I am investigating an auto accident that occurred before the policy was purchased.
Customer: “I’m a paying customer! I pay for full coverage, and I expect you to fix the car!”
Me: “You’re a paying customer today, but you weren’t a week ago when this happened, right?”
Customer: “This is ridiculous! I’m paying now! It should be fixed now!”
I work in a call center for a medical insurer. I am on a call with a customer who lives in a rural part of the country.
Me: “So, just about anyone in the medical field can fill out that insurance claim form for you.”
Caller: “But we don’t just have doctors walking around fields here!”
Me: “No, sorry, I meant the medical field. Someone who works in any medical capacity.”
Caller: “We only got corn fields out here.”
I’m working at a kayak rental hut by a quiet lake. A family is picking up their rental gear. The dad looks over the waiver form.
Dad: “Why do we have to sign all this? We’re just paddling. It’s not like we’re cliff diving.”
Me: “It’s standard liability stuff, just in case.”
Dad: “So what, if a squirrel jumps on my kayak and I fall in, you’re not responsible?”
Me: “Exactly.”
Dad: “That’s ridiculous. I’ve signed fewer papers buying a car.”
Me: “Well, cars don’t capsize when your kid sees a frog and screams.”
Some years ago, I worked in an insurance call center that focused on car insurance.
The brand I worked on was focused on new drivers and, as such, required that a black box tracking device be fitted to the car so that how you drove could be monitored. We needed the box to be fitted by one of our engineers, who would come to you and install it. While they were doing this, they would check over the car to make sure it wasn’t modified.
One of my first calls of the day goes as such:
Me: “You’re through to [Insurance Company], how can I help?”
Engineer: “Hey, man, one of the engineers here. I came to fit a box to the car, but the wheels and probably the exhaust are very much not standard… the wheels look to be the wrong size.”
Me: “Okay, thanks, yeah, don’t worry about fitting the box. Want me to talk to her to explain the deal?”
Engineer: “If you can, she’s not happy about it.”
The phone gets passed over, and I do the various data protection stuff.
Me: “Okay, so the wheels and exhaust on your car aren’t standard, you’re going to need to get them changed back before we can fit the box, and you need the box for the insurance.”
Customer: “But I’ve spent hundreds on those!”
Me: “Well, it’s against the terms of your insurance policy to have them, so while they’re on your car, you aren’t actually insured.”
Customer: “But the wheels on my last car were modified and you didn’t say anything then!”
Me: *Trying to ignore her admitting to insurance fraud on a recorded call.* “That may well be, but it is against the terms of this insurance to have any modifications on your car; you’re going to have to revert them if you want this policy.”
Customer: “I don’t see the problem… It’s not like the wheels are even part of the car.”
Me: *My sarcastic a**.* “They’re not part of… how far do you think you can drive without them?”
At this point, she escalated to a manager, luckily, when he listened to the call, my manager laughed. Got told to try not to do it again, but it was funny enough that he’d let it slide this time.
Oh, and she did get the modifications removed. She got her insurance cancelled for speeding a couple of months later anyway, but that one is another story.
This story reminded me of one of my most baffling customer encounters.
I live in a part of the world where a large part of the population has a sincere distrust of any institution. Most of our insurance agency’s customers only give us money because state law requires it. My Customer Service Personality™ is completely wasted, because our customers are angry and bitter about that.
I’m new, not only to this agency but to property and casualty insurance as a whole. I’ve been fully licensed, but there are still a few things I don’t know how to answer. To my customers, this means I’m an untrustworthy moron who is looking for an opportunity to scam them.
To make matters worse, the agency has recently been purchased by a new individual, and the beloved former agent has retired. His grandfather began the agency, and it has now carried through three generations. The community reacts as though the new agency owner is Satan incarnate (seriously- some folks came in and prayed in the office for Jesus to guide the new owner).
You see, most of the clients of this agency had been clients since the previous owner’s grandfather owned the business, which meant many of our policies dated back to the 1980s and beyond. Since it was a small agency with limited resources, none of those records had been digitized yet, though they had been regularly reviewed, purged, and updated according to state property and casualty requirements.
So, when a client calls in asking if we have their historical records, the agency manager (who has been there twenty years and essentially came with the building) authorizes me to say yes.
I explain this to a client, according to her instruction:
Me: “We can take a look through and find anything specific you might be looking for.”
Client: “Well, we’re trying to find a copy of my wife’s driver’s license.”
Me: “We definitely don’t have that on file.”
I say this with confidence because I know we don’t ask for copies of driver’s licenses. Furthermore, I have already pulled the customer’s file, and I’m looking through it as I speak.
Client: *Growling.* “You absolutely do! When we set up my wife’s policy in 1982, we had to give them a copy of her driver’s license!”
Me: “According to this policy document, her policy began in 1988, and we do not have a copy of her driver’s license in her records.”
The client starts roaring down the phone:
Client: “WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT?! I’M CALLING THE COPS! YOU STOLE MY WIFE’S IDENTITY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH HER DRIVER’S LICENSE? YOU’RE GOING TO JAIL! I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!”
I took a deep breath before responding, because he did, in fact, know where I lived. The whole town did.
Me: “Well, sir, I’m new here, and this is my first time looking at your file, so I’ll need a moment. But can I ask why you need a copy of your wife’s driver’s license from when your policy began?”
To summarize with fewer curse words and actual curses upon my family and my ancestors, his wife had lost her driver’s license in this good year 2017, and she had been pulled over. The police officer had cited her for driving without a license, but would waive that penalty if she could find it.
Ergo, they were looking for some sign that she had once had a driver’s license, albeit thirty years ago. They thought that would do the trick. However, a photocopy of a document that expired in an entirely different millennium would not be adequate proof of a current legal license. Three people tried to explain this to him before he hung up in rage.
Ultimately, screaming at everyone currently employed at the agency didn’t force this photocopy to exist, so the customer ended up calling the former owner’s father at home to accuse him of stealing her 1980s copied ID. When he explained that he hadn’t even had a photocopier in those days, the customer and his wife immediately canceled their policies.
Amazingly, the police never showed up at my house to talk to me about identity theft. I was kind of looking forward to their reactions when I explained the situation to them.
