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Oh my god. What a nightmare!
Um. Wow.
Just ..... Wow.
Seriously? Over a table??
Well, the table was late and scratched, and the drivers were irritable, so surely that's worth killing them, isn't it?
Okay, so this happened in a Dirty Harry state. So, Colorado... Ohio... I think, Utah... Florida?
When I worked collections for Sprint wireless/PCS, a lot of customers threatened female agents with rape. I would say that one in ten calls involved rape threats. Of course, when it didn't work, they'd bring your family into it. "I'll find you and rape you! Then, I'll go through your address book and rape your mom, your grandma, your sister... Whoever I can find!" You're sitting there going dude, I have your address and you don't have mine. I have your SSN, and you just gave me your checking account information. Who wins here?
Once, a man from my city called and threatened such bullshittery. I had his address and I said, "Sir, don't you live across from [geographically important] hospital? You live on the side street where the new Speedway is, right?" You could tell he had a definite "Oh, shit." moment.
Holy crap. That is astounding. Talk about taking an unexpected turn for the worse...
Cool! Now I know how to get free furniture! Course, I gotta get me some shotguns first...
I am guessing it might be Texas (does the Big Machine deliver in Texas?) as that is the state whose Stand Your Ground (i.e. CRAZY PERSON WITH GUN) law I'm the most familiar with.
Really, and not to advise those I'm unfamiliar with? But you guys maybe should have canceled this order as soon the words "hostage" came up? I mean, if someone says "there's a bomb on this bus " you don't keep letting on passengers, right?
Or am I unfamiliar with the basic level of crazy you should expect in customer service?
Oh my god, fujiko, you did know that communicating threats is a crime, didn't you? I believe depending on the severity you can get a felony conviction for communicating threats (we're talking at the least a deferral agreement with a year or two on probation and no right to own a firearm if you get a conviction...) there's no reason for your company to let that happen to you over and over! I mean, "I'm NEVAH GOING TO SHOP HERE AGAIN" is one thing, but "I will track you down and physically assault you" is actually illegal.
I just looked it up and it's a Class 1 misdemeanor in most states if you get a conviction, but if nothing else hauling people's asses to court would encourage them to stop making rape threats at random customer service reps. God. Tell me y'all at least called the cops on each of them?
Ah, customer service, what a fun fun fun industry.
We've got a log at our front desk area similar to your NOTES section on the orders, where there are notes about people whose problems we already know.
One in particular has made enough of a name for himself in his own home town, that he's known by the state police, two state senators, the electric company, the phone company- any other company who puts wires on poles, and who knows who else. He seems to think that seeing one of our company vans drive by his road is equivilant to tresspassing. Many times he has called to let us know that if he see's one of our vans on his property again, he will "remedy the situation with his shotgun." He has also threatened to cut wires down because they "interfere with harvesting [his] crops." And that's wether they belong to the company he's calling or not.
The note in our book states that our lawyers have advised us not to engage in conversation with this gentleman, all correspondence between him and our company need to be handled through legal channels. The other main note is that if you see his number come up on the phone display, don't ask how you can help him, don't ask him if he would like to hold, just put him directly through to the Public Affairs Office.
It only took a couple of years of this happening every few months or so before we were able to figure out that he is psychologically disturbed and each of these incidents were the result of going off his meds and making phone calls.
One memorable occasion he called to let us know his wife was very upset with us because the police had come out to their home per our request. Funny thing about us, we take care of our employees in the way that means protecting them from being shot at by crazy people. Yes. His wife was upset with us for that, which was why she wasn't calling herself to tell us so... not upset with him, with us. Right.
Now I know how to get free furniture!
Yes, it's the old time-honored way of getting stuff for free - armed robbery.
Holy cow, fujiko! I have to say that rape threats are not common at Big Machine. That's horrible.
I think all I can say is:
Jesus Old Man Chrysler!
wookie FTW!!11!
I have also found, when I am getting seriously irritated with a company, and with policies or service that are problematic, I try to say to the person on the other end of the phone, Hey, I know it's not you, personally, and I'm sorry I'm getting a little agitated here.
That's an incredible saga, though--firearms?? hostages?? over a TABLE??
It sounds like he must have been in the state I live in. The lege just reaffirmed the right to shoot people last session.
Having been audited twice this summer, I'm wondering what the service notes at the IRS office are like.I was polite, I think. I certainly wouldn't expect swearing or threatening people to get me anywhere.
