And hurry, they’re going fast!
I’ve worked Tech support (final tier) and have dealt with miserable support as a consumer.
1: If its your companies fuckup, it’s your companies job to make it right, the way it was. Forcing the customer to jump through any bureaucratic hoops to fix something the company did wrong is unacceptable. I’ve worked for some very big companies, and some very small ones, and I’ve yet to see one where there isn’t someone high enough on the food chain that they cant reset everything to appear to be the same before the screwup. No time machine required.
If an account was closed by mistake, a new one can be opened with all the same settings etc.
2: whenever a company in this situation starts trying to make me play by their rules, and jump through their hoops I ask for a supervisor. I start off polite, get mean when I’m mistreated and go back to polite as needed. I want the person on the other end of the line to want to get me back to nice mode. it usually works.
3: I never use abusive language or threaten to sue. No matter how much i want to.
If the company screwed up and cancelled the wrong plan, a way should have been found to reverse that rather than try and flog a new plan.
It doesn’t excuse the ranting, but the customer was correct in wanting your company to correct the problem.
I don’t remember the exact threads, but I do remember Chimera talking about “stupid customers” before, and every example that he gives seems to illustrate what a jerk he is. This one is no different. His company screwed up, maybe he couldn’t cancel the refund but trying to sell a brand new plan rather than restoring the old one in unacceptable. Although there’s no excuse for being rude to front-line support, if Chimera has made it clear that he’s the top of the pyaramid, and she won’t be getting any further she is 100% in the right to be angry, and show her anger to Chimera.
I’m wondering if this could have been handled differently.
Could you have done the new plan without telling her that you were doing a new plan?
Something like 'Okay, I’m putting this plan back in place, but because you’ve already had a refund, it’ll debit your card again. The system will probably send you out some new documentation, but it’s just the same as the documentation you originally recieved.
Most customers don’t care about how your systems work or what you need to do to fix things. They just want them fixed.
The worst of these, in my experience, are medical billing agencies. Generally, when they say something can’t be changed, it usually really means “I can’t figure out how to do that with the software I have in front of me.” An example is getting a warning letter with threat to sue because my payment of -$20 has not been received. Yep, that’s right, they owed me a $20 credit, but it kept coming up in their software as a debt and automatically generated a warning letter.
I spent about a year dealing with a medical problem that required dozens of doctor visits, and wish I had a nickel for every time I heard, “But that’s what the computer says!”
You sound like a real peach.
“I started acting like a child. In my defense, the agent ADMITTED that I only acted like a child and not a bully.”
Use it wisely. 
Teach Your Children Well.
BTW- I think going ballistic at some automated voice interpretation system doesn’t count.
Chimera did you leave out any important info?
Does this new plan you need to sell her cost more?
Does it extend the contract further than the one that was canceled?
Will she have to spend any of her time setting up a new plan?
Will she have to visit a retail store to buy the new plan?
You gave us a story on how horrible the customer was to you but what exactly is the amount of inconvenience or extra cost that was placed on the customer by your company’s error.
If its minimal I can sympathize with your cause.
If it’s substantial then I don’t understand why you find it remarkable that this person reacted negatively.
I know if some company screwed up my transaction and told me that their business practices didn’t allow them to fix it properly and that I should just deal with it… I would have a very hard time being pleasant.
No offense, and there is no reason to scream at the support folks, but any response along the lines of “our company fucked it up, and you have to do thus-and-so as a result” is unacceptable.
The only acceptable response is “My apologies for the screw-up. I will fix it by COB today, and it won’t cost you anything. Again, my apologies.” Customers do not care what your bureaucratic procedures are, nor should they.
I don’t care how far up the food chain you are, telling me this -
is not gonna fly.
Regards,
Shodan
Let’s put it this way.
It was an extended warranty.
It was already credited back to her credit card.
At that point, we, like any other company, are unable to call the credit card company one week later and say “this was a mistake, undo it.” Just doesn’t work that way. All we can do is say “Well, you got your money back on it and the refund process is complete. We can, however, sell you another extended warranty.”
No, what you can do is take the amount you refunded back, and sell her a warranty to October 2010*, rather than trying to charge the full amount up to March 2012* and do it without giving her any more hassle than “so, we just need to take your debit card details again…”
- or whenever.
Not acceptable.
The only acceptable answer, as I said, is an apology and a promise to fix the problem at no cost or effort on the customer’s part.
Your company will have to eat the loss.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, if she got a FULL refund on the original warranty, and they are going to sell her a new warranty at the same price that is just as long, but starts TODAY, she ended up with some time period of having a free warranty and this snafu is a net gain to her.
I can see you’d be a joy to work with.
I have no options to do what you suggest. I can hand it off to the specific area that handles those agreements, and let them deal with it, but I would bet money they’ll say exactly what I said.
Again, it being “unacceptable” to you doesn’t make miracles happen.
Okay, let’s put it this way: Your company screwed up. Your customer did not. Good customer service would require that you fix it.
I do understand that, having credited her money back, you might have to take it again. But if there were two of them, and the wrong one was canceled, maybe the balance could have been transferred to the correct account?
Or, you know, if you didn’t have the authority to fix it, you could choose to transfer her to someone who did have the authority. You did say you have the choice. Not having done that kind of makes you sound petty, throwing your power around.
Which is not to say you have to take abuse, but it sounds like you only got the abuse after you basically told the customer you couldn’t help and you weren’t going to transfer her to someone who could.
Interesting perspectives here.
I only have one question: what kind of surname is ‘Selfimportant’?
No matter how many times I see it explained, and how it can benefit me in the long run, I still bristle at the word “sell” here. You screwed up, you can’t fix it, and now you want to sell me more of the same? The very word has baggage around it.
It reminds me of some disputes I’ve had with the phone company. They’d screw something up, and while the customer service person was waiting for an answer from her supervisor, she ask if she could interest me in some of their other services. That takes a hell of a lot of nerve.
It’s very common in Doperlandia.