Customer Service Thread

So a bit unrelated because this is on the end of being the customer, but my hairstylist gave me a discount on my haircut this week because when asking how things were going I mentioned I've only been scheduled two days a week lately and she felt sorry for me. But also this woman has known me since I was a baby and her salon is run out of her house. I think I've only had one other person cut my hair ever and I had to try to negotiate that in not my native language, but I succeeded!
My hairstylist told me not to tell my sister about the discount, though. She does the whole family's hair because family friend XP

 

Today in pharmacy I'm doing okay, but someone gave the pharmacist a heck of a time.

They came in with a prescription that had info missing on it regarding frequency of use, the pharmacist told them they would have to call the doctor to get the information, and since it's a weekend that may take until Monday. The patient gave the pharmacist the doctors personal cell phone number, asked if the pharmacist could call them, the pharmacist said yes.

After the call went to voicemail and other tasks had been done, the pharmacist called the patient and said unfortunately, they need to wait to hear from the doctor before the prescription could be filled. Now I wasn't on the phone hearing everything, but it was clear the patient wasn't happy. They were pressuring the pharmacist to fill the prescription, and the pharmacist just kept saying no, I can't do that, I can't trust you for the dosage information, it's the law and store policy that I need the doctor for this. No, i can't fill it anyway, my pharmacist license would be at risk and I'm not willing to risk prescribing the wrong dosage for this medication. Etc etc for ten minutes. Really felt bad for the pharmacist on that one.

 

Update on that customer from later on in the day. They had also made the pharmacist call the other pharmacist, on their day off, to see if they would tell them to just fill the prescription without talking to the doctor. the answer was no. Of course it was no. Later we heard back from the doctor and got it filled, I asked them to verify the patient's address (as per store policy) to verify the pickup. They gave me the city, I asked for the street part of the address and they got angry, and said "It's not like I'm gonna abuse the medication." (which totally sounds like someone who would abuse medication would say) And when they left, they talked to the manager about filing a complaint about it. Come on, we are doing our job to ensure patient safety here.

 

So I have mentioned the man who threw his change on the ground in a huff when I made him take his change (he knows we can't take tips, he's just Too Good For Pennies), he also recently angrily tapped on the drivethru window because I put the money in the drawer before handing him his coffee (WHO EVEN DOES THAT)

Well today, apparently he cut off someone in line for the drivethru, and the person he cut off was pretty miffed. (He may have had the right of way, the parking lot is confusing, but if he's as impatient about driving as he is about change...)

Apparently she knows him (distant family I think?) and he's a complete jerk all the time. We let her vent about him for a bit because it's always nice to have outside confirmation that someone is really like that.

 

I always tell people, "some people come in here looking to be jerks." I implore people to not try too hard around jerks or feel bad if the jerks jerk about anyway, because there's nothing you can do. They woke up today wanting to be a jerk.

 

I wish there were a way to link letmegooglethatforyou.com to people in real life

"Oh you work in a craft store? You must know literally everything about every type of art or creative process"

When I say I don't know or I'm not familiar with the product they're asking about, some people like...just keep asking me questions as if I hadn't said that? And I have to keep repeating I don't know and it's extremely frustrating because it's like they can't wrap their heads around the fact that I DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR YOU, I'M NOT HOLDING OUT ON YOU BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T ASK ENOUGH TIMES, I REALLY DON'T KNOW

My other favorite thing is when someone has already decided what they want to do but they ask me for advice anyway and I tell them (nicely) that their idea won't work and they get...stuck. even if I offer alternatives they keep coming back to their original idea.

Sometimes I think spray paint is the worst invention ever because people just want it so they don't have to paint with a brush. They don't understand that it doesn't come in a non toxic form and keep buying it for their kids school project and complaining about how expensive it is and I'm like you could buy a $2 bottle of regular paint and it would accomplish the same thing with less toxic fumes!!!

Did I mention that every year in the town I work in the schools assign this molecule model project and a billion kids come in and buy us out of Styrofoam balls. And then when those are gone they start buying floral foam balls. And they don't like it when I tell them that spray paint won't work on floral foam because it's extra porous since it's for STICKING FAKE FLOWERS IN and it just sucks up the paint or melts. And I'm like "well you could coat it with mod podge or Elmers glue first so the paint doesn't destroy it" and they always whine about how much work that is

I'm sorry your teachers collaborate with the whole school district to make retail workers lives miserable at the same time every year???

