Stupid Customer Tricks
Nov. 13th, 2002 05:29 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
teriwyn.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecovery( crossposted to the customers_suck community, sorry if you're seeing this twice. )
The stupidity of this guy really amazed me today. He wasn't so much a sucky customer as he was stupid. Our transaction went something like this:
Stupid Customer (SC) called in and reached me. He expressed that his modem had stopped working, and described the lights on the face of it. The lights he described indicated a modem that was not in our system or had been disabled. Bringing up the account, there was apparently no modem there at all. Now, with cable modem systems, a modem has to be in inventory to be placed on an account, and it must be on an account to be activated. That's just the way our system works. (Cable Data, for anyone who's familiar.) So I had him give me the serial number from, what I was to assume was his modem. He read it off. I added it again. Or at least I tried.
The modem could not be placed to on the caller's account, and a warehouse error code came back. I checked the error code -- it meant the modem was marked as "arrived at warehouse bad" and couldn't be assigned. Only the warehouse can change this. Up until this point, I'm thinking we've made some terrible mistake, because that modem is in his possession and working, so I place a call to his local warehouse to investigate.
In the past, dealing with local warehouses and dispatchers has been tedious at best, so I will add here I was pleasantly surprised with the help I got. The Warehouse Dude (WD) tells me what I already know ... the modem is marked as bad, and was indicated that it had been returned. WG sounds surprised that I'm telling him the customer apparently has this modem in his possession, and asks me to go ask SC what the model of modem is.
I go back to SC, and I tell him that, due to a problem with his modem's information in our system, the Warehouse thinks this modem has been returned bad, and tell him I need the model number. What I wasn't prepared for was the explanation SC launched into:
SC: Oh, I never knew what you guys did with the serial numbers was so important, blah blah ... I bought my own modem and then returned it to you.
I pause for a minute to make sure we're clear... He went to some retailer, bought a modem, then gave it to My Company so we could take the rental fee off his modem. At this point, I'm thinking he returned his modem by accident, since it was the exact same make and model number as the modem he rented from us. How lucky, he has the Serial number of the modem that he bought, as well. I took that from him, and went back to Warehouse Dude to relay the new information the customer has so conveniently volunteered.
Warehouse Dude asks me to hang on a minute, then comes back and says he has the customer's modem. And then he tells me what the customer's done to it to cause such a fuss. The customer peeled off the sticker with the Serial number and MAC address information from the modem he rents from us, and put it on the modem he was returning. Meaning, customer keeps the rental modem and returns the new modem that he purchased. It occurs to me that he probably did this because the modem he purchased didn't work when he took it out of the box. (By design, because he never gave us the Serial number and MAC address, so we never activated it or knew to activate it.) So this twerp thinks that he's going to stick us with the faulty modem and get rid of his modem rental fee.
Warehouse Dude and I laugh about this, then fume over the fact that the SC has voided the warranties on both of these modems by tampering with that sticker. We come to the conclusion that the customer had no idea that when he returned a modem that had serial number XXXXXX printed on it, we would then deactivate serial number XXXXXX. Furthermore, when this modem, with serial number XXXXXX gets back to the warehouse for testing, it doesn't work. Because it's really got serial number YYYYYY and serial number YYYYYY has never been activated.
I would have liked to have gone back to SC and asked him what the hell he was thinking when he did this ... if he was trying to scam us or what. I'm sure he was, in retrospect. I would have also liked to be able to tell him that, from voiding the warranties, he was going to have to pay retail for the modem he was renting from us and just have a couple of paperweights with pretty blinking lights. Couldn't do that either, though. In the end, SC had to go down to the warehouse himself and let Warehouse Dude take care of the problem with the stickers.
He thought he was real slick, with his little scam. Maybe he should've called us about the new modem from the start.
The stupidity of this guy really amazed me today. He wasn't so much a sucky customer as he was stupid. Our transaction went something like this:
Stupid Customer (SC) called in and reached me. He expressed that his modem had stopped working, and described the lights on the face of it. The lights he described indicated a modem that was not in our system or had been disabled. Bringing up the account, there was apparently no modem there at all. Now, with cable modem systems, a modem has to be in inventory to be placed on an account, and it must be on an account to be activated. That's just the way our system works. (Cable Data, for anyone who's familiar.) So I had him give me the serial number from, what I was to assume was his modem. He read it off. I added it again. Or at least I tried.
