Back in customer services

[Rapscallion]

The multiskilling at work played its part in putting me near the end users, once again, and I was dealing with customers today.

Not only did I have to work out how to deal with other peoples' errors, which is currently a major part of my job there, what with a whole new group of people starting at the same time, but...

First answerphone message of the day:

Recorded yesterday at 6:17pm "They're not answering!" *click*

That one amused me.

An ordinary call.

"Hello? I bought some ground almonds from you back in February and want to know what shelf life is on them, please."

Optimists... I tell you...

Rapscallion

[Kiwi]

actually thats a good question... I always wondered what is the shelf life of nuts? We buy the in a kilo bag and it takes us like 8 weeks to get through them....(although ours are whole)

oh raps god of organic food distribution, what is the shelf life of almonds?

[Rapscallion]

African or European?

In a vague attempt at maintaining a grip on reality, I think it only fair to point out that best before dates are pretty much a guess. Barring infestation, most grains, pulses, etc, can be fine two years down the line if kept cool and away from direct light.

I asked the buyer how long we could give and she said six months from the date of purchase. We did a little figuring and realised that was now, so we amended that to eight months from the date of purchase...

Rapscallion

[Rapscallion]

Today started with a colleague firmly telling a potential customer, "I did *not* say you'd get your catalogue by tomorrow. We send it by Royal Mail first class, but that's all the promise we will make."

A leader of a local vegetarian/vegan group started to throw his imagined weight around by demanding a catalogue of our products to order in bulk. He lives less than three miles from a good retail customer of ours in the area, so upon the area manager's advice we pointed him there. He sxreamed blue murder (well, almost) and managed to pout rather unprettily in an email, telling us he would take his business elsewhere. I forwarded his email to the area manager with the comment "This email will replace the screams in my nightmares for years to come."

Another exchange had me request more information from a potential customer as to what their company did, and the response was "kiting".

?

A little later, I had to deal with someone complaining that we couldn't take his order as nobody could find his details in the system. He'd ignored the covering letter sent with every catalogue that tells people to call a few days before ordering so we can set up their account.

A phone call came from someone who wanted to set up an account.

"Did we send you a catalogue?" I asked, as is standard.

"Yes," she says cheerfully. I check her location and it's not too close to any shops we supply.

"Hmm, did we send it to a different address?" I asked. "There's nothing on our records..."

"Well, not so much sent as I borrowed it from a friend." She then pointed out that the friend lived some hundred miles from her.

Ouch!

Rapscallion

[Rapscallion]

I forgot one! I had a feeling I would.

I had a phone call from a member of a vegan prisoner support group. "Sod the rest of the prisoners," thought I. "Concentrate on the ones who don't eat meat." Makes sense, I guess, since there are fewer to worry about.

She explained that one of the people she supports gets one litre cartons of soya milk through a supplier who gets them from us. Do we do half-litre sizes? I went through the spreadheeet and confirmed that we do indeed do half-litre sizes, giving her the product codes for the purchasing organisation involved. I also warned her that they may not be able to get it as many such purchasing organisations have strict product lists that they have to buy from mandated by head office.

All the while I was trying not to scream that the best support was to tell him not to do things that get him in prison in the first place.

I related this to a colleague today and she suggested he may have been a prisoner of conscience. I suggested that the odds were vastly in my favour, which she accepted.

However, the canteen discussion came up with something very interesting. Some years ago, we used to do vegan prisoner packs, specially made hampers of goods for vegan prisoners. Things like peanut butter, fruit juices etc. We actually did a good trade in those at the time, but one of our guys became curious. He worked out how many vegan prisoners the country had and realised that, based on the figures from the vegan society, between eighty and ninety percent of all vegans in the UK were in prison.

The answer was more prosaic than 'Eat meat and don't get locked up'. The gubmint gives our X pence per prisoner per day for feeding. Vegan prisoners are allocated X+Y pence for food, hence making their food of distinctly better quality. Quite a number of lags know this and falsley claim veganity to get better grub.

Oh yes, there was also someone saying she was calling on behalf of a good customer of ours. Did we have the organic Palestinian olive oil produced by Traidcraft? Traidcraft are an organisation dedicated to fair trade, as in paying the producers more for their goods instead of cutting their throats to get a better price. This gear is not cheap.

After finding out that it's actually by Equal Exchange (similar company, but different organisation), she asks if she can buy it direct from us.

"I thought you were calling on behalf of ***?" I asked.

"Er, I am, but I wanted to know if I could order it directly through you."

"Just ask *** to add it to their order," I said, disappointing an attempted scammer.

Rum old day.

Rapscallion

[HYHYBT]

Another exchange had me request more information from a potential customer as to what their company did, and the response was "kiting".
They're in the business of writing themselves bad cheques? And they admit it?

[Rapscallion]

I didn't know 'kiting' was writing bad cheques. Something learned today, so the day isn't wasted, but we've had a few people bounce cheques recently. I may start to bandy the term around.

Someone reminded me today about a moron yesterday - overshadowed by Mental Ben.

I had a call put through from reception, and the chap on reception was trying to stifle sniggers.

"Hello? It says on your cans of soup that I should heat it gently until it's hot, but overheating may cause the flavour to be not as good?"

"Er, yes?"

"It doesn't make it dangerous, does it?"

"Well, unless you scald yourself, no."

"No, I mean as in dangerous bad? As in poison?"

Well, we made an impressive career by selling pallets of soup that was safe unless you overheated it, and we were suddenly undone by one simple moron.

Curses!

Rapscallion

[wagegoth]

Kiting is a method often used to fake cash reserves and score interest.

The usual method is to open an account with a large (bad) check. Then a check from the new account is written and deposited to the old account to cover the original deposited check. This goes back and forth for a while, until the criminal withdraws the money (that never really existed) from whichever account and disappears with money they never had plus any interest earned.

Sometimes this method is used by a company to make their cash reserves look larger to anyone investigating them.

With the regular use of computers by banks, and the resulting loss of the lead time between the writing of the check and it clearing the bank, it has cut down on the practice to some extent.