You’ve Been Cancelled

I work at a call center for an online retailer. While we’ve always allowed customers to place orders for items that are not in stock but will be soon (backorders), our policy changed after many items were on backorder for months instead of a week or two for restock. Essentially, our CEO decided on a new policy where every few months we would cancel backorders we were not going to get back in for a long time and issue a coupon as well as a refund. As the person who has to field angry customers about this, I’m not thrilled by the change.

A woman calls in to check on a backordered item she thought should have shipped out. A week ago, our system ran its auto cancelation procedure and emailed out coupons. I pull up the order and discover that this item has been canceled due to the aforementioned reasons.

To say she isn’t pleased is an understatement. I explain the policy change, that we sent her an email regarding it, and that I also have the coupon number I can give her over the phone if she did not receive it. She screams at me, of course, that the cancelation of her four-dollar order is the final straw with us and that she doesn’t want a coupon — worth more than the item we canceled — and demands that I pull up another order to cancel that, too.

You’ll never guess what had happened to that order.

I explain that the second order was also canceled for the same reason and offer her the two coupons worth well more than the amount of the items that were canceled. She screams at me that she is “so absolutely done with you people!” and hangs up the phone.

She netted all her money back and almost twice that amount in free coupons. But some people want to be mad.