(I’m a supervisor in customer care at a call center for a major cellular provider. When we do warranty replacements, we send a phone out and require the defective one to be returned. If, however, it returns physically damaged outside of the warranty, we bill a damaged device fee. The following is one of those escalations.)

Me: *taking over escalated call from agent* “Hi, ma’am. I’m a wireless care supervisor; how may I help you?”

Customer: “I want my money back! You HAVE to give me my money back!”

Me: “I’m very sorry, ma’am, but I’m looking at the pictures of the device you sent in, and the phone’s screen isn’t just cracked, it’s completely shattered. Our warranty doesn’t cover this, and I’m afraid we have to charge you.”

Customer: “No, you HAVE to get rid of this charge. There was NOTHING wrong with that phone when I sent it in.”

Me: “I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am. When we received it, it was pretty beaten up. Did you pack it well when you mailed it?”

Customer: “I packed it exactly like the other rep told me to! It was fine when it left here!”

Me: “Perhaps you could take it up with the postal carrier?”

Customer: “I thought it was weird, the way the rep told me to pack it, but I did it exactly like they said!”

Me: *curious where this is going to lead* “Okay, ma’am. What did they tell you to do?”

Customer: “He said to tape it to the box. I’ve never done that before, but that’s what he said to do, and I did. If it’s broken, it’s your fault!”

Me: “Actually, ma’am, taping the phone inside the box is a good idea, as it does prevent the phone from jostling around and possibly breaking.”

Customer: *quiet for a moment* “What do you mean ‘inside the box’?”

Me: *thinking I see where this is going, checking the pics of the broken phone, and the box it came in, again* “Ma’am… did you tape your phone to the OUTSIDE of the shipping box?”

Customer: “I just did what the representative told me to do! That’s the way you guys package your return phones, and I did everything I was supposed to do!”

Me: “…”

Customer: “You have to get rid of this charge! You just have to!”

Me: “Ma’am, you taped the phone to the outside of an empty box, shipped it to us, and you don’t know why the phone is broken?” *barely able to contain laughter at this point* “I’m sorry, but there’s just no way we can refund this.”

(The customer launched into tirade of profanity, yelled for my manager, and ended up getting disconnected for being abusive. And I don’t think she ever realized that she shouldn’t have taped it to the box.)

Customer: “I have six boxes I want to ship. Can you do that?”

Me: “Sure, we can.”

Customer: “Okay. They might be heavy; I have a lot of clothes in them.”

Me: “That’s okay; the max weight for shipping out is 150 pounds.”

Customer: “Oh. I have a lot of cotton clothes. But there’s six boxes.”

Me: “Okay. Do you have them here?”

Customer: “No. But you’ll be able to tell me, right?”

Me: “Tell you what?”

Customer: “Yeah… see, ’cause I have to send all these costumes back, and some of them are heavy, like one of them is 7 pounds on its own, but most of the other clothes are just cotton.”

Me: “…oh.”

Customer: “So, you’ll have an idea, right?”

Me: “An idea of what?”

Customer: “Of the cost.”

Me: “Oh, well I can create an estimate. Where’s it going?”

Customer: “California.”

Me: “Okay, do you have the zip code?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “Do you have the address?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “I’ll need one or the other in order to get a proper quote for you. Do you have it saved in your phone or something?”

Customer: “No. But yeah. You can get an idea. Yeah, there’s a lot of clothes that I’m sending, and I’m so mad that I have to send them all back. It’ll probably be 150 pounds once I fill all the boxes.”

(I kind of want her to stop talking, since I don’t even know how to respond to her, so I type in 90210 as the zip code so that I can give her some kind of quote.)

Me: “This quote isn’t totally accurate, because I just put in 90210 for the zip code, but it’s coming up to [price]. That’s for six boxes at this size, all equaling 150 pounds.”

Customer: “WHAT?! That’s so expensive! How much would it cost to send it Canada Post?”

Me: “I’m not sure; you’d have to go to the post office.”

Customer: “Because this guy, his size is like 34x34x34! Like, you’ve got to be joking! So I put the pants on and they come up to my neck! I was so mad! I can’t wear these! They said they’d send me 50 bucks to mail them back, but there’s so many costumes!”

