Customers who make extremely unreasonable requests

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by this thread.

I already posted about how a customer arrived at the bank where I was a teller fifteen minutes late and insisted that I defeat the vault security so that she could make a five dollar withdrawel.

What stories do you have about customers expecting the unreasonable?

Years ago I was waiting in line at the DMV. The very young man in front of me was asking the clerk to change the birthdate on his driver’s license to make him look over 21. She, naturally, refused. He got totally indignant. “Come on, I’ll slip you a twenty!”

Yeah, that would be worth her while.

2

I do Mac support.

I’ve seen plenty of customers have USER ERRORS and a severe inability to use a computer. Often very frequent callers to our help line, who are unable to do basic commands and clicking on things that we tell them to do over the phone (Translation: Too Stupid To Own A Computer).

Then claim that there is something physically wrong with their computer and demand a new one.

No such luck.

3

In our CVICU, we had a patient with a very large, involved, and demanding family for several days. Each nurse in the unit typically has two patients at a time, three if staffing is low. The day that I took care of that patient, I had three patients total and was very, very busy.

Eventually the patient was improving and was able to transfer to a general medical floor, where each nurse typically has six to seven patients at a time.

Within a couple of days, word got back to us that the patient’s family had begun demanding that the medical floor staff their nurses at a 2:1 patient ratio. Yeah, they didn’t get that.

4

I know it’s based on a more important request than this one, but that Wachovia ad bugs me, where the parents get their rep to come in from home at night because they realize their kid’s passport is in the safe deposit box. Yeah, great customer service but it’ll never teach the family a lesson!! :wink:

5

I worked in a lingerie store and women would come in wanting a “pretty” bra rather than a supportive bra. One woman wore a 38DD and wanted a strapless bra with no underwires, because those were uncomfortable.
Imagine it. DD.
Strapless + no underwire = sag unless you live on a planet without gravity. You may as well not wear a bra.
We told her we didn’t have any like that. She was sure Macy’s had them. My manager told her she should go there!

6

Waaaaay back in 80s I worked at a foreign exchange booth located in a downtown Toronto hotel; the bulk of my customers were hotel guests exchanging their U.S. cash/traveller’s cheques for Canadian currency.

One customer presented a small stack of $100 U.S. traveller’s cheques and though he did present a driver’s license as ID, the photo on it didn’t look a thing like him and the signature he gave didn’t match what was on the cheques, so I told him I wouldn’t take them. “Why not?” he countered. “It’s not like you don’t have insurance!”

“Yeah,” I thought to myself as he stomped off, “that could be our new company slogan: Stolen traveller’s cheques gratefully accepted!”

7

Y’know what’s worse than customers making unreasonable requests? Bosses who say “OK” to whatever the customer wants and then assume the workers will somehow miraculously be able to accomplish it. :frowning:

8

I work in a convenience store. We sell money orders and alot of locals use them to pay their bills, including rent. We sell alot at the end of month. So few months ago one of the local [del]slum[/del]landlords came in to the store with about three thousand dollars worth of money orders from his tenants. To his credit all the money orders were from our store. He wanted us to cash them. :eek: All of them. He flipped out when I told him that wasn’t possible. We don’t cash money orders (though we sometimes let a regular cash a small one from our store). We’re not allowed to keep more that $100 in the till, let alone 3 grand. Nor can we open the safe to make change. Then he started insisting that we “save up” and he’d come back later that evening. I told him to go to a bank. :smack: He started going on about how the banks were closed (did I mention this was Saturday afternoon), how I was being smart, how we have to cash our own money orders, etc. Finally he left, but on his way out he said he was going to have me fired and report us (to who?). He did file a complaint with corporate. Our district manager thought it was hilarious. I do feel bad for some of our regulars who’ve since told me that he won’t accept money orders from us for their rent anymore (not sure if that’s legal).

9

I used to work for a company that manufactured in Japan and then shipped parts by boat to the US. Twice a week, they would load up 6-12 shipping containers full of parts, put them on a container ship, and ship them across the Pacific. Then the containers were unloaded in the West Coast, passed through customs, and shipped on a train to Chicago.