 

Oh man, in my state fair job for some reason people thought that because we were an ice cream booth we must know about ALL THE ICE CREAM IN THE STATE FAIR
'where's the nitro ice cream?' fuck idk maam i don't live in the state fair grounds like a gnome

 

Had a guy come in the other day asking about tissue used in sewing leather. Asked other employees if we had that and they were like uh, no? But we have tissue paper in this isle. So I find the tissue paper. Oops, that's not what he wanted. He explains to me more of what it is he's looking for and it's cord made out of tissue and I'm like "oooooh, you want something like sinew" and yes, that's what he's looking for. People aren't responding on the radio to help me find it so I take him to where it would be if we had it. We are out of stock. He was nice, though. He was just like "ah, I saw it here last time I was here but didn't get it. Guess I should have".

Also one of my dad's friends was buying something at my work and specifically waited on my lane when he saw me at register. At least he's one of the chill friends instead of one of the ones I'd rather avoid XP

 

[drags this thread kicking and screaming back from the dead]
my favorite customers: ones who think talking to the manager will get you anything you want. theres this lady that comes in all the time, always when im working, and always asks for stuff were either out of or never carried in the first place, then when i tell her that goes straight to the manager to complain. and then gets huffy when the manager tells her the same thing i said. like, lady, my customer service percentage is higher than even my manager's, if i could pull some french bread/pecan pie slices/strawberry loaf cake/etc out of my ass for you, i would.

 

This evening a customer bought a dish that involved rice, noodles, beans, and sauce. After eating a few bites of it he came up to me to ask, "out of curiosity," if we make all of the ingredients here. Now I know the beans and rice are cooked at the restaurant, the sauce is bought elsewhere and then has spices added to it, and I'm sure the noodles are bought premade because making shell noodles is probably more pain than it's worth. But most of it is cooked beforehand so all that has to be done is to put it together and re-heat it. I gave the customer a shorter version of the answer, and he went back to his food. A while later he came back with his dish half-eaten and told me that he didn't like it because it tasted microwaved (it was, as are many other things served here) and wanted to know if we could just give him something else instead. I was pretty sure the answer was no because no mistakes had been made, he got exactly what he ordered, he just... didn't understand what he'd ordered. But to be sure I asked a coworker who was more familiar with the rules, and she went to explain to him why would couldn't just give him free food because he didn't like what he ordered. He asked to speak to the owner (who is almost never there and definitely wasn't there then) or a manager, (she wasn't there either) told us it really wasn't so much about wanting free food as being unhappy with our service, and when my coworker finally offered him a free dessert (the one thing we're allowed to ever offer for free to appease anger customers) he accepted instantly and we never heard another peep from him. What was that about it not being about free food?

 

On my end, rather than a customer's, because working through overload makes the words go funny:
"Are plastic bags okay?" + "Do you have a rewards card with you?" = "Do you have a plastic bag with you?" OTL

 

Customer: Can I get two coffees in [bigger size] cups? Fill the difference with milk, please. (The difference is about half a cup.)

Same customer, 5 minutes later: I just got these two coffees and they're kind of cold, can you remake them?

I wonder what possibly could have caused that.

 

Samehat, man. I haven't slept since 4 pm yesterday & had to be at work at 10:45 this morning. I forgot how to English right almost immediately & once I just straight up forgot what I was trying to explain to a customer right in the middle of my sentence.

Good times.

 

Today I had a customer get really arsey with me over the fact that we don't sell danish blue cheese anymore.
Her: "You haven't had any since Christmas!"
Me: "I know, I'm afraid we don't stock it anymore. I'm really sorry!"
Her: "Yes, well it's absolutely RIDICULOUS!!!!"
And I kid you not, she actually did that pompous sniffing and turning away thing that I thought only happened in fiction, leaving me there like lol okay???

In other news, my colleague got shoved by a customer who didn't get the prize they wanted in the charity tombola.

 

Dear customer who paid for a $6.27 transaction with a hundred-dollar bill and twenty-seven cents exactly:

Why. Just... why.

 

I totally forgot I'd not shared the tale of Hi-Vis Mushroom Lady here yet... It is time.

Back in December I had what was, without question, the strangest customer interaction I've had so far. I was trying to date-check juice when a middle-aged lady in a high-visibility orange jacket accosted me to inquire about our mushrooms.

Her tone accusatory, she told me she was 'very curious' about the mushrooms. "It says here that they're a good source of Vitamin D. But Vitamin D is fat-soluble, so how can they be high in Vitamin D?" I told her that was a good question, but also that I was afraid I didn't know much about mushrooms myself. She asked if I could find out for her. Repeating multiple times about her 'curiosity' regarding how a mushroom can possibly contain Vitamin D, she became insistent on me fetching her a manager. "Because, you know, a good source would be more than a trace. I'm just very curious."

It's hard to kind of capture the intensity of this woman? I have no doubt whatsover that she was trying to unmask what she thought must be Fake Advertising in the mushrooms' nutritional information?? She delivered a lot of her questions with the kind of smirk a person has when they think they've caught you out and are quietly enjoying it.

