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I'm not sure what this is. Kind of sucky customer mixed with sucky coworker mixed with sighting...but I think it's mostly sucky customer.
About five months ago, we had a paid obituary for a "Nadia Guardia" (fake name blatantly borrowed from Chrono Trigger). The obit was about five column inches with no photo. I know, I pulled it up and looked at it. Now, obviously, for a paid obituary, we charge money, right? Right. The going rate is about $25 per column inch (a newspaper page is about six columns), so this obit probably cost about $125. Ridiculous, I know, but hey, people pay it.
One woman, a daughter or sister or some sort of female relative of Nadia Guardia, has been causing hell for us ever since this obituary ran. She's kind of a raving psycho bitch, to put it mildly.
Daughter of course ordered a few copies of the paper with the obituary in it, which we gathered up and mailed to her for some sort of discount (10 papers for the price of eight or some kind of thing like that) and without charging for the shipping and handling. As soon as she got the papers, though, the shit hath hitteth the fan.
She INSISTS that the obituary we ran for her mother (?...you know, I'm just going to assume it's her mother because she's never exactly been clear what relation she is) was two columns wide, about a quarter page in size, and had a photo with it. Which, by rough guess, would have made it about a $300 obituary...if it ever existed.
However, we have on file that the obituary only ran once, and it was the five inch version. We checked all our computer files. Just in case our files weren't correct, my boss RM went to the back and went through two weeks worth of dead tree by HAND, never found another copy of the obituary. It just flat doesn't exist.
But Daughter kept yelling that her imaginary version was the obit she saw, that was the version she wanted, and we were being "hateful" by not giving it to her and only offering the cheap knock-off. She left vicious voicemail messages for me, RM, the editors, a couple of the reporters (even though since this was technically a paid ad, none of us in the newsroom had anything to do with it), and the advertising department manager. We all called back and told her, many times, the same thing...an obituary matching that description NEVER EVER RAN.
I hadn't thought of any of this as worthy of much attention because how many of us have had hallucinating customers, am I right? But what happened with the funeral home this morning moved this story into the red on the WTF-o-meter.
I get a call from the funeral home this morning about 8:30, and it's the funeral home that handled the obituary. I hadn't thought about it in a while, so when they started asking about an improper obituary from April, eyebrows went up. He mentioned the Nadia Guardia name and I recognized it right away.
Apparently, how this works is that the funeral home itself pays for the obituary, then adds it to the funeral bill to get paid back by the relatives. Daughter, however, is refusing to pay the funeral home for the obituary because it's "not what she wants" (despite the fact that paid obituaries HAVE to be approved before they're run). Funeral home has been trying to coax the money out of her and she refuses to pay.
So the funeral home called us and asked for their money back.
I don't know if you caught the full stupidity of that statement so let me repeat it.
THEY ASKED FOR THEIR MONEY BACK.
They wrote out the obituary, they okayed it with the family (at least they were SUPPOSED TO), they sent it to the ad department, the ad department worked it up and sent it back to them to be proofread, and the funeral home HAD to approve it before it could have been run. They told us "okay" at every freaking turn. But Daughter won't pay THEM because she hallucinated a different obituary that never existed...and so they seem to think that somehow, HER not paying THEM entitles THEM to get back their money from US.
Don't try to draw the lines connecting those thoughts to each other because I already tried and now I have a nosebleed.
Fortunately, G downstairs in advertising basically laughed them off the phone, so no refund for them (at least for now, I have a feeling this will come back around again later). Which is good because I was a little worried that the manager down there would give them one. Not that I think he's a spineless wimp, but just because this obit has been haunting us for a third of a year and we're all getting driven a little nuts by it.
Wheeeee, the fun things funeral homes do...
About five months ago, we had a paid obituary for a "Nadia Guardia" (fake name blatantly borrowed from Chrono Trigger). The obit was about five column inches with no photo. I know, I pulled it up and looked at it. Now, obviously, for a paid obituary, we charge money, right? Right. The going rate is about $25 per column inch (a newspaper page is about six columns), so this obit probably cost about $125. Ridiculous, I know, but hey, people pay it.
One woman, a daughter or sister or some sort of female relative of Nadia Guardia, has been causing hell for us ever since this obituary ran. She's kind of a raving psycho bitch, to put it mildly.
Daughter of course ordered a few copies of the paper with the obituary in it, which we gathered up and mailed to her for some sort of discount (10 papers for the price of eight or some kind of thing like that) and without charging for the shipping and handling. As soon as she got the papers, though, the shit hath hitteth the fan.
She INSISTS that the obituary we ran for her mother (?...you know, I'm just going to assume it's her mother because she's never exactly been clear what relation she is) was two columns wide, about a quarter page in size, and had a photo with it. Which, by rough guess, would have made it about a $300 obituary...if it ever existed.
However, we have on file that the obituary only ran once, and it was the five inch version. We checked all our computer files. Just in case our files weren't correct, my boss RM went to the back and went through two weeks worth of dead tree by HAND, never found another copy of the obituary. It just flat doesn't exist.
But Daughter kept yelling that her imaginary version was the obit she saw, that was the version she wanted, and we were being "hateful" by not giving it to her and only offering the cheap knock-off. She left vicious voicemail messages for me, RM, the editors, a couple of the reporters (even though since this was technically a paid ad, none of us in the newsroom had anything to do with it), and the advertising department manager. We all called back and told her, many times, the same thing...an obituary matching that description NEVER EVER RAN.
I hadn't thought of any of this as worthy of much attention because how many of us have had hallucinating customers, am I right? But what happened with the funeral home this morning moved this story into the red on the WTF-o-meter.
I get a call from the funeral home this morning about 8:30, and it's the funeral home that handled the obituary. I hadn't thought about it in a while, so when they started asking about an improper obituary from April, eyebrows went up. He mentioned the Nadia Guardia name and I recognized it right away.
Apparently, how this works is that the funeral home itself pays for the obituary, then adds it to the funeral bill to get paid back by the relatives. Daughter, however, is refusing to pay the funeral home for the obituary because it's "not what she wants" (despite the fact that paid obituaries HAVE to be approved before they're run). Funeral home has been trying to coax the money out of her and she refuses to pay.
So the funeral home called us and asked for their money back.
I don't know if you caught the full stupidity of that statement so let me repeat it.
THEY ASKED FOR THEIR MONEY BACK.
They wrote out the obituary, they okayed it with the family (at least they were SUPPOSED TO), they sent it to the ad department, the ad department worked it up and sent it back to them to be proofread, and the funeral home HAD to approve it before it could have been run. They told us "okay" at every freaking turn. But Daughter won't pay THEM because she hallucinated a different obituary that never existed...and so they seem to think that somehow, HER not paying THEM entitles THEM to get back their money from US.
Don't try to draw the lines connecting those thoughts to each other because I already tried and now I have a nosebleed.
Fortunately, G downstairs in advertising basically laughed them off the phone, so no refund for them (at least for now, I have a feeling this will come back around again later). Which is good because I was a little worried that the manager down there would give them one. Not that I think he's a spineless wimp, but just because this obit has been haunting us for a third of a year and we're all getting driven a little nuts by it.
Wheeeee, the fun things funeral homes do...
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