Me: “…oh.”

Customer: “But, oh my gosh, you’ve been so helpful! Thank you so much! Oh my gosh, I’m so happy now! Thanks!”

(She leaves and I turn to my coworker:)
Me: “That was weird.”

(I am standing in line at my local post office when I overhear this:)

Man: “There’s been a problem; I’ve put my mail on hold, but it’s still being delivered.”

Worker: *interrupting him* “Yes, your mail was delivered to your mailbox.”

Man: “My mail was put on hold because I don’t have a mailbox right now.”

Worker: “Well, you should have been issued a temporary city-given one.”

(In our city, if a mailbox is damaged, it will be replaced by the city.)

Man: “No, I don’t have a mailbox, temporary or not. And now I’m looking for a week’s’ worth of mail.”

Worker: “The mail was delivered to your mailbox!”

Man: “The mail that should have been on hold was delivered to the mailbox I don’t have.”

Worker: “I’m sure the delivery person was just trying to be nice!”

Man: “By delivering my held mail to a mailbox that’s not mine?”

(Throughout this entire conversation, the post office worker continued to walk in circles about the mail, which should have been held, being delivered to either a mailbox that didn’t exist or to the wrong one. No apologies were given, either, and no ETA was given on the missing mail.)

(I work at a chain clothing store that also has a website that you can order from. Sometimes, if they are out of an item online, the call center will direct a customer to a store that has it in stock and have the customer order it from the store. One day an online rep calls me for this type of transaction, to check if I have the item a customer wants. I look, find the item, and this takes place…)

Me: “It looks like we have that item!”

Online Rep: “Great! Let me patch the customer over to you and you can get that sent to them!”

(A lady answers with a thick Southern accent:)

Caller: “Hello?”

Me: “Hello! So, you want to order [item] today?”

Caller: “Yes… so, it’s going to be shipped from a store to me?”

Me: “Yes, that’s right! We happened to have it in stock, even though they’re out online. “

Caller: “So, wait… how long is it going to take?”

Me: “It’ll be the standard three to five day shipping, ma’am.”

Caller: “Where is this store located?”

Me: “We’re in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “

Caller: “You’re going to ship it all the way from New Mexico? I’m not sure I want to wait that long…”

Me: “Well, it’s still three to five day shipping, so you will get it in three to five days.”

Caller: “But all that way? I don’t think I want to wait that long… I’ll just wait for them to get more online. ”

Me: “Okay, but if you do that, you might have to wait several weeks for them to get in, and then you’ll have to wait for it to ship to you. I can get it to you in three to five days.”

Caller: “I just don’t want to wait for it to come all the way from New Mexico… bye.” *hangs up*

(It occurred to me after she hung up that she might have gotten New Mexico, the state, confused with Mexico, the country. Either way, three to five day shipping still means you’ll get it in three to five days. And, ironically, our warehouses are on the west coast, so it probably would have to have gone a longer distance if she had ordered online.)

(I tend to go a bit too far to make customers happy, and it’s bitten me in the butt. A customer has called to ask me to send some items to her. As I am writing down the address, I realise I drive through her suburb on my way home. I usually drop deliveries off at a post box in the suburb next to her, so I offer to drop her items off at her home as a favour, and to save her the postage. Her address is more out of the way than I anticipated, and when I arrive I find that the area is a bit dodgy. I quickly give the items to the customer and leave. Ultimately, I have added an extra half-hour to my trip home. A week later…)

Manager: “[My Name], did you deliver to [Customer]?”

Me: “Yes.”

Manager: “She called today to place an order and told me to make that girl deliver it again.”

Me: “Seriously? I barely even got a thank you. I told her that I was doing her a favour last time, and told her I happened to be heading in her direction because she wanted it sent as soon as possible. What did you say?”

Manager: “I told her we no longer do deliveries. You need to stop doing too much for customers. They only take advantage.”

(Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last time I did this. On another occasion, I was going to be heading through the area that a customer lived in, so I offered to drop items off. Again, it took me way out of my way, and again, the customer demanded to have me deliver her next order. No, I didn’t, and no, I’ve never made the offer since.)