You think I can read this chicken scratch??

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

<Red Checkmark> has an obscure page on our website detailing how formal complaints are handled. You can either fill out an online form and submit it or, you can do it the old fashioned and way and mail us a letter.

All of those letters get referred to the department I now work in.

Most are typed and easily legible but I still get a few that are hand written. We don't get actual physical copies, just scans of the written documents in PDF form.

So a complaint gets referred to me and this guy has sent in three handwritten pages. The hand writing is so difficult to read I suspect he must be a doctor. I can infer he is very mad about something (a discount..I think) thanks to the copious exclamation points everywhere, but that's about the best I can do and we don't have the budget for a professional handwriting expert so I move to plan B: email.

I like to get as much information as I can BEFORE I call the customer, that way the actual call is usually much shorter and smoother.

Unfortunately my plan B fails spectacularly because the email address on these scanned documents is as illegible as everything else. So you'd think I could maybe pull an email address off his <Red Checkmark> account but I pull it up and nope, there's just a generic email address listed.

Well, so much for that. So now I have to call him not really having a clue what's going on which I don't like, but c'est la vie.

In this department we have bascially a three strikes policy. You file a complaint and we attempt to call you three times. If you don't answer, the complaint is closed.

Guess what happened with this guy? Yep, three calls and no answer so I closed it and went on with my day.

Here's where the SC factor comes in.

Four days later, I get a call from the customer in question and he is FURIOUS. How dare he have to spend time calling me when we should have called him. How dare I ask him to explain his complaint because "Everything was in the letter" and how dare we close his complaint and waste his valuable time.

So, after he spent awhile insulting my intelligence level because I couldn't make heads or tails of his horrible writing, we eventually identified the problem: Awhile back, a <Red Checkmark> store employee had mistakenly told this guy he was eligible for a discount he actually doesn't qualify for because that discount only applies to people in a certain profession.

He then said: "Well, just give it to me anyway" and I explained that I can't do that because the system regularly checks to confirm customers who have those discounts are actually eligible for them and if it finds accounts that are not, the discount is removed. So even if I did give it to him, he'd lose it in a matter of months.

"Unacceptable!" he says. "Unavoidable." I respond. Then I offer a $120 credit (equal to roughly 9 months of the discount) because we did screw up here to an extent and the guy has been with us for over 10 years.

No dice. He wants his discount and he wants it "for life". I explain that's not going to happen. He demands my manager.

"Sorry, sir. My manager is not customer facing. There's no one else to speak to and no customer service departments higher than this one."

Then he cussed me out and said he's going to Short Run wireless. Yeah okay, have fun with that. Bye, Felicia!

[EricKei]

So a complaint gets referred to me and this guy has sent in three handwritten pages. The hand writing is so difficult to read I suspect he must be a doctor.

Ya know, my handwriting was so bad when I was growing up that my family told me that I was destined to be a doctor. Sadly, that never happened >_>



One thing I did end up doing, however, was working as a copyeditor at a small newspaper or two. This meant that part of my job was reading incoming complaint letters that the boss had deemed worthy (or, at least, lengthy enough...gotta fill that space somehow!) to publish. Unfortunately, he wouldn't just let us scan them in and run them as images. I got too many to count that were just as hard to read as what you described, and I always had to re-type them by hand, translating them as best I could. . . while transcribing them verbatim. The grammar---i in me died a little bit each time I had to attempt to read one of those infernal missives.

[Food Lady]

"Unacceptable!" he says. "Unavoidable." I respond.

That made me literally laugh out loud. It's just the perfect answer.

[earl colby pottinger]

Bad member

I am part of a homesteading group that are making our own tiny houses.

When we started out we had a leading member who made all sorts of rules to the point that we started to get confused about how they were to be used.

So we would asked him the question, "It's all in the paper work" he would claim.

We pointed out we could not understand the papers and could he explain some points.

Time and time again this happened. But we came up with a final answer.

We threw him and his rules out of the group.

We bought the land, next month I start building the house.

[Argabarga]

That made me literally laugh out loud. It's just the perfect answer.

"The list of belligerent nations who signed surrender documents they swore they never would is forming around the block, Sir. And they had actual armies, with guns and everything...."