Odds and Ends

[flybye023]

These are just a few short stories from my call center days.

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Lady with a 1997 car with 137,000 miles wanted a brand new paint job and was asking for The Company to pay for it because the original paint job was “defective”. When we refused, she demanded the number to the BBB to make a complaint. We gave it to her. Figured the BBB could use a laugh.
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Lady with a 1999 car and 149,000 miles wanted us to give her a new transmission. Because she couldn’t pay for it herself.

(Sidenote: We based our assistance on customer loyalty, previous problems with the car, or sometimes if the problem was just really weird and we had no solution. I can’t believe how many people called seeking payment assistance for the simple reason that they “couldn’t afford it.” I can’t afford a house. Can I go to the nearest realtor and just ask for one?)
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Old lady calls in because her wiper motor is burned out. Every year, she claims, it burns out and she has to get a new one. Every year, the dealership replaces the motor free of charge but this year they’re refusing and she "just can't understaaand whyyyyy!". I call the dealership to see what the story is.

Me: hello, I’ve got Mrs. Whinyperson on the phone about a windshield wiper? She says that—

Dealer: Yeah, we’ve been dealing with her for years. She always calls us after the first snowfall and real freeze. We’ve replaced her motor every year because it really is kinda poorly made. However, each year we tell her that she needs to be more careful. See, what’s happening is she tries to turn the wipers on without cleaning off the windshield first. Even if the blades are frozen to the window, she still tries to force the wipers to work and the motor ends up burning out. We’re not going to do this again for free because if she followed our precautions, the motor wouldn’t burn out.

Me: Okay, fair enough.

Return to the lady and spend the next ten minutes explaining and re-explaining, then explaining yet again why we can’t give her a sixth motor for free. She never did get it.

[Hello Kitty]

Wow, the unrealistic expectations of customers never ceases to dumbfound me.

[Andara Bledin]

See, what’s happening is she tries to turn the wipers on without cleaning off the windshield first.

Cripes! I have never lived or stayed in a place where there has ever been more than a light layer of frost on my windshield and even I know better than to think that my wiper motor can push more than water.

^-.-^

[StevieJD]

See what ya get for being nice

[Sonoma]

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Old lady calls in because her wiper motor is burned out. Every year, she claims, it burns out and she has to get a new one. Every year, the dealership replaces the motor free of charge but this year they’re refusing and she "just can't understaaand whyyyyy!". I call the dealership to see what the story is.

Me: hello, I’ve got Mrs. Whinyperson on the phone about a windshield wiper? She says that—

Dealer: Yeah, we’ve been dealing with her for years. She always calls us after the first snowfall and real freeze. We’ve replaced her motor every year because it really is kinda poorly made. However, each year we tell her that she needs to be more careful. See, what’s happening is she tries to turn the wipers on without cleaning off the windshield first. Even if the blades are frozen to the window, she still tries to force the wipers to work and the motor ends up burning out. We’re not going to do this again for free because if she followed our precautions, the motor wouldn’t burn out.

Me: Okay, fair enough.

Return to the lady and spend the next ten minutes explaining and re-explaining, then explaining yet again why we can’t give her a sixth motor for free. She never did get it.

I think I talked to that same lady when I worked in the call center. She absolutely refused to believe that she had to detatch her wipers from the frozen windshield, or remove the 6" of snow piled on said windshield. Those little wiper arms are not snowplows, nor should they be used as such.

[TryNotToBeThatOne]

I once had a very nice repairman 'fix' my windshield wipers for free. I had driven through a blizzard* and after 2 hours the wipers stopped working. I thought for sure that I had burned out the motor but it turned out to be just a couple loose bolts.

It took him less than 5 minutes to find & fix the problem & I was so thankful that I would have paid him almost anything, keeping in mind that working at minimum wage I didn't have much money. He just smiled & said that his garage didn't actually handle those sorts of repairs anyway & waved me on my way.

Even I know that it was the effort of pushing all that snow around that caused my problem. Not a defect in the wipers. *duh*

*Is it really a blizzard if you have up to 10' of visibility? It did wipe out most of the East coast, though.

[Sarlon]

ok I'll admit I didn't know about burning out the wiper's moter...but my little Bishi (98 nissan sentra) has served me faithfully, and on cold mornings when its a sheet of ice on my car, and frost so thick on my windshield it looks like snow...I got out of my house 20 minutes before I have to go, turn on my car, turn the heater for the defroster onto full blast and go back inside to finish getting ready...normally by the time I get out to my car she's mostly defrosted and can use my wipers to get most of it off my windshield...sometimes it does strain...but I at least have the foresite to pry my wipers from the glass first...can someone tell me if this is wrong?

[Sonoma]

but I at least have the foresite to pry my wipers from the glass first...can someone tell me if this is wrong?

Sounds like you're clearing the windshield by warming up the car, then breaking the wiper blades loose from the windshield before you turn on the wipers. The woman I had to deal with would just go out, start the ignition, then turn on the wipers. She'd leave all the snow on the window, and neglect to free the wipers, which caused all her problems.

[Imogene]

can someone tell me if this is wrong?

Well, if you live in Texas, they're currently working on legislation to make it illegal to go out and run your car in the driveway, to defrost. That's how thefts happen...

[Emrld]

Where I live in Tx it is illegal to live your keys in your car without an adult present.
That covers defrosting in the driveway. Leaving the motor on with the kid in the car while steping up to the store front to return your movie rental. Not even having the key in the ignition put having the key where it can be seen by someone walking by.
(granted if you accidently lock your keys in your car you are not given a ticket)
Basically they are preventing theft, childen whom were left in the car putting it in gear etc.

Side note due to the temps we reach here in Tx it is illegal to live a child in the car while you run into the post office etc.

[smileyeagle1021]

...can someone tell me if this is wrong?

not really wrong, but not that wise... excessive idling isn't really the best on car motors, and with gas prices what they are having the car sitting and getting zero miles per gallon would give me pause... that aside, an idling car is an extremely easy target for theft.
my :twocents: is that it's worth the 2 minutes of misery to just use an ice scraper (this is coming from someone who has had his condo broken into and has a friend who got his car stolen, so the whole easy to steal alone makes me paranoid hearing someone is leaving a car idling).

[SpyOne]

Last I checked, just leaving the keys in a car (much less leaving it running) counted as creating an "attractive nussiance", which means (among other things) that taking such a car is not, legally, "theft".


That said, back when cars were tanks and not built out of the lightest possible parts (to improve gas milage), windshield wipers could easilly clear inches of snow off a windshield, and the reason for making sure they weren't frozen to the windshiled when you turned them on was you could damage the blades, not the motor(s): the rubber blade frozen to the windshield might tear off the arm before it broke free of the windshield.

I don't know how many horsepower the windshield wiper motor on ... say a 1972 Dodge Dart would produce, but it was plenty for clearing all but the heaviest of snowfalls. And I can easilly see someone who spent most of their life driving such cars to be mystified at how "flimsy" a modern car is, and be convinced that the wipers motors had a "design defect".
For instance, my grandfather bought a Chevy Impala new in 1970, and then replaced it with a Honda Civic in 1991. Even a 1976 Honda Civic had stronger wipers than a 1991 Civic, and I know he never felt comfortable driving that car, and sold it a year later because he didn't feel safe in it.


The customer in question needs to "get with the times", but I do see how she could have come to expect performance that is beyond the capabilities of modern cars.