Friday, April 13, 2012

As always, the stupid burns.

This woman called up today with a fairly standard technical problem. Wanting to find out if I could help or if I had to scoot her along to the next tier, I asked if it was happening on all her televisions.

"Uh! I only have one."
"Oh, okay. Well, I see you have two receivers. Is the other in an RV or--"
"I do not!"
Sigh. "Well, I see here a model (extremely ancient) that you've probably had since you first got the service."
"Oh!" she laughed. "That thing's been in our attic for about six or seven years now. We bought this new one and chucked that one upstairs."
Oh holy Jesus. I hate having to tell people they've been paying for something they haven't been using. "Okay, well let me just go ahead and deactivate that receiver since you mentioned that." Please don't ask, please don't ask, please don't .....
"Why? What will that do?"
Shit. "It will decrease your bill by $9 a month," I said pleasantly. "Now to fix the problem with your receiver, we need to--"
"Nine dollars a month? I've been paying nine dollars a month for something I wasn't even using? For how long?"
"Since whenever you unplugged it and put it in the attic, ma'am." I knew what her next words were going to be.
"Well, that's not fair! I want my money back! Why should I pay for something I wasn't using!"
"I totally understand, but it's been printed on your bill every month for the last six years, and we had no way of knowing you were no longer using it."
"Of course you did, don't lie to me! I want my money back! Or I'm just going to cancel my service!"

At least at that point I could transfer her over to the retention team, not that they can do anything for her. A few months, we can fix. But six years? Now, I'd want my $650 back too, but I would also not have been so fucking stupid as to have paid a bill for six or more years without ever looking at it.

Here's the bad news .... at the end of the month I have to go into retention training, so those kinds of idiots will be transferred to me instead of away from me. Oi.

1 comment:

DMT said...

Caveat emptor - always read the fine-print the bill and the receipt mornon!