Liar, liar

[klytus.livejournal.com]

So I get a call from a lady who is having some trouble changing something in her (insert name of proprietary desktop daily planner program here). There is one record she is totally unable to change and wants to know what to do in order to fix it. The record shows no start date or end date for a promotion and wants to put dates in for those values. In and of itself, not a big issue, we get calls for this all the time.

I ask her more about this record. It is for a promotion that ran in December 2003. That is not a typo folks – 2003. I try to explain to her that changing records that old are not possible. She insists that it is, as she was able to make the very same changes in a record in her (insert name of proprietary desktop daily planner program here) for a promotion that ran in August 2003. So I go online to look up the copies of these records of hers on the corporate file servers. It turns out the oldest records for the unit in question don’t go back that far.

Now I ask you… whywhyWHY do the clients bother lying to us? Do they somehow imagine that if they get someone to believe a lie that all of reality will bend like light near a black hole and make the impossible thing they want to have happen true? Do they think we lack the capacity and resources to punch a few keys and do fact checking?

To be fair, as I am the new guy, so I did consult with my fellow analysts about this to be sure I wasn't mistaken about calling bull$hit on this... but they all agreed with my assessment of the situation.

The icing on the cake… the lady did admit that the promotion in question never ran, and she wasn't trying to do anything like have someone back-paid for it. Which make me wonder: why in the bloody-blue-blazes is she trying to change an accurate record?

Comments

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

WHY do the clients bother lying to us? Do they somehow imagine that if they get someone to believe a lie that all of reality will bend like light near a black hole and make the impossible thing they want to have happen true?

I DON'T KNOW!! But by god it drives me insane. It's like going to the doctor because you've broken your leg and telling him that it's your arm. Why lie to someone whose JOB it is to help you?

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

whywhyWHY do the clients bother lying to us?

It's hard for anyone to imagine the thought processes and capabilities of a more intelligent person. Some people are smart enough to know this, some aren't and think they can get away with BS they themselves would fall for.

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

Trouble is you have to be able to prove they are lying in order to call them on it. Most will even try to call you on calling their bluff.

Now for us this usually means someone lying about what happened to their computer to get us to service it, when we have it in the call log that they called in for an unsupported problem. We actually allow them to send their systems in in this case and note in the repair facility notes that customer had called in for this unsupported issue that previous day. They then get told they have to pay for the repair or the non-repair service fee ($129) to get their system back if the issue they stated to us wasn't the problem. Sometimes they'll get notified of this four weeks after they sent it in depending on the repair depot's backlog. Sure it's not good customer service... but it's a proper customer screwing that they deserved for trying to bullshit us.