Back during the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, I was working for one of the major Internet service providers in the USA. I worked in the fiber business division, but the queues were so overloaded that we ended up getting overflow from residential customers. We had no ability to access their accounts or dispatch for them, and even if we did, resources were at their max, so we just had to talk them down and get them off the phones. Day in, day out, I’d be getting calls like this.

Me: “Thank you for calling—”

Customer: “You f***ers need to get out here and fix my f****** Internet now!“

Me: “Sir, you’re currently speaking to the business division on overflow. I can’t pull your account, but I can see by your phone number that you’re calling from Florida. Repair efforts are underway, but currently, we can’t guarantee when services will be resto—”

Customer: “Don’t give me that bulls***! That’s the same thing the f****** power company said to me five minutes ago!”

Me: “Sir, are you saying you currently don’t have power?”

Customer: “F****** right, I don’t!”

Me: “Sir, even if I could get a tech dispatched out to your location, you do realize that both our modem and your computer require power to operate, correct?”

Customer: “…F*** you!” *Click*

A customer calls in because they can’t connect to the Internet with their dial-up connection. At some point during the walk-through, they manage to delete their shortcut for the dial-up connection. Instead of taking them directly into networking, I decide it will be easier to just have them go into the Recycling Bin and restore it.

Me: “Okay, double-click on the Recycling Bin.”

Caller: “Okay, done, now what?”

Me: “Right-click on your dial-up connection, [Connection], and click ‘Restore’. Let me know when you’re done.”

Five minutes pass, and I’m sitting there in my cubicle just waiting. I hear this rustling and squeaking in the background.

Me: “Did you click ‘Restore’?”

Caller: “What? Oh… Yeah, well, you said recycling bin, and it reminded me that I needed to empty the trash in my bathroom, and now I realized my bathroom floor is a mess! I’m mopping. Can you hang on?” 

Me: “…”

I work for an Internet service provider. A job shows up on my laptop in the morning, and it turns out a tech has been to the customer’s home before but wasn’t able to resolve the issue because the owner wasn’t home. I arrive at the customer’s home and she is there. After I introduce myself:

Me: “I just need to take a measurement at the side of the home to verify that the problem is in the house.”

I am basically double-checking that the other tech did his job correctly.

She flips her s***!

Customer: “No! The problem is in the house!”

Me: “Well, it will only take me a few seconds to verify.”

Customer: “Either you come inside immediately or I’m going to call your manager and give you s***!”

Me: “Okay, the problem is in the house. Have you unplugged all your phones?”

There was a short circuit, and it’s usually a phone or modem plugged in causing this.

Customer: “Of course, I did!”

She is rolling her eyes as if I’m an idiot.

Me: “Do you have a modem, and is it unplugged?”

Customer: *Kind of taken aback for a second* “I didn’t unplug my modem.”

Me: “Unplug it, please?”

I watch on my multimeter as the short circuit disappears. I tell her that was the problem. Still not believing me, she says:

Customer: “Hold on a minute. I’m going to verify with my phone.”

Sure enough, it’s working.

Customer: “Huh, you don’t know how lucky you are, because I was just going to yell at you.”

I smugly told her to have a nice day, went outside to my van, and charged her for every single thing I could possibly find related to the service call. I hope she enjoyed her bill.

I am a senior manager in the business class division. I work for a company that offers Internet, cable, and phone services. I take an escalation from a church that has our services. The following is my summary of our discussion.

Me: “So, to recap, your lawn service — who has no affiliation with our business — cut your cable line and disrupted your services. Within twenty-four hours, at no cost to you, we sent a truck and crew to replace the line and restore your service. We then issued a seven-day credit for a one-day outage which was, again, due to no failure or negligence on our part. Now you have climbed the customer service ladder to the senior manager because you believe we have somehow not done enough for you. Is my summary accurate?”

There is a long pause.

Customer: “You have a blessed day!” *Click*

Our Internet modem broke. This was a few years ago, before 4G, so no modem meant no Internet at all. Our service provider was sending out a replacement, but it was a few days past the expected arrival date, so I called to check where it was.

Me: “Hello. We’re expecting a new modem at our house at [address]. We have no Internet until it gets here, so do you know when it might arrive?”

Employee: “Let me check for you.”

I was put on hold for about twenty minutes. Eventually, he returned.

Employee: “We’ve just looked up your address, and it appears you don’t have any Internet currently.”

He paused as if he had answered my question.

Me: “Uh, I know. We have no modem, like I said, so no Internet. When’s the new one getting here?”

Employee: “Umm… Let me check.”

I held for twenty minutes again.

Employee: “Okay, you can track your delivery on this website. Go to WWW dot…”

Me: “Are you for real? I. Have. No. Internet!”

I don’t often get annoyed with customer service workers as I am one myself, and to be fair, the guy was probably new or training, but forty minutes is a long time to be on the phone with someone so utterly clueless.

I asked for another operative who was almost instantly able to inform me that the new modem had been delivered to my neighbour.