I work customer service so I am so used to this. I also work for a bank so you can imagine the amount of threats we've received. We're sworn at all the time and it gets pretty old.
Our system allows us to put comments in the actual account and they can be pretty amusing. But this is insane. Completely and totally insane.
I just wanted to follow up here. No, we never called the cops. Honestly, these threats were so numerous that we would've had a whole department filing police reports. 200-300 people, half of which were female, being threatened at least a few times each day... That's a lot of reports, you know?
I worked there 11 months, and at first it was very uncommon to hear such a thing. This was in 2002-2003, and I swear there must have been a foul-tempered version of Consumerist SOMEWHERE on the Internet then. It definitely graduated from a regional problem to a national problem over the last three months that I was there. It was definitely like someone told a whole bunch of other people to do it on a very large scale at the same time.
The mental impact was actually more dangerous than the people. Many, many employees would quit by coming to work, sitting down for five minutes and then just deciding it wasn't worth it anymore. Or, they would drive in, stare at the front door for fifteen minutes and then drive away without a word to anyone. When they fired me, I actually threw a little party for myself and my roommate. Woo-hoo, you know?
But, this isn't about me. This is about how quickly situations can escalate. I love how detailed the account notes are! Honestly, I would've sought permission to cancel the order after the "taking the truck hostage" comments. Also, either you guys don't speak in lingo and abbreviations, or you were very nice to have translated all of that!
Good luck to you, Flea!
All I can say is this makes me feel a little bit better about how difficult Mr. B. can be with customer service people (for which I apologize on his behalf. Sometimes repeatedly).
What a terrific story. (I actually went and got a bag of chips to munch on while reading it - thanks for the suggestion, Flea.)
I mean - appalling and all, and good lord, I am never going to be anything but perfectly polite to a customer service rep, ever - but still. Great story. Post more!
fujiko, sorry to fuss at you, it's just that - if half of your employees were being subjected to small but uncomfortable electric shocks several times a day, the fact that the scale of the problem makes it expensive to fix would not make it any less your supervisors' job to fix it. My mother used to work for a phone order company, and they had clear-cut rules to deal with obscene phone calls - they pressed the "monitor this call" button, noted their phone number, and passed it to the legal office, which, I believe, followed through on a certain percentage of cases just to make sure it was out there that this was unacceptable behavior. As long as the obscene-inator is calling you, not vice versa, you have clear legal grounds for action, and I am fairly distressed that apparently your employer thought being threatened daily was par for the course.
Wow. I agree the order should've been cancelled as soon as the word "hostage" was used (or maybe as soon as it was repeated—spot them one angry comment like that); but at least I was still basically sympathetic with the customer until the shotgun came out. A shotgun! Good heavens.
Holy smokes.
I was still basically sympathetic with the customer until the shotgun came out.
We were, too!
I wasn't involved in this order, but from what I know of the people who were, they probably assumed he was going to do exactly what he said he was going to do, which is refuse to sign the paperwork. What would have happened, had a gun not come into play, was that if the drivers are not able to obtain a signature, they will take the table back and mark delivery as being incomplete. Considering the fact that the table arrived damaged, that would have been best for everyone involved.
Furthermore, had they not escalated the situation to violence, they probably would have not only gotten their $279 delivery fee refunded, but probably would have gotten a Big Machine gift card for an amount between $25-$100, depending on how badly we screwed up overall and how long it took to get a decent table in the home. Big Machine prefers to wait until the delivery is completed and the customer is happy with the merchandise before deciding on final compensation, because we like to account for the entire delivery experience. It's unfortunate for everyone that the customer reacted so poorly.
Ah - the joys of customer service. I answer a lot of calls from oil royalty owners, and for some their bad temper is exceeded only by their ignorance. They only yell at me once. I suggest that they call back when they feel more comfortable talking to me and hang up. No one in the company wants to take my calls, so I have never caught any flack for putting the bad hats in their places. Most of them are just fine, but one nasty caller can get your whole day off kilter.
I used to co-own / do on-site work for a computer repair shop in my home town. Fortunately, we never had to deal with anyone this belligerent, although in this case I have an inkling that the phone actually made it worse: not having to be face-to-face, it's much easier to fly off the handle at a disembodied person than one who's standing there in front of you and can just pack up their things and leave if the situation becomes untenable.
