Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Playing dumb.

Our company offers two types of accounts. One is the regular one where we send you a bill, and if you don't pay it before some date (a ridiculously long time after it's due, actually), your service gets shut off. The other is for people who are ... credit challenged. Like me, honestly. Those kinds of account are very strict. You pay for a month of service, you get a month of service. If you don't pay, you don't have service even one day past the due date. So it's a pay-as-you-fo.

This woman called in yesterday asking about upgrading to a new package, and she had one of those accounts. When you have the kind of account and you change to a more expensive package, you have to pay the difference. So if you've already paid for one month of the $30 channel package, and after two weeks you want to go to the $50 channel package, you're going to have to pay $10 to get it (for two weeks of service). That's how it goes. Also, nobody starts out with a regular account and then gets changed to pay-as-you-go. It's that way from the start. This woman had been with us for two and a half years. There is no way she didn't know this.

Yet when I advised her of the ten dollar charge, she refused to pay it and asked why. I told her why, very politely.
"Well, when did this become that kind of account? It never used to be!" she said. I'd happened to look at the notes on the account and saw where she'd already talked to two other agents yesterday, within the last hour, who told her exactly the same thing.

Now, sometimes if you keep calling you'll get ahold of someone who will break a rule or find a loophole for you on some things. But if you have shitty credit and can't get a regular account, you know you have shitty credit and can't get a regular account! She could call 18 times and get the same answer. And every time a customer calls back, it fucks up our statistics and in some cases people get fired over that shit. So I called her on it, because I have no doubt that when I got off the phone with her, she would have called yet again.

"Well, the type of account would be determined when you originally started services, so it's been that way for the two and a half years you've been with us. I also see notes here where two other people today did cover that information with. I apologize it they weren't clear, did you have any other questions about it?"

She got off the phone really quickly then.

4 comments:

Just Sayin... said...

I love it when you're in the position to do that.

I once worked customer service for a gym. And due to the bad wages they offered, I too had bad credit.

A gentleman called me at work to discuss my account with them. He made the mistake of giving me his full name. Without thinking as we're talking and he's being a huge jerk, I looked to see if he had an account with us.... as he's talking, I asked for his ID employee name etc so if I had to let him go I could reach him again (cough).... in reality, I was about to turn the fucking tables on him.

The second he was extremely rude with me, I advised he should change his tune or I'd be calling him at work(now that I had all his infor) and harrass him for the $2G he owed on unpaid personal trainer sessions. He shut up, and I banned him from the gym til his account was paid in full.

His $2G to my $60 late... hmmmmm

JoeinVegas said...

Sounds like you did fine.

DMT said...

In the service industry that's called being rude to the "customer" It's good to be in a job where being reasonable is not frowned upon

Anonymous said...

How does a customer repeatedly calling screw up statistics and get you fired? That's seems unfair.