Shut Up And Take Your Money!
Back in my days as a customer service representative for a cellphone carrier, when phone contracts were a thing, it was decided that the admin fees were going up by $0.05 per account. Management decided (rightfully so) that people were going to call in and use this as “a financial burden” to get out of their contracts, so they directed us to credit the $0.05 by how many months they had left in their contract — if they had multiple lines, then it was based on the one with the longest contract — for which the longest time would be twenty-four months.
Then, this guy called.
Customer: “This $0.05 increase is unacceptable! This will financially break me! I demand to be let out of my contract — with no early termination fee!”
Per management direction, I credited him $1.20; he had signed up for a two-year contract two days before the fee increased.
Customer: “I demand that you remove that credit and let me out of my contract!”
Me: “Sir, I’m afraid neither is an option. When you mentioned that the fee was a financial burden, we had to issue that credit.”
The guy got mad and hung up, and I noted the account accordingly.
I had a sneaking suspicion he’d call back, so I kept the account open and checked it later in the day. And yeah, he called back and got some new hire who was known not to look at the notes, and they took off the credit. (They didn’t let him out of the contract, thankfully.) I reapplied it, referenced my previous notes, and reiterated that it came from management and should not be removed.