One customer didn’t want to wait for the ship to cross the ocean. He actually asked me if we could get a customs officer on a helicopter, fly them out to the ship, open up the container with his parts in it, and bring back his 2 foot cubed box of parts, so he could get them a week earlier.

Right.

10

Not a patch to most of these stories, but here’s mind:

11

“Can you make the intermissions at the plays longer. Sometimes I have trouble finishing my drink in time.”

Yes… we’ll make everyone else wait an extra 10 minutes so you can continue to nurse your cappuccino.

12

“Give me (item) for (price lower than wholesale) or I’ll walk out of here.”

13

At my previous place of employment, I worked with wireless phone accounts. On two occasions I had customers who, through a bizarre series of loopholes and coincidences, had accounts which existed in all of the systems necessary to make the phone work but did not exist in the billing system.

Yep. You go in, you sign up, you activate your phone, it works, and you never ever get a bill. The service is free because the billing systems don’t ever see it happening.

The first customer called wondering where her bills were. I dug into the system, saw none were issued, went to look for the account in the billing system, found no record, explained what had happened and advised her that I was creating the record in the billing system, so starting on (date) she would begin to be charged for the service. She asked about paying for the previous service, and I told her that as she’d been with us for only three months and it was our error we’d just eat the loss and start billing her when we got it right. Keep in mind, we had no usage detail but we could have billed at least three months of her basic monthly service charge.

The second customer came to me when I had advanced enough in the company that I was the “your boss” that angry people wanted to talk to. The second customer wanted to talk to me, because he was angry.

He was angry because he couldn’t get a free phone. The reason he couldn’t get a free phone was that he’d just gotten a free phone 4 months ago. (We’d generally offer you a free basic phone every two years, to lock you back into a contract.) I advised that the agent was correct, he would not be able to get a free phone, because of when he got the last one.

He exploded, and the general drift of what he was screaming was that he was such a good customer we needed to give him a free phone or else he would leave and go to another company.

Being the conscientious guy I am, I pulled up his last few bills to see how good a customer he was.

He had no bills, didn’t exist in the billing system, and had had free service for the past three years.

Apparently, we owed him a phone, because he’d… used our system and not paid us, so… I can’t even imagine the thought process, or how stupid you’d have to be to have a setup like that and risk bringing it to management attention.

I referred his account to my boss, as he asked me to.

He shouldn’t have asked me to do that.

14

I am a lawyer. Back in ancient times when we used dusty old law books with numerous supplements rather than computers to do legal research, there once was a fellow who walked in to my suburban office and asked to use our law library. “I don’t want to hire you - even though we advertise that the 30 minute initial consult is free - I just want to use your books. Why won’t you let me do that?” I politely told him where the public library was.

15

I’ve heard this one many times: “My computer should last forever. Your company should support their product forever. Therefore I demand that you repair my 5+ year old computer. I don’t care what the warranty is. Your company should stand behind it’s product.”

(Waaaaaaaahhhh! You’re such a meanie! Your company sucks! It’s not right that you won’t stand behind your equipment and replace the entire unit five years after I bought it! And I want a NEW one too! Waaaaaaaahhhh!)

Hell, one person tried to pull this with a computer manufactured in 2000.
Also frequently heard in one variation or another: “I don’t care that this is a piece of hardware/software that I bought from a flea market/back alley in Hong Kong/some guy off the street. I’m using it with YOUR computer and therefore I demand that YOU support this device/program and help me figure out how to use it. I demand that you magically repair it over the phone when it goes bad. I demand you know every detail of it’s operation! NOW NOW NOW!!! You won’t? I DEMAND TO SPEAK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR!!!”
And from the terminally stupid: “pfftt I’m not going to press any damned buttons on my computer. You’re going to have to fix this right now (over the phone) without my help. It’s your problem, not mine.”
Hell, one time I had a retired military officer (female) who claimed to have run a computer department call me up and scream at me about how she wanted me to correct some problems with her military retirement accounts. When I pointed out that this had nothing to do with tech support for her computer and would not only violate my company’s policies but very probably Federal Law, she responded by attempting to intimidate and badger me into doing it, very probably like she used to do to the soldiers who were unfortunate enough to work for her sorry ass.