I found the nearest manager, who looked up the answer on his phone before coming out to meet the customer with me. When informed about the fact that mushrooms can produce Vitamin D within themselves when exposed to UV light, she then asked how that was done??? She wanted to know the process?? "It interests me, as a vegetarian." The manager said he wasn't sure, but guessed they do it some time during the growing process, presumably with lamps.

Luckily that was apparently enough to sate her 'curiosity', and left the manager and myself to share a moment of utter bemusement before we both went back to doing our jobs...

 

@Socket I'll be honest, I never expected to read a story about someone being 'very curious' about mushrooms without it turning out that they were hoping for shrooms.

 

I assume they wanted to break the hundred and not get back any coins. Still a dick move, but I'll dig for coins so I don't get coins back.

 

From waaaay back when I still worked customer service:

Dude, there is no way someone's offering you an iPhone on a plan that's less than $35 a month. This is just flat-out not possible, okay? Not if you're getting the phone at a discount. No one offers that. And I'm even more dubious about this being a real offer made by real people when you admit that you can't remember the name of the company offering the deal; that sort of thing tends to be memorable, and I'd expect you'd write it down or something. But all I can really do is kick you to retention, when you threaten to cancel your contract.

And then there's the lady who wanted to dispute data charges from July. In November. First of all, I had no way of pulling up charges more than 90 days old. Second, the notes said she'd already disputed those charges and the back office looked at it and went "nah, those are legit charges" and that she'd been told this. Third, we...really can't take blame for if your phone's using data when you don't want it to; there's a couple things we can do to keep your phone from using US cell towers if you live really close to the border and you've got issues with your phone hopping towers (this is mainly only an issue for folks living in the Niagara region, really), but we can't really do anything to keep your phone from using data. We can troubleshoot if it's an issue with your phone or not, and work on fixing that, but keeping the system from charging for overage requires a lot of finagling to pull off that we generally really do not like having to do.
Fourth, there's no way the data overage was $700. Mayyyybe her total bill came up to $700 (it's not impossible, although it would be unusual), but there's a hard cap on overages and roaming fees, and we were warned that the ombudsman took complaints about companies exceeding those caps very seriously. Honestly, I suspected then (and still suspect now) that she'd actually used the data and didn't realize how much she was using at the time, and didn't process how much it was going to cost in the end, and was trying to find a way to avoid having to pay that much for what was probably a couple weeks down in the States that could've easily been covered by a travel pack.

ETA: Oh! And there was the lady who was trying to be smart about her and her husband's phone plans, and arrange things so that they weren't getting charged long-distance for his calls home while he was working out West in the oil fields. So she'd put an unlimited long-distance package on his phone, so that they wouldn't have to worry about how much time he spent on the phone calling her.
She, uh, didn't get charged long-distance. What she did get charged was for airtime used - meaning, the system saw one Guelph number calling another Guelph number and went "oh hey, that's a local call" and it did its usual job of noting down how long the call went for and charged appropriately.

The thing is, everyone who goes and works out west in Alberta changes their numbers to local numbers exactly to avoid that specific problem (and to avoid the sibling problem of getting charged long-distance for what would otherwise be local calls). I've got no idea why this guy didn't do that, but he didn't. And I explained to the lady that he was going to need to change his number to a local one if he wanted to get any use out of the long-distance package.

I explained why she'd gotten charged five times, actually. And I documented thoroughly, so she was going to have a hell of a time disputing that they weren't legit charges or that no one had explained them to her. I'm pretty sure the supervisor would've swatted her with a rolled-up newspaper, but she ended up hanging up on me when I put her on hold to transfer her like she'd demanded. (Which also got documented, which was gonna make it even harder for her to try disputing.)

 

SEATBELTS, EVERYONE, this is gonna be long!

Okay, so I'm a loan counselor at [TIVAS servicer-shaped train roars by] and my last call of the day today was this lady with a FFELP loan that called in wanting to make a payment. Okay, no big deal, I think, and get the screen to process the payment pulled up. She mentions she's unemployed, so I bring up that hey, if making her student loan payment out of her unemployment check is putting her in a bad situation, there's an unemployment deferment she can request while she's looking for work. She says no, she'd rather keep making payments so she can get this thing paid off as quick as possible. Now, she's already had this loan out and not been making payments on it for nine years, so I make understanding noises and start putting info in for the payment while she goes off on a tangent about how we've already taken like $10,000 from her and say she owes like $7000 more. I'm not really engaging with that because the numbers she's throwing out make zero sense unless she's got other loans that aren't with us, because the card processing system is already hella slow and I'm not getting paid to sort out who else she's doing business (or failing to do business) with and fix their customer service snafu for them. Not a problem I can really help with, and she just sounds like she wants to rant to blow off a little steam, which is common enough, I don't take it personally, still no big deal.

