What would you do? (very long)

[Chanlin]

So here is an interesting scenario. This isn't really a story about a sucky customer but a sucky situation for two customers.

Short Background: I work for a prepaid cellular phone service provider. We use CDMA phones which uses ESN's instead of SIM cards for identification of the phones. In order to activate a phone we assign the Phone number to a specific ESN. Now in theory every CDMA phone on the market should have a unique ESN. This is an 11 digit number that follows a few rules because the computer stores it in a hexidecimal format. Computer techs know what i mean, and possibly some people who do some more advanced maths, but sufficing to say in theory each and every phone on the market should have a unique ESN.

Now, I say in theory. Every once in a great while an ESN gets duplicated and put on to two different phones. This is a rare enough occurrence that in 6 years of working in this industry I have only ever seen it personally happen 3 times across many hundreds of thousands of transactions.

So, I am dealing now with an issue that has taken place over the course of the last 3 days. We have been made aware of an issue where an ESN has been duplicated. One of the phones belongs to an active account in New York, the other belongs to an active account in Ohio.

Now comes the monkey wrenches:

1: The New York account has been active longer by a whole 1 month.

2: The Ohio account has had his phone longer. The New York account just got his 2 months ago as a result of purchasing a replacement phone, reasons at this point are unknown to me AFAIK he just wanted a different phone.

3: 4 days ago the OH account owner called to find out why his phone was not working. Well, the ESN had been changed over to a NY phone number. He of course never authorized this. So, the CSR changed the ESN back to his phone number and placed the NY account on a dummy ESN that we have on a phone in house.

Of course the NY account owner called back the next day to find out why his phone was not working. He ended up being transfered to a supervisor because the CSR taking his call rightly told him that we could not turn his phone back on and offered to send him a warranty replacement because his phone is under warranty.

4: The phone in OH is not under warranty, the customer has had the phone for about 3 years. The phone in NY is under warranty as it was just sold within the last 2 months.

So this is where I come in. The supervisor went ahead and reactivated the NY account and opened a ticket to have the warranty replacement processed which I have done and set up the phone to be shipped. In the meanwhile the owner of the OH account called again to find out why his phone was not on. The CSR who took the call turned his account back on thus turning the account in NY back off.

Today I fielded a call from the customer in NY. This was through our regular customer service line. IE as far as the customer knows I am just a regular grunt. In actuality I have authority on par with a supervisor in this case because the issue is one of a warranty claim now

Now he explained his situation to me and as soon as he mentioned New York and Duplicate ESN I knew who he was. He said he was told that if his line got deactivated again to just call us back and we would turn it back on. There are notes on his account showing this. There are also notes on the OH account to the same effect.

I told him I would not turn his account back on for the following reasons:

1: To turn his account back on, I would be turning off the account of another paying customer.

2: In order for this cycle to stop someone has to be told no we will not turn your account back on. I'm sorry to say I'm making the decision of it being the NY account because we have already warrantied your phone. The owner of the OH account does not have a warranty on his phone thus we are unable to extend the same courtesy to him as we are to the NY account.

3: Sorry, luck of the draw in this case to. This issue will continue.

I posed the question to the NY customer of "What do I do when the OH account owner calls me back? Tell him I can't turn his phone back on?" Ultimately until the warranty claim gets processed one of these two customers has to be without service. Since the claim got in after 4pm on friday the actual shipment will not occur until Monday. Shipping to NY is 1 to 2 business days for us so the NY customer will be without service until At least Wednesday at the latest.

He of course screamed and yelled and pissed and moaned to speak with a supervisor. Since in this situation I have some authority I put my foot down and said no. He ended up hanging up on me. I have not yet heard from anyone on this issue on whether or not he has complained, but so far no one has turned his account back on yet.

I left detailed notes on the account saying not to turn it back on until the warranty replacement has been received.

So the question I have is, what would you do and or what do you think?