On the other hand, I can relate completely, having to deal with and solve this kind of thing myself. The SR did exactly the right thing to comp the table and disengage with the implicit "Please don't ever do business with us ever again." It's about the hardest thing ever to fire a customer, but it's good someone got around to it.
I once had a lady whose computer was so full of cat hair it broke. This was an on-site repair job, so I knew full well the food-eating-pooping-peeing-shedding-hair balls of fluff she kept -- darling critters that they were -- but I swear to God she thought the vacuum worked just by putting it in the same room as the mess you wanted cleaned up.
So yeah, I pulled the side off the case and this wad of hair and (I assume) cigarette smoke came tumbling down on me in an avalanche. And she wanted to make this our fault. And unrelated software was malfunctioning and that was, of course, our fault too... Eventually it was like, fine, ma'am, I will replace [whatever component] that choked on a hairball, we'll comp it, and I'm afraid we can't provide the level of service you expect going forth, but "thank you" for your business....
Sheesh. Dealing with customers is hella-educational, huh??
I also work in a call center - as the one who listens to recordings for assessment and training purposes. That series would have had me banging my head on the desk in sympathetic frustration.
Good Lord. I think that goes beyond constultation to something else, there must be a word in the OED that conveys the "psychopathic threats over something stupid" idea.
I'm kicking myself for returning "Reading the OED" to the library, because I want to look up the word for "repeating a word or phrase expressly to annoy someone." My kids were doing it a lot today, and I wanted to tell them to just stop the "oxxx?ation" already. Plus I just need that book on my shelves.
Chuck, you never did computer work for me did you? Because that sounds like my office computer.
__
I work customer service and it's pretty common to get called everything but my own name by 5-6 jacked up people 8-9 times a day. I keep having my own sitting-outside-the-building-staring-at-the-doors mornings, but the job market is so bad I can't bring myself to say fuck it and quit.
Also I used to think the level of hostility was worse when I worked phones instead of face-to-face, but I'm not so sure anymore. For one, the angry people have the ability to get everyone else in line worked up before they get to you, so it's a long, sustained burn to get through the day instead of a few sparks.
This is really scaring me. To the point that I don't want to identify myself among your readers, even though I've read and loved this blog (and comments) for years. And granted, this guy sounds like a real orifice, a person I'd definitely now want to know. But is anyone paying attention to what his wife said? That these delivery guys, with whom they were already not having a very positive interaction, were in rooms of their home that they had no reason to be in? And that when his wife said that they had to wait until he got off the phone, that they *pushed past her*? *In her own home*? That they refused to be escorted out? That kind of lack of basic respect for the boundaries that are represented by a person's home sound really terrifying to me. Not just offensive, but really, isn't that exactly the kind of experience that a person would want to have a gun for, to ensure that they can protect their right to set even these basic sort of limits in their own home? I don't own a gun, so I can't speak for people who do specifically, but I know I would have felt really unsafe at that point, with belligerent men in my home who demonstrated no respect for me and swore in response to efforts to escort them out. As much as we'd not like to see someone get out a gun, it sounds like it actually took that extreme of a measure to get these guys to stop their aggressive behavior. And sure, calling the police sounds like really sensible advice after the fact, but it doesn't sound like it was much of an environment for slow, cautioned measures. Nor that there was time to sit around waiting for the cops while these guys plow through your home. I'm really the only one getting this out of the story?
Something (almost) as scary just happened to me at work on Thursday. I work for a temp agency that provides concierges, leasing agents, and front desk workers for high-end apartment buildings. I was working the front desk at a VERY nice property that I had only been to once before, and the property was apparently having some trouble with the heat in some units.
At about 9 am, a man came up to the desk to complain about his heat and his fireplace not working. He was upset, but not irate or aggressive or anything. He was told (by me and by the assistant property manager, as well as the head of maintenance) that the maintenance people were working to resolve the problem as fast as they could, and he went away.
Around 3 pm, he came back and he was SUPER pissed. He was yelling about how his heat and fireplace were still not fixed, calling the building a dump and a "tenement", and generally acting scary. Then he told me to call a maintenance person immediately so he could "kick them in the belly".
I mean, I understand getting upset, but once someone starts threatening violence, I do NOT have to help them in any way until they calm down. One of the maintenance people happened to walk through the lobby right after he said this, and the maintenance guy started talking to him to try to calm him down and explain the situation. The resident kept yelling and swearing and then he said, direct quote, "This CUNT over here won't help me!"
