Customer Service Thread

@tickingnectarine You'd be surprised. A nearby office sends someone to buy ~$500 in giftcards from my store every holiday season, and I've seen people spending in the $250 range for personal gifts.

ime it's people asking for refunds (especially for consumables) who are more likely to be involved in scams.

 

Dude calls me at the major retail chain I work at to ask if we have a specific set of legos. It says we have them online, he tells me, but he didn't see any when he came in.

Well, my device says we have them, but our inventory system updates very slowly. I tell him that if he didn't see them in their designated slot, we likely sold out. He kinda argues, but just a little. Then he gives up.

Fast forward to a couple hours later. I get asked to help a guy in toys. As soon as he starts telling me what he wants I'm like 'Oh God, same dude.'

I didn't have my scanning device with me but I explained that if there's none in the proper location, we likely sold out.

Him: I mean, it's a little strange that it says you have it online but you don't have it in store.

Dude, I already explained why that might be.

Him (passive-aggressively): but I mean, if you're not gonna check, it's fine. It's fine!

I gave up and sent him to someone else. He's their problem now.

 

I used to be a phone rep for a cellphone service company. ...and I don't know how obscure I should be about which one, so lemme just cue up dogsong to provide the hint as I talk; I can always be more blatant later.

Sir, you don't get a free cellphone. Yes, I'm sure you've been an awesome customer, but I still cannot give you a free cellphone, you're only six months into the contract you signed. I'm so sorry that Apple came out with a new phone six months into your contract, but I cannot give you a new phone. You can definitely pay for a new phone, if you really want to upgrade, but unless you buy out your current contract, you cannot has a new phone for zero down.

And the lady I got as, like - my last call of the first night I actually worked on the floor. Lady, I don't actually have real reason to doubt that your phone suffered a horrible, tragic accident ten days into when you got it from us. The part where I start to think you're lacking in common sense is where you then did not bring it in to any retailer associated with us, nor did you call us and go "hey, my phone broke, how do I get it fixed". We could've even fixed or replaced it for free at that point, you were still under our thirty-day warranty! Instead, you...went to a different cellphone service company entirely, got a new phone and contract from them, and then proceeded to ignore any and all bills from us on grounds of "I don't have a phone from you any more".

I can see your logic there, but - you never actually cancelled your account with us. You still owe us money. We're still going to send you bills so that you are aware you owe us money, and so that you can get around to, y'know, paying us what you owe. You will have to settle your account with us before you can close it out. No, your phone not being functional doesn't mean your contract got cancelled, it means you should have contacted us to get it fixed; the contract was, you give us money, we give you a working cellphone.

No, juggling the phone you're using to call me with between three different people isn't really going to help. Yes, I need to talk to the person who's actually on the account. No, I can't cancel your account, even if you were fully paid up, that's not my department.

She ended up hanging up, and I made the most detailed notes possible about it, because what the hell.

(I didn't like that job, but I'm probably going to be annoyed forever that they made me quit it because "your voice is too quiet". And it happened about two months from when I would've had enough hours to qualify for EI, too, which was just awesome.)

 

It's been a "good news, bad news" kind of day. Good news: two separate customers apparently thought I was great enough to give me things! The candy bar I used for sustenance, the cash I decided to pay forward and put it in the charity box. (I would have felt kind of bad about keeping it, I honestly did so little.)

Bad news: F U C K I N G M E A T J U I C E. Dude had an appallingly leaky package of pork and there was just no way to handle it cleanly. Hand sanitizer did nothing except thin it enough to form an even coating on my hands. This was almost, but not quite, undetectable after the sanitizer evaporated... except that it would reconstitute into its disgustingly slick state when moistened. Such as by the condensation on every cold item I handled. (Fortunately the supervisor both noticed my increasing distress and agreed that I should definitely go and wash my hands properly.)

 

so how many of my fellow retail bros are gonna have to have thanksgiving brunch due to their schedules?

3 pm to 12 am on thursday, 2 pm to 9 pm on friday, 11:30 to 7 on saturday. WHY. DEAR GOD WHY. WHO NEEDS TO SHOP AT MIDNIGHT ON THANKSGIVING.

 

I have missed multiple & consecutive holidays in their entirety for that kind of scheduling.

 

So a while back, a lady at the drivethru bitched us out because we "never have lemons for [her] tea", told me she wasn't going to come here anymore, and that she wouldn't be going to the one down the street either for the same reason. My reaction was basically "uh, ok?" because I was trying not to say "ok good I dont want to deal with your bitchy ass anyway, @!$& your lemons". Wanted to speak to the manager because I guess she wanted to feel like the loss of her patronage was a Big Deal? Anyway, my manager is exactly the last person to deal with someone else's attitude, especially over something so petty, especially especially when there's a line in the drive thru that's getting held up.