Lo and behold, she brings up a legal question that I do have to answer, says that she heard about it from her daughter, who also works with student loans. Okay, I explain the thing, tell her not to worry, nothing's changing that would impact her loans, and I've got her payment ready to process, and I am required to mention that usually there's a $14.95 convenience fee for payments over the phone for her loan type, but the phone system that lets her make the payment and not pay that fee is down, so I'm able to waive that for her today- is it okay if I submit the payment in the amount of [normal monthly payment] for her?

And she. Goes. Off.

Like, three minutes straight of being outraged that there's a convenience fee at all- which I totally sympathize with, I think it's stupid moneygrubbing bullshit and a ridiculously high number, but it is kinda there to encourage people to make the payment through other methods that don't come with fees instead of tying up the phone lines for people who actually need help and not just for us to be glorified ATMs and it does do that- and then going on about how she can just mail the payment (I tell her that's fine, offer her the P.O. box for payments, and she snaps at me that she already knows it- okay, lady, I was just trying to be helpful)- and then throws in that she can just have her daughter's company- "she works for a student loan forgiveness company, you see"- transfer her loans.

And that right there was where I started having to make will saves not to fight this woman, because her shitty daughter does not work for a 'loan forgiveness company' because there's no such fucking thing. She's one of those pustules on the asscrack of humanity that calls up elderly borrowers that took out loans to put their kids through college, and first generation college students, and borrowers that have English as their second language and are more likely to struggle with the legalese (BONUS POINTS FOR ALL THREE AT ONCE! :D :D :D) and tells them that for three or four payments of (on average) 2oo-400 dollars, and then continuing payments of 100 or so (again on average, this is aggregate data from my own experience hearing these quotes from people who have been victimized by these shitstains) they can get their loans *~*~forgiven~*~*~!!!

What they actually do is pocket all of that money and either put the account in forbearance for a few years (which lets it keep accruing interest and then capitalizes the interest when it's done and runs them out of forbearance time that they might actually *need* later), or consolidate the account (which is free, and we can help them with for free) and put them in an income-driven program (ditto) where the borrower actually owes $0 monthly payments, and just keeps pocketing their cash while they think that they've done a smart thing for themselves and feel good about making progress on their accounts. I have talked to so fucking many people that are horrified and betrayed when they find out what actually happens, and it drives me fucking nuts.

So. I maaaaaaaaybe have a huge issue with these companies. But! I did not give that caller an earful about how her daughter is scamming people like her out of their hard-earned money every damn day and just let her know that what her daughter does is actually a free program offered through the Department of Education and I can send her more information if she wants to change her loan type to one that doesn't have fees associated with phone payments (because Direct Loans don't, it's just FFELP loans because they're ancient and shitty.) But because this caller is kind, even-tempered, and a good listener, she tells me that she'll just do it through her daughter (which I tell her again is fine, I just wanted to make sure she knew what her available options were, just like with the deferment I mentioned earlier), and that she's just outraged that I'm charging her a $15 fee.

Which. You recall that comment about her being a good listener?

I lied.

So, in the calmest and sweetest voice I could muster (and this is my fucking forte, okay, I am known among my colleagues for unshakable poise on the phone (I get it all out of my system when i'm not at work to make that possible)) I tell her, "Ma'am, I'm not charging you a fee. I was telling you earlier, the phone system that lets you ordinarily avoid the fee is down, so we're able to waive that for you right now. I just wanted to let you know that that's what was going on, so there was no confusion."

Oh! Well that sort of changes things, because now she feels like she needs to tell me that she "wasn't trying to yell at me", I successfully do not tell her that she appears to have managed it anyway, somehow, get her okay to submit the fucking payment while making understanding noises about how student loans can be a pain, don't correct her on the five more tidbits of incorrect information she spouts at me about how student loans work, and finally get her off the phone.

My coworker who has the desk next to me is laughing at me by this point (it's cool, we're friends) about how he was just talking with one of the team leads about how I hardly ever seem upset on the phone, even when borrowers are being absolutely ridiculous. So maybe I actually had an expression to match the "what the fuck" feelings I wasn't verbalizing, and I got to vent a little bit of the "what even just happened there" and commiserate a bit about some of the calls that he'd had earlier, and I only clocked out a little bit off my schedule.

But seriously. Fuck you, you nasty old phone payment making no listening skills having lady, and your nasty fucking vulnerable borrower scamming daughter too. I hope you both step in snot in your bare feet.

/primal scream/

Phew. Ok, I'm done.