True Stories in Customer Assistance

"The power of Norton compels you! The power of Norton compels you!"

Laugh!!!!

While I dont think this is any comparison to the PC Exorcisim, I still think it needs to be said.

True Story...

About a year ago I worked for one of the local PC shops, as a technician. My boss told me this story about what happened about 6 months before that.

He says that one day this customer calls him, and starts complaining about her CD-ROM drive being installed upside-down. He looks up the customer in his database, and sees that none of the technicians even touched her CD-ROM drive.

Of course the customer is fairly irate, and who could blame her, her frickin CD-ROM drive is dropping out all the CD's she puts in it, straight to the floor. So, the customer is cussing out my boss, who is trying to figure out what happened during the course of the repair to cause her CD-ROM drive to magically remove itself, and re-insert itself upside-down.

So about an hour into the conversation, my boss asks the customer, "Ma'am, is your computer upside down?"

I swear, this is a true story.

Out, out demons of stupidity!

cupple urban legond computer tech storys ...

my cupholder wont go back in (the tech finds a cd rom bent from hot coffee cups)

this POS doesnt work (well did you plug it in, no, should i?)

real life story

customer keeps bringing a bargin bin PC back to the store cussing me up one side and down the other, i fix it, its fixed 100% works fine, 3 days later broken again, i fix it 100% fine... this goes on for about a month, i keep noticing little weird things each time, last time the video card was fried, i put in a new one and WELD the sob to the case... shure nuff here comes the irrate customer with the computer, no video ...

i open it up to find metal shavings in the bottom of the case and not the video card i put in there

turns out her son was yanking parts to sell and replacing them with bad ones he found in the dumpster outside our store ....

at the time i would have hated to be that kid

but it just goes to show that the customer isnt always right, and no matter what you do theres gonna be some yahoo who thinks they can get away with anything

In the interests of proper customer service Jamie, you could at least have checked to see whether the bomb had been used.

here is another one, this happened to me.

Again, the PC shop.

This older fellow comes in and says that his computer will no longer power on. Time to check the usual suspects. Open the case, everything seems to be fine, little bit of dust, more shiny than normal, but nothing bizarre. Unplug power supply, plug in new test power supply. Hit button.

Notta.

Take out pen light and check board for blown capacitors. Hmm... whats this greasy stuff around the processor? Not thermal goop, this stuff is clear.

Move light around. Hmm.. this stuff is all over the major card connectors as well... what the heck?

Call customer.

Me: "Well, Sir... it seems as though your problem might be caused by a strange sustance coating all of the major connectors in your system."

Customer: "Can't be, thats a Marine Anti-Corosive Compound, to keep the system from rusting."

I look the stuff up (can't remember what it was called now), it is actually a compound to keep battery connectors in a boat from rusting. Read: Corrosive.

Strangeness: customer claims that the system worked for a whole 2 months with this stuff on it.


File this one in the WTF?! file. Also, I have had 3 phone calls with customers who did not plug their computers in. Legend no more.

THis one time in band camp, me and the nerdy flute group walked out we went to walmart, and we bought toilet paper, we used 3 rolls... and had 1 left over, and we returned it.. said it was not soft enough!

After receiving several complaints about this thread I have decided that it is in no way against any rules of the community. In fact as a vendor myself, and one who has worked in retail in RL I find the stories here quite enjoyable, and a lesson for all.


Unless things go whackadinghoy I see no reason to move or close the thead.


On a side note...


I used to work at Wal-Mart, a place where customers would get away quite literally with murder. Several times during the holiday season (like the week after Christmas) we'd see electronics come back in complete boxes with a plethora of "things" wrong with them.

Video Games:
Nintendo64 Mario Kart - A game was returned to the "dump bin" with a return ticket saying the customer already had the game and wished to trade it for another game. It seemed to be unopened except the celophane wrapper felt... odd... More like saran wrap and places where the saran wrap was hard. The box also made an odd rattling sound. Opening up the box I found no manual, but enough ramen noodles for a complete meal.

Playstation:
A customer returned a defective Playstation (not PSOne, nor PS2, but the first model) saying it wouldn't play games anymore and wanted a complete refund for the $150 system. At the time the electronics department's staff was spread thin through electronics, fabrics, toys, automotive, and sporting goods. After two calls for an associate from electronics to come to the service desk I abandoned the sporting goods department since there were few customers and went to the service desk. The manager handed me the box demanding prompt response from the electronics department. Earlier that day he had sent the five electronics associates to various departments, me being the oldest one was sent to sporting goods... So quickly explaining the delay I then opened the box there in front of the manager. First to fall out was a pair of Nintendo NES controllers, clearly marked with Nintendo on the face of the controllers. The Playstation should only come with one controller. Taking out the Playstation I noticed an odd smell from the box and an oddly lightweight Playstation. Checking the box there was no power cord, no manuals, and no demo CD. Checking the Playstation I flipped it over to find a large hole running around the outer bottom edge of the Playstation held in place with duct tape. Removing the duct tape removed the bottom of the Playstation revealed no internal components. Just the empty shell.