[BossLady]

I don't think you did anything wrong but the supervisor who authorized the replacement should have
1. Directed the customer to a retail location for a replacement phone.
or
2. Rushed the phone so it would have be in his hand the next day.

[BlaqueKatt]

I don't think you did anything wrong but the supervisor who authorized the replacement should have
1. Directed the customer to a retail location for a replacement phone.
or
2. Rushed the phone so it would have be in his hand the next day.

from working in CS for "the big red checkmark"...neither of these would have been possible-here's why:

1-a retail location(normally an "authorized dealer" with their own rules/guidelines stock-nothing much to do with corp. other than having the brand*) does not handle warranty issues-and being a 2 month old phone is outside of any phone company's return period.

2-the op stated the claim was not issued until after 4pm on a friday-no way to rush/next day in that situation. Especially as depending on the location of the op vs location of the warehouse-the warehouse may have been closed already, and does not work on weekends.


*would you expect wal-mart to cover the warranty on the Braun coffeemaker you bought there? Same situation-brand x cellphone provider is selling phones made by brand y company-the warranty is through brand y cellphone company not brand x provider.

[Javarod]

And the answer to the duplicate ESN is that the New York phone is a clone. Boy, you don't hear about this much any more. Technically ifn you wanted to, you could clone the ESN from your phone onto as many phones as you want, thing is you can only use one at a time. Its fairly easy as i understand it, so long as you know what you're doing (we have a lot of stores here in Phoenix that promise to flash your phone to Cricket for example). Most likely what happened in this case was the NY customer bought his phone at a discount, prolly got a smoking deal on it. Now how they OH customer's ESN wound up being cloning is up for guesses, since he's had his phone longer without activating it, it was at least cloned once, but how he fits into the picture is anyone's guess.

As to the problem, warranty shouldn't've been the issue, one of them needs a new phone, or their phone reprogrammed, its easier to just give away a phone than figure out who to punish for this kind of stuff, since the NY customer is clearly innocent albeit stupid for buying his phone at a smoking deal, the OH customer, who knows how his was cloned, could've been as simple as loaning it to a friend.

[Chanlin]

BlaqueKatt is correct on both counts for reasons of not being able to do any rush shipping or in store exchanges. we have negotiated them on the past, but it can be like pulling teeth without use of pain killers.

As for the cloned ESN it was actually sent through one of our distributors. We get quite a few of our phones through a 3rd party company that specializes in refurbishing and recycling used cell phones. Part of their process is to reprogram the phone's ESN so more than likely someone in their warehouse screwed up in this process.

As I said before it is a very rare occurrence. In the end the question comes down to who do you screw? This one was extra sucky/annoying for the customer because of the timing of reporting things. As I said in my OP the customer really wasn't sucky at all since IMO he had every reason to be annoyed and ticked off. He was civil despite the yelling at the end of the call.

[prb]

Which is why I like Fido, okay that's cause it's GSM, but if theres a warranty issue, I take it to my closest dealer and they do an OTC exchange.

Also, here's a question - did the customer get a credit for the few days he can't use his phone?

[LadyAndreca]

I think you did it the only way that could cover both customers. I'd just try to make sure that the NY customer 1) still has warranty on the new phone, ie, getting shipped a new phone doesn't screw up his warranty or replacement plan, and 2) gets some sort of credit for the days without service. If that's not possible, okay, but I'd try to make sure those two things at least were covered for him.

[Javarod]

As for the cloned ESN it was actually sent through one of our distributors. We get quite a few of our phones through a 3rd party company that specializes in refurbishing and recycling used cell phones. Part of their process is to reprogram the phone's ESN so more than likely someone in their warehouse screwed up in this process.

Ah, gotcha, i assumed we were talking about new or ostensibly new phones. Yep, that's a whoops, but i can easily picture it happening ifn one got disturbed and lost their place while doing a batch, that or a computer hiccup.

[Chanlin]

Also, here's a question - did the customer get a credit for the few days he can't use his phone?