I just walked into the inner office and got the manager and assistant manager. He threatened them, asked the assistant manager if he wanted to take it outside, and basically scared the crap out of me to the point that I didn't want to return to the property. I was physically shaking, I was so freaked out.
Coincidentally, his lease was up November first and he will NOT have the option to renew. The whole staff backed me up (there were at least 2 witnesses to the name-calling).
I seriously do not understand people. I can't comprehend why someone would think that it was ok to call me (or anyone!) such a thing, let alone pull a GUN on a delivery person.
Anon, why would you trust the customers' account of the incident, given that it comes after they had *already made threats to hold the delivery guys hostage?* I can understand having a strong reaction to a delivery person acting threatening--though I don't think that what the customers' described, even if believed, justifies using a firearm. But why would you think that it's the delivery guys who were being threatening, rather than the people who had already made threats toward the delivery guys?
anon, based on the phone rep's account, and Mr. X's original account, I think the wife may have embellished her version of events. I think Mr. X would certainly have thrown those nuggets into the original story if that is what happened. It sounds like both sides behaved badly, but rep was on the phone w/Mr. X while these guys were in the house and spoke to him right after they left. There didn't seem to be anything gun-worthy in either version.
I'm really the only one getting this out of the story?
Yes.
Hmrph. I wish those delivery guys could've gotten their truth-ray gun out of the truck in order to properly confront those 2 lying sacks of you know what. Forget protecting themselves against the hostage threat...surely it's legal to defend yourself against people who treat you like you're criminally stupid?
I would get in trouble in that situation. Nothing pisses me off more than people who think they're being really clever w/ their really, really stupid lies they've half-confessed to telling, while expecting you to just keep waltzing through their fiction, oblivious. grrrr!
MR X CALLED THIS EVENING. HE RECEIVED A CALL FROM [THE OUTSOURCED DELIVERY COMPANY] YESTERDAY TELLING HIM THAT HE WOULD NOT RECEIVE HIS DELIVERY THIS WEEK BECAUSE THEY DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH DELIVERIES IN THE AREA TO MAKE A DELIVERY TO HIM.
10/15 - HELLO ALL, I AM QUITE CONFUSED ABOUT THIS. THE DELIVERY COMPANY HAS ALREADY SCHEDULED A DATE WITH THIS CUSTOMER THAT IS COORDINATED WITH THE CUSTOMER BEING BACK IN TOWN. SEE BELOW SCHEDULED FOR 10/22 BECAUSE THE CUSTOMER SAID THEY WERE OUT OF TOWN FROM NOW UNTIL 10/21.
EMAILED BR/191 TO CONFIRM WHY THERE WAS NO DELIVERY THIS WEEK. TRUCKING COMPANY CLAIMS CUSTOMER SAYS HE WOULD BE OUT OF TOWN BUT CUSTOMER CLAIMS IT WAS DUE TO NO OTHER DELIVERIES IN THE AREA.
CUSTOMER SAID HE JUST CAME FROM VERY INTENSIVE BUSINESS TRIP AND HAD MEETINGS PLANNED TOMORROW WITH BANKER, VENDORS AND CUSTOMERS TO CEMENT A 16 MILLION DOLLAR DEAL.
SHE TOLD ME THAT THEY WERE TOLD AT THE LAST MINUTE WHEN THEY WERE ON A PLANE THAT THE DRIVERS WOULD BE THERE BETWEEN 4-5 YESTERDAY. THEY HAD TO RUN FROM THE AIRPORT - MR. X TOOK HER TO WORK AND THEN WENT HOME WHERE HE WAITED FOR THE DRIVERS. THEY DID NOT SHOW SO HE WENT TO PICK UP MS. Y. WHILE THEY WERE ON THEIR WAY HOME THEY GOT A CALL FROM THE DRIVERS WHO IN HER WORDS, WERE IRRITATED THEY HAD TO WAIT. SHE SAID IT TOOK 15 MINUTES TO GET HOME.
Pants! On! Fire!
I assumed the wife describing the delivery guys as "thugs" meant they were black. Am I being too cynical?
No.
