Suspicious and Annoying

[starsinthesky]

So a small background on my jobs payment plans. They are offered on many items ranging from 2 to 6 months of payments depending on the item. If the payment gos late, you are blocked from making an order till you are current. That happens by either it rebills when the system retries it a week later or the customer calls in to take care of it. Simple.

I get this call and the pull up the item and place it on order. Get her telephone # to pull up her account. Here is where it gets suspicious.

Two accounts pop up both have the same telephone #, address, first name, and last name. The only difference is the middle name. The slightly older account as the middle initial A, the younger account has the word mother in the middle name.

The customer states that she is the mother and I select her account. Up pops a past due block, but she doesn't have anything past due. This happens sometimes due to having a block, it clears and the system glitches and doesn't remove it. However, this wasn't the case. The account that she says belongs to her daughter had lots of money owed to us. Someone determined or believes (I don't make those calls) that they are one and the same person.

The annoying part was when I had to explain over and over again that while she didn't owe us the money, it was the fact that save for a middle name, the customer info is identical, and that is why she can't order. The accounts are linked and until her daughter gets current we can't do anything. So then she asks me if we want her to throw her sick daughter out of her house so she can shop because she always shops with us. It was lather rinse repeat. I had to tell her over and over that she needed to talk to customer service in the morning to see if anything can be done. Right now, nothing can be done. Which started her up again.

[emax4]

When she brings the daughter into question, my response would have been, "I'm not responsible for what you do to someone, but since you mentioned throwing your sick daughter out, I might just place a call to CYS after this.."

[Pixilated]

Good idea ...

If she really does have a sick daughter (which I am inclined to doubt) that'll shut her up. It does sound as if it's the same person running both accounts and she's hoping she can keep ordering on the one while the overdue bill on the other one continues to languish unpaid.

Which makes me wonder what she plans to do when the second account becomes overdue as well ...

[Tama]

She may have other daughters. It wouldn't surprise me to see her do more...

[PepperElf]

ah yes the "you're endangering the life of my child" card.

[starsinthesky]

And the kicker is, that kicking her daughter out of the house won't work. When you are past due you can only update the billing not the primary ship to. So even her daughter moved out, her daughter can't update her account until the nearly 600 she owes is billed. I didn't tell her that.

[lobo94]

This sounds like a major electronic retailer I worked for years ago.

[RealUnimportant]

I once had difficulties setting up a bank account because it was with the same company my dad banked with - not the same branch, just the same overall company. I had no say in the matter, it was work-relate that I needed to get an account with these people due to some kind of corporate sponsorship...

When they started trying to quiz me on why my folks might be overdrawn, I gave them such an earful; they shut up & treated me like a proper individual after that.