I got a new phone, and it blew up with calls from debt collectors. Most people can just send unknown callers to voicemail. I, unfortunately, worked tech support for a large company at the time, so I had to answer every call.

I’ll spare you the details of how annoying those folks are. “Very” should suffice. And I got tired of it pretty darn quick. I put up with it as long as I could, but then something broke. I needed to f*** with these a**holes, inasmuch as it was possible and legal to do so.

Mostly, I just wasted as much of their time as I could. But for the really annoying ones, I had a routine that I developed over the course of about a year.

Dunner: “Is this Joe Debtor?”

Me: “Is this about the unpaid phone bill from 2010?”

Dunner: “Yes. Mr. Debtor, are you going to pay—”

Me: “—Hang on a sec. I never said I was your dude. I work with him, though. He sold me this phone a couple of weeks ago and told me I might be getting a few of these calls. Listen, could you please just call him directly? I can give you his new address and phone number, and the phone for our HR department if you want that too.”

Dunner: “That would be wonderful. Thank you!”

Me: “Are you ready to write this down? It’s—” *Click!*

Invariably, they’d call back, thinking I had just accidentally disconnected. I’d say something like:

Me: “Sorry. Cell coverage sucks around here. I apologize. Do you still want me to—” *Click!*

You’d be surprised how many times they’d try again. I answered, and pretended to accidentally hang up, every single time.

They all eventually figured it out. Not before getting REALLY ANGRY though.

This was not in the US, but I’ll use approximate dollar values to make it easier for people.

Back then, I was a tier two customer service rep. Which basically meant that I got all the angry people on the phone, or the weird, bizarre, or complex cases that the tier one reps couldn’t figure out. There were a lot of crazy people calling us, but The Greek is one everyone remembered. We nicknamed him that because his true name was Greek-sounding and hard to pronounce and remember.

I’d heard rumors of him for a few weeks by then. He’d call us to help him fix his problem, but he didn’t like the solutions offered, and he’d start cursing and shouting. I’m sure all of you know the type of person I’m talking about. Eventually, someone connected him through to me.

His story was this: he bought an active speaker from us worth about $800. Within a week (he claims), it broke, but he didn’t inform us until the sixth week. Within the first thirty days, we do a replacement, no questions asked. After that, it’s a repair.

The customer said that he needed it for his work, so one of the earlier customer service reps offered and sent him a loaner model. This is the one time where we screwed up. That colleague sent out a loaner with a higher value (around $1000), and worse, he sent it to the customer before we received the broken item. He sent it before the customer even shipped the broken speaker to us. If you see the potential problem here and facepalm… yeah, that was me too.

A few days after receiving the loaner, the customer calls again, saying that the loaner is broken too, with the exact same complaint. Around this point, yours truly got the pleasure of meeting this wonderful man.

At first, I walked him through his setup to rule out user error. This is where I figured out what was going on. He connected his active speaker through an amplifier to his music installation.

For those of you with little audio knowledge, here’s what you should know:

If you use a passive speaker, you need an amplifier.

If you use an active speaker, the amplifier is built in.

So, if you run the electric signal through an amp and then into an active speaker, you blow the thing up. Poof, say goodbye to your speaker(s).

At this point, we had it on a recorded line that he destroyed both his original model (which he still hadn’t sent back) and destroyed the loaner. I told him he had a few options moving forward:

Send back the original model for repairs. It was almost certain that the supplier would determine it was his fault, and he’d have to pay for the repair since it would be out of warranty due to his actions.

Send back the loaner and keep the original. We would check it as usual, and if it’s broken due to his fault, he’d be on the hook for those repair costs.

Or send both back, with the results mentioned above.

He was not happy, to say it politely. He started shouting and screaming that we were trying to scam him, that he would not return anything since we couldn’t be trusted, yada-yada-yada. I’m sure you can imagine the colorful language used.

He went one step further. He demanded that we pay HIM $500 so he could get his thing repaired at a third party. I, of course, declined this because, what the h***, dude? Not happening.

Amidst the cursing, he told me he’d keep the loaner as “hostage” until we paid him, and that he wouldn’t send the original in either.

We went back and forth on this, getting nowhere. So, I presented him with the fourth option that I hated using: if he decided to keep both the original and the loaner, then I’d have to forward his case to our collections department. They’d inform him that he had to pay for the loaner, send out payment reminders, and could eventually escalate it to a bailiff/debt collector.

He. Went. Off.

Screaming obscenities, threats, the whole nine yards. I informed him once again of the options, talking through his screaming. He held on to what he wanted, and I disconnected the call.

I forwarded his case to collections, and they sent out a payment reminder. A normal person would pay or try to solve this. Not this guy. More threats and angry emails. Payment reminders turned into the final warning, and he still didn’t want to do anything. He still wanted us to pay him.

So, his case got turned over to the collection agency/bailiffs. A normal person would realize he messed up and pay. Not this guy. At this point, he called us again and they forwarded him to me. I explained that I could not talk about the case with him anymore; the only communication would go through the bailiffs. He got angry, I repeated, and disconnected.

At this point, it remained quiet for a bit. Until I heard what happened from someone I know in the collections department.

This idiot continued his threats and anger towards the bailiff agency. They didn’t screw around. They pressed charges with the police for the various (death) threats he made. Besides that, they went to court to get a writ for the money owed so they could seize his goods.