Well, I do see anon's side of things, and I would be tempted to side with the customers to a certain extent. However, having had this job for 2 1/2 years, I know how often these drivers are lied about, how often they are accused of theft by people trying to make a buck off Big Machine by reporting things stolen (like diamond rings), how often we are told that the drivers "never showed up and kept the furniture for themselves" despite the fact that we have GPS systems in the trucks and can prove they were at the home, and how often they are cursed at and referred to by racial slurs. This is why we require a signature to prove the customer received delivery of the furniture (and even then they lie and say they didn't), and this is why the drivers could not leave the home - the customers refused to sign the paperwork. They had jerked the drivers (and us) around by demanding the drivers wait until Mr. X was finished "closing his 16 million dollar deal," an overly-specific detail that screams "lie." And then they made a point of not being there when the drivers showed up and made them wait 45 minutes. The customers said 15, but again, we have GPS in the truck and can prove how long they were there. Plus, the drivers admit that they were frustrated and got upset when the customers wouldn't sign the paperwork. If they'd just signed off on the paperwork or refused the table, the drivers would have left immediately. Like they wanted to be there in the first place, jeez.
I get very upset that these guys, who really do bust their asses for the most part, have their jobs laid out on the line for a stupid table, or for a discount on their merchandise. People are willing to get these guys fired, and make it harder to get another job and take care of their families, just so some asshole can save $279 dollars. It's infuriating.
anon- I wouldn't have believed more than half of what those particular customers said, given the history of the situation. And half would be generous.
The customer has far more to gain by lying in this situation. Unless those drivers had a history of poor customer service, I'd believe their version far quicker.
Wow. That shit is crazy. I am unfailingly polite to customer service people unless they start ignoring me--eg, not calling back for two days after I call to complain about service problems. People need to relearn the old "you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar."
We had a situation with American Express about a year back that was, admittedly, our fault to begin with, but then they didn't resolve it the way they said they would. It ended up taking 4-5 days to get it all taken care of, and I went up 2-3 layers of CSRs, and had multiple phone calls each day to find out where we were, but in the end, because I was very nice throughout, they not only resolved the situation, they also credited us 20K membership points (almost enough for a free plane ticket) and credited $200 to our account "so we could go out for a nice dinner." I can guarantee that if I had bitched, I wouldn't have gotten such good service.
I wouldn't have believed the customers either. Their threats and bad behavior started days and days before the delivery guys ever entered the picture. Ms Y told an almost completely different story than Mr X did which just screams 'LIE'. The delivery guys had nothing to gain by acting in the manner they were accused of.
As someone who's been in customer service with a governmental agency for 31 years I think I've seen nearly every form of unbelievable behavior imaginable. If I had a dollar for every customer that has looked at me and said 'Are you accusing me of lying?!' when we both know they are, I could take us all out to get swacked on the good stuff.
I've had respected local business people throw fits like Verucka Salt, complete with profanity and insults because you tell them (while pointing to the sign clearly posted in the lobby) that you can't take their paperwork after 3 pm. I've had them look me in the eye and demand a product they 'bought here last week' when said product doesn't exist. I've been called a bitch, an MF-ing C***, a brain dead government lackey and a dozen others I've forgotten.
I've also received homemade baked goods, flowers, candy, thank you gifts and a hand blown glass ornament carefully carried back from Paris by a woman who had been told for 25 years she couldn't get a passport because her name had been changed in a closed adoption (completely not true, just took a call to the Passport Agency), so I know I'm doing something right.
The trouble is, the decent people like yourselves have a hard time believing that other people could behave so badly. They do! The worst story I have? The clerk next to me had a mother and son at her station. Mom didn't get her money out fast enough so the full grown son hit her. When the clerk told him that that was unacceptable and the police would be called if he did it again...the MOTHER assaulted her for 'talking to her son' like that.
purple shoes wrote:
Or am I unfamiliar with the basic level of crazy you should expect in customer service?
YES
LOL
you have no idea what crap customer service reps have to put up with
Wow. Wound up surfing here by a route that I'm not going to go into (not filthy, just boring) and found this post. I used to work as a telemarketer and used to get all sorts of abusive comments from the people that we called. Most realized (as most grown-ups do) that I was doing a job, the numbers were being auto-dialled by a computer, and I wasn't going out of my way to personally irritate them. Then you had the people that would scream curse words about wasting their time for 2-3 minutes, when a "Not interested" and a hang-up (approx. 90% of call resolutions) takes about 2-3 seconds. That includes the time it takes to figure out it's a telemarketer. I wonder how these tools deal with wrong numbers.
As for the rape threats, I'm not a lawyer, but I do follow what laws say, and I'm pretty sure that refusal by an employer to even attempt to put a stop to this would qualify as a "hostile work environment" under sexual harrasment laws. Just saying...
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