O.o

[toxico.livejournal.com]

We support a number of different products, one being a hardware appliance for the scanning of various incoming/outgoing traffic. The hardware for slightly older models can every so often be acquired on eBay . To obtain support, a valid software contract must be in place unless it's a hardware failure problem; if you don't have a hardware contract, you're SOL at this point if the power supply blows, hard drive goes bad, etc. Generally this isn't a major deal, as 99% of people calling for this product have valid contracts for both and are usually fairly bright and willing to follow advice and directions, which is actually quite nice.

A ...rather irate woman has been calling here for the past few days. She bought her appliance on eBay and tried to purchase a software contract for it, which is perfectly fine. As mentioned earlier, though, if something's wrong with the actual box itself we can't help her.

We have tried to help her on multiple occasions, with things beyond our scope and things we shouldn't help her with due to lack of support. She refuses to cooperate in any way. Literally.

It took three days for her to figure out how to burn a CD with a .iso image. Three. Fucking. Days. The main problem? She didn't have a CD-RW capable drive. And we kept telling her that too. For all we know she was trying to burn the image on the back of a Hall & Oates CD or something. And she's trying to image and configure a gateway appliance?

She eventually became abusive and refused to give us information at all. We have a piece of information we ask for at the beginning of the call; she began refusing this, stating "Name's S****** M*****, you know who I am and you can look it up."

Her foul demeanor escalated over a few days so quickly that her software contract was cancelled and her money refunded. She has been asked on a conference call - with every supervisor over our entire department, a sales rep and a customer service supervisor present - to NOT call for support and that we will NOT do business with her.

Through the luck of the draw, I've not had to speak to her as of yet. She's got one guy's direct number, whose cube happens to be directly across from me. We've been instructed to contact a manager immediately should she call back or attempt to contact us by any means. I came in today just in time to listen to two of the three messages on his voice mail from this woman.

If I had any means of obtaining these messages, I assure you they'd be gold. She has left messages for this guy saying things such as "You'd better call me back, you chickenshit mother fucker" and "I'm going to kick you're fucking ass and you won't have a job." Even emailed him with "Answer your phone you lowlife!" She has no problem saying the same things to management and has physically threatened several employees here. She claims to own "seven corporations" and has "taken down General Motors and HP" and is now "going to take us down" as well.

I wish I could accurately portray this to you all; unfortunately, my description just can't capture it well enough. If there is any way I can get a transcript of these voice mails or even a copy of them, you'd better believe I'm sharing.

Supposedly her husband is the company owner and president. They're in the same state as us. ROAD TRIP.

(x-posted to my own journal, and edited to remove link to company's website)

[another edit: The Senior VP of Tech Support and Customer Service just came and had a hearty laugh at the VMs.]