separate subscription for it, we decided we could gift our own magazines to our son after reading them and we decided to let the subscription end. What with a big family celebration and everything, we just let it slide and didn’t really even think about it. But now, we’ve gotten a second reminder. And yes, it makes sense that you are asking for payment for magazines delivered. But we have never received a proper invoice for this sum of money! We have just received the invoice for the full subscription and the first reminder, but not an invoice for just the magazines delivered! How could you remind us to pay a sum you haven’t quoted before? I will pay for the magazines, but it’s a question of principle not to pay the reminder fees!”

One reminder fee is five euros, so two are ten euros.

Now I know my coworker has already explained how this works. I know she has gotten to the “I give up, can’t help you, let it go to collections for all I care” point. We always ask if they received the original invoice. It’s not like we would know if you lie about it. Please lie about it. I don’t see any part of that reminder fee, so I don’t really care either way. But if you admit to just not paying the invoice you have received, I can’t credit it. If I try, I’ll be asked why and possibly reprimanded. Also, I’m just not feeling sympathetic toward this customer, so I’m not inclined to make an exception for her and her principles. My shift should basically end, but now I’m caught in a vortex of “but why would you send me a reminder?” that I can’t seem to exit. No explanation is good enough or clear enough. So, we go for another round of it, again and again.

By the time I’m almost ten minutes over the end of my shift time, I’m contemplating just telling the lady that we should end the call as I can’t help her. But for some reason, I’m still under the delusion that she might get it if someone explained it to her properly. Sometimes, when we’re helping with digital subscriptions and stuff, we might suggest that the customer ask a younger relative to help them. We do this when words like “browser” seem to confuse the customer, as the relative can actually sit next to them and they can figure it out together much faster. And I know this woman has a husband with a properly paid subscription, as he has been mentioned multiple times during the call. So, while I know what I say next might sound bad, that’s my headspace when I open my mouth and say:

Me: “Do you think your husband might comprehend this issue better than you do?”

There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line. A calm before a storm, I guess.

Customer: “Did you just say… Did you just say that my husband might comprehend this issue better than me?”

And she’s off. I’m expecting her to claim I’m a sexist, but I guess since she can figure by my voice that I’m a woman, too, she starts screaming that I’m ageist, I must see her age in her information, and now I’m discriminating against her because she’s almost eighty! Never mind that, one, that’s not actually information we have as we don’t need it to deliver magazines, and two, even if I had that information, does she think I also looked at her husband’s age and did maths while trying to discuss her invoice? Three, probably half of our callers are senior citizens, as younger customers prefer to email us or use the chat on our website, and four, I genuinely don’t think her age is the problem here. Also, how much younger is her husband? I wish I knew.

She demands my name and tries to get my last name, too, but I manage to tell her that I’m not required to tell it and that the call is recorded. She tells me that she’ll write the magazine editor about my discrimination and hangs up.

Now I’m shaking and upset, and I just want to shut my computer off and crawl to bed. But the magazine editors are a weird bunch. They rarely interact with us, but sometimes some of them randomly demand explanations to some customer complaints they receive. Depending on how the customer frames the call and my stupid question, I think this might be one of those situations. So, I send a team lead a private message to please review the call because I might have been out of line. She does listen to it the next day and confirms that I did nothing wrong and that the customer just spent the fifteen minutes ignoring everything I had to say after already having had it all explained to her once before.

I’m still worried this will come back to bite me.