I mean seriously, how big a self-important pompous ASS do you have to be to call up your computer’s tech support line and attempt to ORDER the tech to get into your FEDERAL GOVERNMENT accounts to resolve the issues you’re too goddamned stupid to figure out for yourself???

16

Why couldn’t you overnight his parts from your factory in Japan if they ship that frequently and it was just a 2 foot cube box? Were the parts in the container customized for him?

17

One time during my days as a postman a customer informed me that her sister had sent her a very important letter.

This was told to me on a Saturday, I informed her that she would more tnan likely get her letter the following Monday as we didn’t work Sundays.

She wanted to know if I could go to work on the Sunday and find her letter, I told her that:

A. I don’t have keys to the place
B. Even if I had the keys the odds of my finding her letter among the many 1000s awaiting delivery on Monday, were practically zero.

Her reply, “It’s in a pink envelope, you couldn’t miss it and I’ll give you £5 for yourself”.

A whole fiver, wow

18

I worked in Customer Relations for an International tour company.

One of my favorites was from someone who went on a vacation to Cancun, Mexico and was SURPRISED to find that people from other countries were staying at their hotel as well.

The place was ‘over run’ with French people on holiday and our company should advise its clients that foreigners might be staying at the hotel at the same time.
Uh huh.

19

I was recently on a flight from Paris to JFK. Across the aisle from me were a 40-ish woman and her mother. The woman looked like Kirstie Alley at her fattest. She never stopped talking loudly, throughout the entire flight, even reading an entire newspaper to her mother. She also never stopped eating . . . not just the meals we all ate, but also the large bag of food she brought with her. The area around her was constantly littered with newspapers, magazines, food wrappers, candy wrappers, discarded food, etc. The poor flight attendants were kept busy bringing her trash bags and keeping the aisle cleared. But in spite of their efforts the area looked like a pigpen.

As we were getting ready to depart the plane, I overheard her say, “Look at this mess. Someone should report the flight attendants.”

20

Back when I was waiting tables, I had a guy throw a total hissy fit and demand a manager because I brought his daughter exactly what she ordered and then couldn’t magic up what she’d actually wanted in 45 seconds. I was working at Cracker Barrel at the time, and it was the Sunday morning beat-the-church-crowd rush when they came in. The teenage girl in the group ordered the most basic breakfast, the one that’s just eggs with the grits/gravy/biscuits setup, and that’s what I brought her. And that’s when the rot set in.

She had apparently wanted bacon and thought she was ordering a breakfast that came with it. Mind you, none of the breakfasts on that menu come with bacon. Some of them come with your choice of either bacon or sausage, but those all require the word “bacon” to at some point cross your lips when ordering. But it never did. She didn’t mention bacon when ordering, she didn’t ask me why I wasn’t asking which meat she wanted like I had everyone else at the table, nothing. But it’s not that big a deal to put in a rush order for some bacon and change the receipt in the computer.

It was, however, a big deal for her to wait for that rush order to cook. The dad was pissed at the delay, and when I told him that the only possible way for me to get him the bacon right now was to bring it out half-cooked and that just wasn’t going to happen, he progressed to livid. Called me all kinds of names and demanded to see the manager. You should have seen his face when the manager listened to his complaint and then asked “Did the young lady order any bacon?”

At that same job, I had a woman throw a fit demanding that I take the “Food total” off her bill. The food total is just a subtotal to separate your dining room purchases from any merchandise you’ve gotten in the gift shop. That’s all it is, and taking it off would require completely re-doing the entire bill template in the computers. That, evidently, is what she desired me to do. After all, she hadn’t had any food. All she had was a cobbler.