Manager essentially said:

1. We are an extremely small store. Like, literally only a drivethru and walkup window, usually with 2-3 employees working at a time. We do not have the customer base to support stocking large amounts of all items because most of them would go bad before getting used. We stock the most frequently purchased items in amounts that typically sell before the expire and not much else.

2. We get deliveries on Mondays. Our small supply of lemons had gone bad, so we got rid of them. It was the weekend, so the new order hadn't come in yet.

3. Every store of this chain within 30 miles of here is owned by the same person, so. Have fun with that.


Anyway, guess who was in the drive thru today.

 

Customer of the day: Middle-aged lady who approached me by the butter aisle to ask me to read the ingredient lists of a couple of different spreads to discern which had the highest percentage 'real butter' in them. "Someone told me they're not real butter," she explained.

Upon being informed that Kerrygold spread had the highest actual butter content, she thanked me, and left with these parting words - "You can trust the Irish. They have the best horses, and make the best butter."

 

it is very hard to look a client (one of your former teachers, no less!) in the eyes once you find out that the reason his son's computer is so heavily infected with viruses is that the entire pictures gallery is nothing but porn.

 

I can't really top that, since we could never prove anyone was downloading porn (and also it wasn't a call I took), but one of my former coworkers did field a guy who'd gone over his data limit by A Lot. If I'm remembering right - and I'm not entirely sure I am, because the number I'm recalling is just so huge - he used 300 gig of data. I mostly recall my coworker patiently explaining that no, he couldn't get it waived; no, he could not; no, really, at this point it was not plausibly an accident that he'd gone over; no, she couldn't reduce it by any amount; okay, if he wanted to cancel his account, she'd transfer him to the department for that, but they would tell him exactly what she was saying: that he really did have to pay for the overage.

(And this was back before Canada required a cap on how much a data overage could cost - these days, the most a Canadian carrier can charge you (if I'm remembering right, it's been a while) is $50 per gig of overage, with an upper limit of about $200. But this dude had racked up a couple thousand dollars worth of overage, and had notes on his file saying not to waive fuck-all or use any of the discretionary fund each account got; management had gotten fed up with him trying to weasel out of his overages, and they were usually pretty huge overages.)

...I should probably go through my tumblr tags and try to find the vent-rambles I wrote about customers, it'd probably at least refresh my memories of wtf happened beyond "that one lady who went to a yoga retreat and went over her data limit, and tried to pull the lawyer card on me", and "that dude who racked up roaming charges in the Caribbean despite claiming his phone was in a friggin' bank safe when he went there, and there was a fraud investigation open", and all the people I kept having to explain the travel packages to. (...and that one guy who didn't quite get that maybe it'd be better to switch the plan he was using, since the grandfathered one he had wasn't really serving him well any more.)

 

I had a customer come in yesterday who I'm pretty darn sure nearly assaulted me the last time he came in. I've seen him twice before. The second time he came in, I didn't recognize him until he got angry. This time I remembered, and successfully did not have an anxiety attack.

 

@MayaaFeys that gave me flashbacks to my tech support days. It was a pretty big test of my very meager diplomatic skills to explain to an elderly gentleman how he could have possibly gotten all those porn site dialers on his computer... >_>;

 

We have dispensers for cream and sugar. Press button, get sugar. They go at certain intervals. If you ask for "one and a half sugars", it's going to get eyeballed. No one has complained about this to me so far, but I would not be surprised.

 

@Shingleback We do not have dispensers and I honestly have no idea what "one" milk is, but in three years no one has complained.

Now the number of customers who've asked for a semi dry cappuccino and then said it's too wet/ too dry, on the other hand...

 

..How can a coffee be dry?

 

i have no idea but i am imagining someone licking instant coffee powder off a plate

 

A cappuccino is basically a foamy latte. some people like more foam (dry), some people less (wet)*. You can tell by picking up the cup how wet or dry it is, based off the weight. Some people even order a "bone dry" cappuccino, which is nothing but espresso and foam; for that, the cup should feel empty when you lift it.

Bone dry is a bit of a pain to make, but at least all the customers agree on the definition. No two people seem to have the same definition of semi dry.

*I have no idea where the wet/dry terminology comes from, since it's not like foam is dry, but there you go.

 

To be fair, I don't know what "one" cream is either. I think one sugar is a teaspoon?

 

I deeply deeply hate every single customer who has come in today, most especially the ones who while standing in line have told me "I'm so sorry you have to work today!"

Like buddy, pal, friend, only one of us has voluntarily decided to spend their Thanksgiving at Jc Penney, and it ain't me

 

Why would you keep what is essentially a 2 gallon thermos full of hot chocolate for 5 days and not even rinse it out before returning it?

Spoiler: Gross gross gross

I had the pleasure of emptying it out, and there was this curdled mass almost a foot long, half as wide, and probably two or three inches thick floating in one. It looked like if ricotta and paneer had a disgusting baby together.