So instead of working with us to fix his problem, which would’ve cost about $150–200, he now has to pay over $1500 (price of the loaner + late fees/penalties + bailiff costs), or lose his possessions. Plus, he has a police investigation that is sure to screw him over.

To give you an idea: threatening people is a criminal offense that carries the maximum punishment of two years in prison or a fine of $20,000. If the threat is in writing and the defendant sets conditions (if you don’t do X, I’ll do Y), then the maximum prison time is four years. So, he royally screwed himself over.

Oh, and his speaker is still broken.

I used to work at a call center for one of the biggest network providers in our country: mobile subscriptions, Internet, landlines, all that. The call center was only for business clients, not private customers, so it was not unusual for a client to have a lot of mobile subscriptions.

I am not sure how changing mobile providers in other countries works, but in my country, the company you want to transfer to has to order the numbers from your previous provider. You cannot cancel your subscription and then have it transferred; if you cancel your subscription, it stops working right away. If you want to transfer after that, then you need to order a reopening of the subscription on that phone number for it to be able to transfer to the other provider. And the reopening is treated as a new order and a new subscription, so it’s an ordeal to go through.

Also, if you have a debt collection case for an invoice with the provider you are currently with, you will then no longer be able to get new subscriptions with that company until the debt is paid in full.

I got a call from a customer who had ten to fifteen mobile subscriptions with us as well as an Internet subscription, and apparently, they worked with sales. The customer was very angry on the phone.

Customer: “We have received a debt collection case from you for an invoice we haven’t paid!”

That was true; there was an invoice in our systems that they had not paid, and it had indeed gone to debt collection.

Customer: “I knew about the invoice, but I just haven’t bothered to pay it.”

What did you expect to happen if you didn’t pay it?

He then proceeded to berate me for sending them a debt collection and demanded that we cancel it immediately.

One other thing to note is that none of the people who worked on the floor of the call center had the authority to cancel debt collection cases; those cases had to be handled by other departments. This customer would not let me send a case to another department, nor would he let me call a supervisor to maybe expedite things.

Customer: “Cancel the debt right now, or I will cancel all of our subscriptions right this second!”

Cue malicious compliance.

Normally, when people threaten to cancel their subscriptions, they mean they want to transfer to another provider, and I usually refer them to contact that other provider so they can start the process. This time, however, since the customer was being an a**hole, I did not do that. I asked point blank:

Me: “Do you want to cancel your subscriptions with us immediately?”

Customer: “Yes!“

Me: “Are you sure?”

Customer: “Yes!“

Me: “Okay, then. I will cancel all of your subscriptions right this second.”

Customer: “Good! A**hole!“

And then, he hung up.

I logged the call with every detail that he had said and asked me, and I added an extra line: “if any doubts, just listen to the recording of the call.”

I got at it and cancelled all of the subscriptions this client had with us — all of them, even their Internet subscription.

After about an hour, one of my coworkers got a very angry call from the client. (He had been forced to call from another phone because guess what? Their subscription was cancelled.) I was done for the day, so I just went home, but my coworker filled me in the next day. The client yelled and screamed that they were no longer able to call out or receive calls, and their Internet was down. My coworker read the log I’d created and informed the client that they had terminated our services, so of course, they could not receive any calls, nor make them.

He demanded that we open up the subscriptions again so that they could do their work, but again, my coworker, had to inform him that it would not be possible since they had a debt collection case that needed to be paid first. Otherwise, none of the orders they put in would go through.

After more screaming and profanities, my coworker had to end the call.

The next day, I had the evening shift, but I had saved the client’s information to see if anything else had happened. Apparently, the debt got paid, and the subscriptions were reopened. They also had ordered a transfer to another provider.

I have no idea how much money was lost, but for a sales team to not be able to work for over twenty-four hours, I can only guess that it was a lot. Also, as a cherry on top of things, they were in a contract period with us, which meant that they got a small discount on their subscriptions if they were with us for a set period of time. If they broke that contract (which they did when they told me to cancel their subscription, as well as transfering to another provider afterward), they had to pay a fee of over $300 per subscription. That was at least $4,500 — on top of what they lost during the twenty-four hours when they couldn’t do anything.

All because they didn’t want to pay a $30 late fee.

I work in collections for a credit card company. A customer has called in who has not paid their credit card bill in some time.

Customer: “But I’m in the restaurant now and they won’t accept my card.”

Me: “And that will continue to happen until you pay the minimum payment.”

Customer: “How much is that?”

Me: “£28.”

Customer: “I haven’t got £28! That’s why I’m using the credit card, dummy!”

Related:
Will Not Give Them Credit For Trying, Part 3
Will Not Give Them Credit For Trying, Part 2
Will Not Give Them Credit For Trying

I repeatedly get calls from a debt collection agency looking for “Andy Rand Pearson”, which sounds like a very fake name to me (Any Random Person).

Each time they call, I explain that I’m not this person, I don’t know anyone by that name, I’m on the “do not call” list, you do not have a prior business relationship with me, and you are not permitted to call me. It’s a fine that maxes out at $40,000.

I can’t block the a**hole because it comes from a different number each time.

And each time, this guy laughs at me with his stupid annoying laugh and claims it’s not illegal and he’s not going to be fined. It’s the same guy each time.

I’ve reported it to the government each time, mentioning that it’s an identical laugh.

Today, I got a call from the same guy, and he was pissed. He kept threatening me because, apparently, he got a huge fine, and it was my fault somehow.

I simply did my best imitation of his annoying f****** laugh at him in response and then hung up.