Sporting Goods:
The local newspaper ran a story about a local hotel that had a small peddle boat stolen from its small private pond. Two days later a man from "Florida" needed help bringing in a large package from his truck. The customer says he bought this peddle boat from a store in Florida and wanted to return it or his wife would have him sleeping on the couch for the rest of his life when they returned from vacation. The manager asked if we sold any such thing at our store. Sure, we sold rubber rafts in Toys, but nothing like this boat. And I add nothing like the boat in electronics. I'm up there at the service desk for at least 20 minutes while the customer spins enough of a tale to make sweaters for everyone in the store. The customer leaves the store with $1500 in cash in his pocket, and us with a peddle boat. Checking the boat I notice a worn stamp with the name of a hotel on the back end of the boat and the hotel's telephone number. And the manager then went to deny any role in the return instead blaming me for the whole incident.


The customer is always wrong when it comes to Wal-Mart. Unless a product really is defective and can be proven.

Forgive, but never forget, even if you are fairly humorous.

I've got a good one:

A few days ago I went through the entire sounds section of SLBoutique to remove some sound clips which were clearly just downloaded off a site and uploaded to Second Life, clearly breaking copyright. I notified the sellers that fair use would let them give a small sound clip away for free, but since they were selling these clips, they needed to be removed. I was somewhat shocked when I got cursed out for removing them with excuses and phrases like:

"F*** you! I sell them all the time in world and no one has a problem with it!"

"I know its illegal, but you can't stop it!"

"What the hell crawled up your ass?"

No good deed goes unpunished.

Regards,

-Flip

Hey I read this and reread this it was that funny ...
Well in some ways it was funny in oterhs not

I was called in to a professors office once to fix his PC which would not do anything at all. So I opened up the case to have a look. Noticed a Dried brown liquid all over everything (smelled like coffee).

So I said to the professor what happened. He said deffective coffee cup holder. I guess the look on my face screamed wtf because he reached over and opened the CD drive and set his cup on it which promptly tipped dumping more liquid into the machine. HE says see its deffective!

Heheheh. Ah, the days of retail. Here are some of my favorites.

1.) When I worked in educational supplies, we had a gal who'd come in once every couple of weeks and put between $50 and $200 worth of merch on hold (we had a one-week hold policy). Inevitably, she'd never return to buy the stuff, so we'd put it back. And inevitably, two weeks later, she'd demand to put some of the same merch on hold again. We humored her, then began putting things back just as soon as she left the store.

2.) A teacher came in an announced that he wanted 35 spelling workbooks in stock when his students came in to buy them. I said, sure, I'd just need his name, the grade of the workbook, and the school/class to hold it for (company policy). He frowned and said, "No, you don't need that. Just have them here for me." Patiently, I explained again that this was company policy, and I needed that information to fill out the hold order. He yelled, "Just have them here, goddammit!" and stormed out of the store.

Needless to say, I couldn't complete the hold order, and he came back to yell at me again a week later because his students weren't always able to buy the workbook they needed.

3.) Before educational supplies, I once worked in clothing retail - more specifically, I was usually assigned to lingerie.

One day, a tall, skinny man waltzed in with a cup of lemonade and began picking through the racks. I figured he was looking for things for his wife. I figured wrong.

After scooping up fair armfuls of bras, he headed back to the dressing rooms. When twenty minutes had passed and I hadn't heard from him, I decided to go back and check on his progress. Lordy, I wish I hadn't, 'cause the man was standing in the middle of the dressing area in nothing but a bra, gamely drinking his lemonade and admiring the affect in the public mirror. I backed out, pretending I hadn't seen a thing, and hoping to God no woman decided to enter the lingerie department in the next hour.

He strolled out of the store empty-handed, leaving all those bras on the middle of the floor - and the lemonade cup, too.

Not one of those bras fitted me! Not bloody one!!!

Hehehe. I could've handled measuring a guy for a bra. It was all the old ladies backing up to the counter, pants pulled back and crying, "Dear! Could you check the tag on my underwear? I forgot what size I am!" that gave me chills.

Edit: And some people think working in the Lingerie Department is sexy.

SL customer contacted me a few hours after buying one of my EVERHARD COCKS. She says the cock broke!! She was trying to make it larger and it flew apart. Wanted me to fix it.

I told her if she broke it, it wasnt my responsibility to fix it for her. She exclaimed, "This cost me L$100!! It is gift for my boyfriend and I need it fixed right away!"

I sell these as Mod, no copy, transfer, so had her send it back to me and I sent her a replacement.

Sure enough she somehow managed to seperate the shaft from the head, by a considerable distance, during her attempts to make it bigger. I have no idea how trying to enlarge it could do that.

Biting and sucking waaaaaay too hard!

Ouch!! Now that is passion!

Nah! That's customer service... with a smile

I demand compensation for hour it took me to read this thread, please.

I said please.

If you don't compensate me now I will report you.

::reported::

YOU ALL SUCK!!!

WTFBBQ DO YOU MEAN IT COULDN"T HAVE TAKE ME AN HOUR TO READ IT!!!11

ARE YOU CALLING ME DUM?/?

I"M LIKE A HITMAN YO, 1 CAN HUNT YOU DOWN ANYWHERE!!111!!

/me **Drops Jamies used atomic bomb on Rickard**

It just occured to me, was she saying my cock was too small!!

Did you just quote yourself? Is that legal?

ROFL ... I use the C*** word, blow you up with used A-bomb, and you worry about me quoting myself!!

/me **flipping madly thru the multi page TOS document**