It’s been a few years since this happened in 2016, so some of the specific details are fuzzy. I was working as a floor supervisor for a satellite TV company’s technical support center. The call group I was heading up was a corporate-level team designed to handle customer situations that were recurring frequently or just not getting resolved.

The customer called in and spoke to my agent, demanding credit on his account because he couldn’t watch a baseball game that had happened two days before. On top of that, he was wanting the company to reimburse him for his ~$100 bar tab because he “had to go there to watch the game” because he got an error message. Company policy was that if there was an actual issue and we couldn’t fix it, we’d give credit for the time you were without service.

The error he was getting was a black-out message. He lived in the Chicagoland area, and he was wanting to watch a Cubs playoff game. Since he was in the local area and it was a home game, they had restricted the broadcast in his area to encourage people to buy a ticket and see the game in person. While it’s not what most people want to hear, normally, they understand. Not this guy. He asked for a supervisor and I took the call.

He immediately tore into me, cursing the company, me personally, and anyone else he could think of that might have been involved. I let him get it out of his system and asked for some more information. After he explained the situation, I confirmed that his service was working properly and explained the issue. I also asked him to call us in the future when the issue was happening so that we could fix it.

He refused to accept anything beyond a technician coming out and a full year of service, for free. Like… everything. NFL Sunday Ticket, MLB Extra Innings, HBO, all the international channels (from China, the Philippines, Guatemala, etc,), you name it, he wanted it — for free. I did the math out then, and I think it was around $3,500 in total services he was demanding. As a tenured employee, even I didn’t get all that, and I told him as much.

For some reason, that’s when he changed tactics and started crying, recounting the horrible things he saw and did while a member of the armed services (Marine Corps, I think it was). I have no idea the experiences he’d had and can’t imagine how traumatizing the things he was telling me must have been, but they didn’t change that there wasn’t actually a problem, and if there had been, we weren’t given a chance to fix it.

When crying didn’t work, he threatened to kill me and bomb the call centre. That’s when I took all his information (we had his name, address, phone number, SSN — the whole nine yards) and provided them to his local law enforcement agency. I escalated the call to my corporate security team so that they could provide the call’s recording as evidence for when he went to trial.

It wasn’t cost-effective to have me flown from Denver to Chicago for the proceedings, but I was kept in the loop when he was arrested and charged. I’m pretty sure he took a plea deal.

I work at a gym and am greeting members at the front desk. One member leaves the building and then comes back a few minutes later looking stressed.

Member: “Do you happen to have cameras in the parking lot?”

Me: “I believe the property manager does.”

Member: “Okay, I need video evidence. Someone broke the windows on my truck. I don’t think they took anything, but I already called the police.”

Me: “Oh, no! I’m so sorry about that. Let me grab a few things and I’ll start filling out an incident report.”

I radio for a coworker to come up to the front to cover me and then go out with him to get pictures of his truck. Our parking lot is straight out from the entrance of the gym, so it’s odd when the member makes a right and starts walking toward the side of the gym where our dumpsters are. We turn the corner and he’s parked in a no-parking zone.

Me: “Uh, I’m pretty sure there aren’t cameras in this area.”

Member: “You said you have cameras in the parking lot!”

Me: “This isn’t the parking lot, though.”

I grab a few pictures and tell him to let us know when the police arrive so we can finish the incident report. It’s fairly simple since nothing was stolen and we have no video to find out who smashed his windows.

A few weeks pass and the member comes back.

Member: “The police officer ended up giving me a parking ticket, and I had to pay for the new windows because they said there was nothing they could do!”

This story begins about ten to twelve years ago. I was in my late twenties and I had bought a secondhand car at a car dealership. For a while, everything seemed fine, but then the car started revealing some issues.

First, after about a year, there was a wheel bearing problem (they were worn out) that I had to pay to have fixed. I was a little annoyed that those got worn out so soon after buying the car, but worse was yet to come.

About three years after buying the car, alert lamps started going off on the dashboard. I brought the car into a local workshop, and they diagnosed it as an ABS module failure. Basically, the control unit for the ABS brakes had to be replaced.

At this point, I should explain that in my country, we have a very good Consumer Rights law. Among other things, it states that if a product has a longer life expectancy than two years, then you can automatically expect it to last at least five years. If it doesn’t, the seller (if it’s a business) will be obliged to either repair the item for you or give you your money back. This applies to most items that cost a certain amount of money, and cars are certainly on the list. Not everything is covered (for instance, normal wear and tear), but something that is expected to last the car’s lifetime is.

Knowing this, I decided to contact the dealership to arrange for them to repair the ABS module. I drove for three hours and entered their shop, found the seller, and explained the problem.

Salesperson: “Well, that’s not really our problem, sorry.”

Me: “But… it’s only been three years since I bought the car. I bought it from here, and you’re a business. That means issues like this one are covered for five years.”

Salesperson: “Sorry, we can’t take responsibility for that.”

And that was pretty much the end of the conversation. Talking the matter over with my dad, we were both sure that we were right and that the seller was trying to pull one over on me.

I went back home (another three-hour drive) and double-checked the law. Then I wrote a very lawyer-like email to the dealership, quoting the correct sections of applicable law, which also specified that the seller of a faulty item needed to repair it with little to no inconvenience or cost to the customer. Obviously, travelling for hours would be quite inconvenient and cost me a bit of money, too.