I left a message for my boss to suggest this, but sadly this is not a decision within my control or he would already be getting something.

1) still has warranty on the new phone, ie, getting shipped a new phone doesn't screw up his warranty or replacement plan

This fortunately is a given. In fact it resets his warranty from the date of delivery. That is at least one aspect of my job that I like, we have a somewhat decent warranty (now).

[Arm]

The answer is... or anyway my answer is...

Screw the NY customer; he got a bum phone, and it's not his fault, but it's a bum phone and that's all you can say. You did the right thing there.

But...

Every. Single. Tech,
Who turned his phone BACK on, thus fucking over the OH customer, once this was a known issue? These techs should be fucked in the EAR. Fired, or retrained with a BRICK. They took an annoying situation and made it infinitely worse. They repeatedly screwed BOTH customers, and what's worse, absolutely destroyed both customers' capacity to trust the company.

The NY guy... HE doesn't know that YOU are right and the other techs are wrong, he just knows that SOMEONE is fucking him over; sometimes when he calls to complain, his phone works, and sometimes when he calls, he gets told to screw off. When we read your post, we can see that this is what happened... but the other techs that guy talked to, they had some sort of plausible bullshit to feed him. Undoing that kind of damage is a real pain in the ass.

Anyway. That's just... wow. Sucks to be you to have to clean up after it all, man.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

fucked in the EAR.

Every time I see that phrase, I think "That gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'wet willie.'"

[Bunny the Veggie Slayer]

from working in CS for "the big red checkmark"...neither of these would have been possible-here's why:

1-a retail location(normally an "authorized dealer" with their own rules/guidelines stock-nothing much to do with corp. other than having the brand*) does not handle warranty issues-and being a 2 month old phone is outside of any phone company's return period.

*would you expect wal-mart to cover the warranty on the Braun coffeemaker you bought there? Same situation-brand x cellphone provider is selling phones made by brand y company-the warranty is through brand y cellphone company not brand x provider.

Wow! That's a big difference to the way it works in the UK. Here when you buy any product, it forms a contract between you and whoever sold you the item. This means if you have any problems, the vendor is your first port of call. They may tell you to contact the manufacturer, but this cannot leave you out of pocket.

In the braun coffee-maker example, my store would honour the warranty (as long as a receipt was kept). Infact as we'd get the credit back from head office we would even do it (occasionally) for a good customer who had no reciept. For larger items (full size TV's etc.) we'd pass the customers details on to the makers support line ourselves.

[Chanlin]

@Bunny

Here in the US we do have what is called the law of implied warranty. IE a product sold is guaranteed to function as advertised and if it does not the buyer is entitled to either a refund or a replacement at the discretion of the seller. In most cases the manufacturer of a product provides their own warranty above and beyond what a store may provide. This is most common with electronics or other household items like a coffee maker. Some manufacturer's prefer to be the sole warrantor and make agreements as such with stores that sell their product that way they can ensure quality customer service.

This can be overridden by written terms made available to and agreed upon by the buyer at the time of purchase. This can be as simple as a clearly visible printed sign saying "All sales final" or available terms on a flier or other printed medium that the buyer can read before purchase.

My company has terms of warranty printed on the box our phones are sold in. I can say in the instance of the OP the original phone was not under warranty any further which we track by ESN.

For the NY customer since it was an issue of a duplicated ESN, not the customer's fault, this fell under special circumstances in my book. I made the call to warranty his phone based on our standard which was within so many days of his purchase date. I used the date of his swap to the phone in question as my judgment call and made the call to warranty the phone.

I'm not sure what the particular retailers terms were. We do have some of our retailers who have a better warranty than we do. In the case of the OP I couldn't even verify if the NY customer had purchased from a retailer or not, but at the same time there was also the consideration that the phone number tied to the phone had been active with us for at least 3 years. So at this point it was really just helping out a customer who got screwed by circumstances that were not his fault.