I work in customer service for a magazine publisher. Every print subscription to our magazines includes access to the digital version of the magazine. You register a free account with the same information you have used to subscribe to the magazine and then log in to the website. Your email address is now your unique username in the system.
Caller: “I just registered an account with my own name, but my wife has the subscription so it’s not letting me log on.”
Me: “You can create a new account for your wife, but you can’t use the email you used to create your account.”
Caller: “That doesn’t make any sense!”
Me: “I’m afraid that’s how the system is set up; there’s nothing I can do to help it.”
Caller: “So, after forty years of marriage and decades of this magazine subscription, I’m not allowed to read the magazine because it’s in my wife’s name?”
Me: “Well, the system sees that you are not the same person as your wife, but if I can try to direct you back to just registering a new account in your wife’s name, then—”
Caller: “I don’t want to do that.”
My tone has probably gotten chillier and more polite as the call has progressed, as I tend to use manners to create a safe distance. It’s hard to describe his tone exactly; he seems to immediately come in with this put-upon energy, and he sounds certain that I’m a corporate minion instead of a regular person there to help him despite my minimum wage.
By the end of our fifteen-minute discussion, he is sounding pretty unhinged.
Caller: “My wife will send an email to cancel immediately after this phone call.”
I guess he thinks it’s some sort of trump card because he seems pretty baffled when I tell him:
Me: “We can handle the cancellation during this same call. Can you confirm your wife’s name?”
At the beginning of the call, I confirmed his information, mainly his name and address. Since the wife presumably lives at the same address, I have already accessed her information to see the subscription, but I don’t need to confirm anything at this point as I only need to know that there s a subscription to the address, and it isn’t in the name of the customer.
Caller: “No. I’m fed up with your nonsense. I won’t tell you.”
Me: “I can’t proceed unless I’m certain that I’m handling the correct subscription.”
Caller: “Fine. I’ll get my wife on the phone.”
This perfectly pleasant woman picks up the phone, and I feel myself thaw immediately.
Me: “Can you please confirm your name and address so I can cancel the subscription?”
Caller’s Wife: “What are you talking about?”
I summarize that her husband unfortunately got frustrated with our digital services. She asks me to hold. I can hear her asking why they’re cancelling and him ranting about how it isn’t easy to access the digital content. She picks the phone back up. I can basically hear her rolling her eyes.
Caller’s Wife: “Apparently, we are indeed cancelling.”
She sounds exasperated but not with me. I confirm her information and that the subscription will now end.
Me: “Now that the subscription will end, you can subscribe again under your husband’s name so he can access the digital content with his account.”
I could tell by her tone that she was picking up what I was putting down and that she had a pretty good idea of what I had to deal with.
Despite feeling slightly better after talking to the wife, I spent the rest of the evening feeling sick and upset. Calls like that always leave me wondering if there was a point somewhere early on where I could have prevented the whole call from derailing. I’ll never know.