I ended the email by saying that since I had already been to see them and been dismissed, I could get the car fixed myself and send them the bill. This would be much more costly for them, but that wasn’t my problem. They’d had their chance.

The next day, I got a response — not from the salesperson but the company manager. It was a full retreat, claiming that there had been a misunderstanding; they thought I was talking about a different car. I suspected they were lying. There was no way they didn’t know which car I was talking about; I had only bought one car from that company and they have complete records of all the cars they buy and sell. Still, the manager offered to have the issue repaired post-haste, as soon as I could make my way back there. I decided not to press the issue, as I was essentially getting what I wanted (even though I should have been given it earlier).

I went back a while later and they fixed the issue without any cost to me. The car had several other problems later: the ESP module went, and the servo pump also needed changing… but the dealership never tried to argue with me again.

A few years later, I saw the salesperson on TV. It was one of those shows that help people who are struggling with legal issues. Apparently, this particular car dealership had been trying to cheat lots of customers for years using the same sort of tactics they had against me. They were telling customers who reported problems that it wasn’t their responsibility (despite the law saying otherwise), hoping to get away with it if the customers didn’t know their rights. The TV journalist tore the salesman a new one, listing case after case where they had broken the law, forcing the company reps to make a meek apology. They looked pathetic. On national TV.

I had already cut ties with the dealership at this point, never doing any sort of business with them again. My dad (who had previously bought four different cars from this dealership) also blacklisted them. The dealership is still in business, but from what I’m told, they made some changes to their personnel after that TV show’s visit.

Know your legal rights, people!

My girlfriend is excited about a job interview she has at our favourite sub shop. I decide to go with her on the promise that if she takes me, I’ll buy her a sub. 

She gets in and we go separate ways. She’s in business attire, and I am in casual — not a good look, so I sit on the other side of the store.

Interviewer: “I’m glad you applied; you really look like a great fit for the store! Now, we offer eighteen-hour shifts seven days a week, and we can provide an area in the staff room to sleep in if you want to do overtime and don’t have long until your next shift.”

Cue me waving my arms around and shaking my head.

Girlfriend: “That… that doesn’t sound legal?”

Interviewer: “Oh, it isn’t! Aren’t you willing to break the law? Even to work for us? We’re the best!”

Girlfriend: “No, I don’t think I’d be willing to break the law for a job.”

Interviewer: “Then this interview is over and we have no further business to discuss.” 

We left.

I work in commercial insurance for a large, national insurer. A customer is passed up to me from our personal insurance side. He has a personal auto insurance policy with us but no commercial policies. He is passed to me because he has some questions on the functioning of commercial policies that the other agent can’t answer.

Me: “Good afternoon, sir. I understand you had some questions about commercial auto insurance, is that correct?”

Customer: “Yes, can the owner of a company be excluded from coverage on a commercial policy?”

Me: “Are you trying to start a policy without being listed as a driver?”

Customer: “No, I just want to know if it’s possible.”

Me: “That’s not something we offer at this time.”

Customer: “But is it possible? Is it legal to have a commercial policy that excludes the owner of the company as a driver of the vehicle?”

Me: “I don’t know if there are any laws that specifically prevent it, but I also don’t know of any companies that offer that.”

Customer: “So, it is legal?”

Me: “Possibly. As I said, I don’t know that there is a specific law against it, but I am not a legal professional; I am an insurance agent.”

Customer: “I was kind of hoping you would tell me it was illegal.”

That is a new one for me; we don’t get a lot of people hoping the answer to their question is “no”. My curiosity is piqued, to say the least.

Me: “If you don’t mind my asking, why are you asking about this? It’s a pretty specific concern to have.”

Customer: “I was involved in an accident a couple of weeks ago. I already reported it to your claims people when it happened, but it was pretty clear the other driver was at fault. He blew a red light and hit me in an intersection, and he was in a company vehicle. I reported it to his insurance company, too, and I got a letter from them last week saying they aren’t going to cover the accident since the driver wasn’t covered by their policy. How does that even happen?”

Me: “Well, there is something called a ‘named driver exclusion’ that specifically removes someone from coverage on a policy, but it is very unusual that the owner of a company would be excluded.”

Customer: “I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to claim against my own insurance and risk my rate going up when someone else hit me. What should I do?”

Me: “Did the letter you got from the other insurance company say that they were denying liability on behalf of the driver, or did it say that the driver wasn’t covered under that policy?”

Customer: “Hold on, let me check. I have the letter here. It says that they are denying the claim because the driver is not covered by the policy.”

Me: “Okay. I want to reiterate that I am not a legal professional and can’t give you legal advice, but that letter is only saying that the insurance company is not covering the claim, not that they are denying that the driver was legally liable for the damages.”

Customer: *Pauses* “So… you’re saying that I should take him to court.”

Me: “I can’t tell you to do that, sir. That would be giving you legal advice. What I can tell you is that just because someone doesn’t have insurance, or doesn’t carry enough to cover an accident, that doesn’t remove their liability; it just means that an insurance company isn’t going to pay for them.”

Customer: *Pauses again* “I think I understand. Thank you so much for your help. I’m going to call my attorney.”