The modem could not be placed to on the caller's account, and a warehouse error code came back. I checked the error code -- it meant the modem was marked as "arrived at warehouse bad" and couldn't be assigned. Only the warehouse can change this. Up until this point, I'm thinking we've made some terrible mistake, because that modem is in his possession and working, so I place a call to his local warehouse to investigate.
In the past, dealing with local warehouses and dispatchers has been tedious at best, so I will add here I was pleasantly surprised with the help I got. The Warehouse Dude (WD) tells me what I already know ... the modem is marked as bad, and was indicated that it had been returned. WG sounds surprised that I'm telling him the customer apparently has this modem in his possession, and asks me to go ask SC what the model of modem is.
I go back to SC, and I tell him that, due to a problem with his modem's information in our system, the Warehouse thinks this modem has been returned bad, and tell him I need the model number. What I wasn't prepared for was the explanation SC launched into:
SC: Oh, I never knew what you guys did with the serial numbers was so important, blah blah ... I bought my own modem and then returned it to you.
I pause for a minute to make sure we're clear... He went to some retailer, bought a modem, then gave it to My Company so we could take the rental fee off his modem. At this point, I'm thinking he returned his modem by accident, since it was the exact same make and model number as the modem he rented from us. How lucky, he has the Serial number of the modem that he bought, as well. I took that from him, and went back to Warehouse Dude to relay the new information the customer has so conveniently volunteered.
Warehouse Dude asks me to hang on a minute, then comes back and says he has the customer's modem. And then he tells me what the customer's done to it to cause such a fuss. The customer peeled off the sticker with the Serial number and MAC address information from the modem he rents from us, and put it on the modem he was returning. Meaning, customer keeps the rental modem and returns the new modem that he purchased. It occurs to me that he probably did this because the modem he purchased didn't work when he took it out of the box. (By design, because he never gave us the Serial number and MAC address, so we never activated it or knew to activate it.) So this twerp thinks that he's going to stick us with the faulty modem and get rid of his modem rental fee.
Warehouse Dude and I laugh about this, then fume over the fact that the SC has voided the warranties on both of these modems by tampering with that sticker. We come to the conclusion that the customer had no idea that when he returned a modem that had serial number XXXXXX printed on it, we would then deactivate serial number XXXXXX. Furthermore, when this modem, with serial number XXXXXX gets back to the warehouse for testing, it doesn't work. Because it's really got serial number YYYYYY and serial number YYYYYY has never been activated.
I would have liked to have gone back to SC and asked him what the hell he was thinking when he did this ... if he was trying to scam us or what. I'm sure he was, in retrospect. I would have also liked to be able to tell him that, from voiding the warranties, he was going to have to pay retail for the modem he was renting from us and just have a couple of paperweights with pretty blinking lights. Couldn't do that either, though. In the end, SC had to go down to the warehouse himself and let Warehouse Dude take care of the problem with the stickers.
He thought he was real slick, with his little scam. Maybe he should've called us about the new modem from the start.
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no subject
Date: 2002-11-13 05:17 pm (UTC)I love it.
I get shit like that all the time with the company I work for.
*shakes head*
and being a supervisor.... they're actually quite angry about the stupid switches they pulled.
:)
Cable data is a pain in the ass, though.... I didn't know many companies were still using it... who do you work for?
no subject
Date: 2002-11-16 02:15 pm (UTC)I can't exactly post who I work for here, simply because my employer has corporate looking for junk like this. Call me paranoid, but I used to post on a broadband helping website (www.dslreports.com) until they told me I couldn't any more. They're really Nazi-like about it, even if I do it on my own time. But please, feel free to email me at the address listed on my profile (which does not reflect my current employer), and I'll be happy to answer you privately.
Here's a clue: They just merged with another behemoth of a broadband company...
By the way -- great icon!
no subject
Date: 2002-11-24 11:01 pm (UTC)