Half of the people you know are below average.

[tanamiya.livejournal.com]

Yes, sir. I have verified a problem with your disk drive. No, sir, I won't be giving you a new laptop. Yes, sir. I'm aware that HP has released a service advisory on the motherboards of this particular model. No, sir, a service advisory is not a recall, and does not grant you a new laptop. Yes, sir, your extended warranty will cover this repair. No, sir, the extended warranty doesn't come in to play if you've had to bring in your computer for software problems -- I loaded VLC on your computer, for free, because the alternative was to erase everything and charge you money for that. No, sir, that still wouldn't count as a major hardware repair, nor would it qualify you for a new laptop.

Yes, sir, it is a sound decision to never shop with us again, and shove your laptop up our manager's behind if our dedicated laptop repair team does not fix your issue.

As an aside: why would threatening to never shop with us again make me want to help you more? You've declared your intent, and I'm not going to (and certainly not authorized) to give you a brand new laptop right after saying so. If anything, I'm less inclined to help you, because I know you're either not going to return for more business, or you're a lying sack grasping for straws to try and make me change my mind. Which I'm not authorized to do anyway.

I drown my sorrows in Dr. Pepper. The Doctor knows how to make everything bad go away.

Comments

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I think it's because people in general have the impression that whining either gets positive results or a smack in the face, and you can't slap them over the phone.

If only power-over-ethernet could be upgraded to taser-over-IP.

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

(http://s29.photobucket.com/albums/c264/Fixerkitty/?action=view&current=prayer.gif)

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

I love that image. :D I frequently wish for that or taser over IP abilities.

[jimpossible84.livejournal.com]

I always remember how "Popeye" could send a "fist" thru a telephone wire. that's the only show where I've seen a similar capability - lol!

1 hour over my shift, just wanting to go home...

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

Some lady came in complaining that the phone she bought had the wrong power cord. Common problem.

I eyeballed it, and got the right one and gave it to her, and out of nowhere, she threatens my life for no reason.

I threw the phone in her face.

She left, scared and crying.

The manager and staff applauded me.

Best day ever.

Re: 1 hour over my shift, just wanting to go home...

[tanamiya.livejournal.com]

...WTF. O_o

Re: 1 hour over my shift, just wanting to go home...

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

Woah. I applaud you as well.

Re: 1 hour over my shift, just wanting to go home...

[melstav]

WTF?

I want to know how "I bought this XXXX, and discovered that it was packaged with the wrong power cord" ends up being "a common problem."

[onyxrising.livejournal.com]

A highlighted copy of the warranty at my desk works wonders with those. I tell them that it's a repair-based warranty, not replacement based. If they don't get it, I read them the part of the warranty. It's the fastest way that I've found to shut them up.

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

Because once upon a time "The Customer Is Always Right", even when they weren't, so the threat of going somewhere else is supposed to scare you (the service provider, retailer, etc.) into working that much harder to keep them as customers.

Yeah. *eyeroll*

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

I drown my sorrows in Dr. Pepper. The Doctor knows how to make everything bad go away.

How much vodka do you have to add to the Doctor?

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I thought the answer was to gently wave a can of Dr. Pepper in the general direction of the vodka. You don't want to accidentally spill any.

[major-error.livejournal.com]

nah, just upgrade to the Flaming Dr. Pepper. Enough of them make everything "go away" ;)

In a mug of cheap beer (like Bud Light) drop a shot of Amaretto, topped w/ 151 (on fire). Chug.
Repeat until outlook on life improves, or becomes irrelevant.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

I think for a lot of people who still live in the old pre-computer culture, the threat to "take all my business elsewhere" (a corollary of "the customer is always right") is perceived as the "nuclear option" of sales negotiation, and in their eyes, it's supposed to trigger a veritable firestorm of obsequious obedience to their every whim, with white gloves, red carpet, and "yes sir" to every demand. Couple that with endemic selfishness and narcissism, and you can probably imagine the result.

I'm not sure if it's the inevitable abuse of that tactic or the fact that people apply a manipulation tactic invented in the 1950's world of "widgets" to a product of considerably greater complexity. But it gets my back up every time I hear it, because to me, it's almost always an adult form of temper tantrum calculated to blackmail me into giving the person everything but the keys to the company simply because they want it and refuse to accept anything other than immediate gratification ..

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

What's worse is having management who respond to it as if it's still valid, because they're also stuck in the fifties.

"We must kowtow to the customer or they might GO ELSEWHERE!"

"Boss, they regularly cost us more in time and support calls than we ever make off them. They're simply not profitable. Terminate our relationship with them and our finances will actually look better. Not to mention that morale will rise and we'll have more time to spend tending to actual profitable clients."

"NOOOO DEY R TEH CUSTOMERRRRRRR"

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

Great jumping jellybeans, yes, THIS!!

Internet support was absolutely INFESTED with managers who thought this way (even in the admittedly rare cases where said managers had enough properly firing synapses to know better). Many a shot of SoCo was had while attempting to ken who was the bigger fool: the customer for pulling his/her crap; the manager for falling for aforementioned crap; or me for putting up with it.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Working in corporate support, we once started to get our inbox near-flooded with stupid pissant requests from this one employee who obviously considered themselves hot stuff. To give you an idea of how many emails they were sending, we supported 25,000 users and they were personally responsible for fully 1/4 of our incoming emails.

In the end, the techs got tired of telling this person to piss off, and complained to the maanger. Unfortunately, the manager didn't tell the yappy employee's own boss to gag their little darling, but instead assigned one of our sub-managers to handle everything coming from this person.

The techs didn't mind too much, as it meant not having to deal with the emails, but there were some grumbles about setting a bad example.


I think part of the "customer is always right" aspect comes from the sales side of things. It's a lot easier to promise the world when you're not the person who is going to have to actually deliver it.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

And don't get me started about sales guys who tell the customer exactly what they want to hear, in order to make the sale and cash in the commission, and end up making promises no vendor on earth could live up to. And leave it up to us to clean up the mess when, unsurprisingly, the promise turns out to have been pure BS to close the sale.

(And let's not speak of custom contracts where someone thought it was a bright idea to let the customer basically make up their own terms of service completely counter to what anyone else would consider SOP.)

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It doesn't help that the employees responsible for delivering the service are not usually in the mindset of telling the employer "Sorry, you haven't provided us with the capability to fulfill this request. Either upgrade the plant/office/workforce or have a word with your sales force about promising things you can't deliver."

There really does need to be some process in place so that it's not automatically the back office's fault when the front office lies about the company's capabilities.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

As well as a sufficiently PHB-free level of management to realize that squawking from tech support about unreasonable promises from the sales folks isn't just background noise. It helps to have a significant portion of the management population actually *promoted* from within tech support so they a) have a clue about this problem and b) have actual power to deal with it. ;)

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

I drown my sorrows in Dr. Pepper. The Doctor knows how to make everything bad go away.

By the way, meant to mention this earlier -- my tonic of choice these days:



No HFCS, tastes like the DP I grew up with, and is generally cooler than cool. (If only it didn't come in those damn 8 oz bottles..)