Odd Customers

[CountryBoy]

Working as a customer service rep for a large cell phone company I was introduced to many strange individuals. I am imagine in hosting I'll meet a few more.

One of my favorites was the man who called to complain about voicemail being available on his account. He had had it removed because he thought the CIA was monitoring his calls through that system. We had restored his voicemail during routine system maintenance because it defaults onto the account. He was convinced it was an evil plot. He told me a good portion of his life story before I managed to get rid of him.

 

[Hostlayer]

Hah, thats a good one

 

[chatterbox]

Too funny

You run into that in any business that involves customer service. I'd much rather deal with the odd paranoid individuals than the ones that should own the company as they know all about everything. Some people get an ounce of knowledge and become "experts". You can't tell these ones anything because they already know it all.

 

[CountryBoy]

Every once in awhile there comes a super pest customer. Where I used to work we had one and he was famous. He alternately passed himself off as either a doctor or a lawyer depending on his new creative complaint. He had a very commanding voice and could buffalo most of the reps and even some of the supervisors. I think every long time rep in the company dealt with him at least half a dozen times. He pretended to know absolutely everything including how we were supposed to be doing our jobs. He knew quite a lot and so was difficult to get rid of. I did see reps have near nervous breakdowns having to deal with him. His complaints ranged from very well thought out traps for the reps to the the ludicrous. My last run in with him was his complaint that a rep had used the word rigmarole while dealing with another of his complaints and this had offended his Italian heritage. The word isn't Italian and neither was he.

I was one of the few who was adept and getting rid of him. For a time we were able to hang up on customers who refused to identify themselves. It took him awhile to figure that one out. He did fall for one of my last resort sanity savers and he never figured that one out. I would review his entire complaint and who was working on the issue assuring him they would call back as they had promised (that was company policy). I would tell this too him in a cadence a little slower than normal business like. At the end I would change cadence and hit him with a very abrupt, "Are there any other issues I can help you with today?" He would always try to answer with, "no, but..." With me he never got the but out. He'd said no I wouldn't let him get another word in before finishing my closing and hanging up. Technically call finished as far as my company was concerned.

 

[expertwebhost]

ha ha :lol: thats a good one.

I work for a college actually where i teach computer science.

One of my student wrote in a test ..

"We should have large capacity hard dick for better pc performance!"

I hope you understand what she wanted to write.

ewh

 

[shockym]

Sometimes you always get "know it alls". I have one still to this day that can someones be a target for "bad folk" so we moved him over to a VPS. Though I can vouch that one time his stalkers were randomly attacking or attempting to attack a sever they "thought" this client was on. I was about 30 weeks pregnant at the time, at home on a day off when I get a phone call going "OMG MY SITE IS DOWN".....they had banged the server so bad the CPU shot through the roof and this guy only thought about his site..............sometimes people amaze me with being so selfish.

 

[xzbackup]

Have you ever had to explain to a customer that 'Hosting' and the domain name 'registration' are two seperate things. And that one does not automatically come with the other?

This guy paid for 3 years of hosting thinking he had been reserving his domain name for that long. Then he gets mad at us for not calling him and telling him that he only has the hosting. But trying to explain that just getting 'hosting' is a VERY common thing, was extremely difficult.

 

[ldcdc]

Have you ever had to explain to a customer that 'Hosting' and the domain name 'registration' are two seperate things. And that one does not automatically come with the other?

That kind of thing happens in all industries. Insufficiently knowledgeable customers will assume things go in a manner that suits them (wishful thinking basically) only to turn against the provider when their dreams are shattered. That's often the first time they read the TOS for more than a couple of seconds too.

 

[CountryBoy]

Not knowing what they are buying can be traumatic for them and a royal pain in the posterior for the company involved. The worst cell phone misunderstanding I know of went to one of my teammates. The woman calls in with major bill shock. She had misunderstood the term 'National Plan'. Thought she could talk unlimited nights and weekends to Jamaica. The one month bill was a little in excess of $30,000.