Will Be Complaining For A Calendar Year

I work in the admissions and gift shop in an art gallery. There is a university in the same city that has a restoration going on, and last year they were selling calendars to raise money for said project. Ours is one of the locations carrying them. I get a phone call:

Me: “[Gallery], how may I help you?”

Customer: “I saw on CBC that [University] is selling calendars to restore the building. Are you selling them?”

Me: “Yes, we are.”

Customer: “I live in [Other Province]. Would you be able to ship one to me?”

We have never done this before, and I have only been working there for a few months.

Me: “Um… I’ll have to check with my supervisor. May I have your name and number and I’ll call you back?”

Customer: “I don’t give out my phone number. How about you give me her number and I’ll call her?”

Me: “Okay, no problem!”

I give her the number, and after we hang up, I give my supervisor a heads-up about the call. Fast forward a few weeks; the following has taken place.

We do agree to send the calendar, but the payment has to be processed from my station upstairs. As we can’t call the customer to have her give us the credit card number in real time, she instead tells it to my supervisor, who writes it down, and then brings it up the next day to have it done. The card number is declined. We have no way of calling the customer, so we decide to wait it out. She eventually calls back.

Customer: “I ordered a [University] calendar some time ago. When should I be expecting it to arrive?”

Me: “Well, unfortunately, we couldn’t finish processing the payment as your card number was declined, and as we had no way of contacting you, we had no way of rectifying this.”

Customer: “You had my address! You could have sent me a letter!”

She is now clearly upset.

Customer: “This is the problem with [My Province]! You’re always dropping the ball when it comes to business! My family was from there and can be traced back!”

She went on for a bit about how it was all our fault and we should have sent her a letter, because, of course, WE were the ones dropping the ball. She was perfectly ready to give us her credit card number but not her phone number when nearly the whole world runs on phone lines and the Internet. But no, WE should have sent HER a letter.

I was eventually able to end the call with an apology and a “hope you have a nice day.” Once my supervisor came out of a meeting she was in, I told her what had happened, and both she and another office staffer agreed that the customer was probably trying to get a free calendar.