Tweet
I have 3 recent stories to share from my oh so wonderful (sarcasm) place of employment.
Quick Background: I work in a call center for a prepaid cellular phone service.
You mean I have to pay for it
So a customer of ours had his phone stolen apparently. Amazingly enough our warranty does not cover theft. As a courtesy my boss offered him a discount on a replacement phone, the same model he had (Motorola Razr) for half price.
The guy didn't have a credit card or anything like that so Boss man took it a step further and said if he loads prepaid airtime equivalent to the price of the half off replacement phone we will deduct the money from his account and ship a phone to him. - This offer was made at the beginning of May.
Customer was not happy that we weren't replacing the phone for free. He called today and spoke with me.
Me: Well sir I see per the notes on the account that my boss offered you a half price Motorola Razr, and all you need to do to pay for it is load airtime to the account equivalent to the price and we will ship it to you.
SC: Can you leave a message for your boss that if he ships the phone today I can have the money on the phone by Monday. I'm in the hospital right now so I can't get the money on there just yet.
Me:
(mm hmm and I have a very nice piece of ocean front property in Ohio to sell you) I'm sorry sir, but without a payment being made nothing can be shipped.
Rinse-Lather-Lather Some more-Repeat a few times
After about 5 minutes of this round about he hung up on me. In the background I heard him say "Stupid ass" just before he hung up.
Yes amazingly enough, we expect you to pay for something before we will put it in the mail.
Smart ass comments
This call was for a wireless number port.
SC: Yes, I'm calling about a Port from Alltel.
Me: OK, is this regarding a new port request or one that you have already started?
SC: [sarcasm]Well I'm just now calling so what do you think?
Me: I think its entirely possible that you may have called a request in already hence my first question. What's the number you'd like to port.
Amazingly enough the call was normal from there on out. I haven't heard anything about a complaint yet either
Occasionally we know what we're talking about
This issue was another one regarding a wireless number port. This happened to be for a transfer from my company to another company which shall remain nameless to protect the ignorant.
The issue was the other company OC had submitted the wrong account security PIN on their first request. So they sent a response on that request with the correct PIN. We tried to issue a confirmation which was rejected by their computer system. The response their system was giving on the rejection was invalid TP (invalid trading partner, IE their system was saying we as a company were not a telephone service provider they recognized). Now per OC own tier 3 technical support this is a known bug in their system which we have encountered when porting number from OC to my company. The solution is always cancel the port request and submit a new one.
Short technical explanation. All Porting requests have a request number associated with them. This usually contains the FCC ID number of the provider making the request. The issue with OC's system is that somehow or someway it is misreading the FCC ID on requests that have more than 4 request lines (each response constitutes a request line IE: We submit a port, that is line 1, OC responds with wrong account number, that is line 2, we submit a response with the correct account number that is line 3 and so on). Once it hits more than 4 lines their system for some reason or another stops recognizing the FCC ID and kicks back the invalid trading partner response.
So anyhow, we get a call today about a number transferring from my company to OC, I did not take the original call. At my company when it comes to concerns with the porting software I'm the last line of support before we escalate issues to the technical support for the porting software which is a third party. So the CSR who took the call asked me what to do with the invalid trading partner response on the port out. I took the time to explain the above and said all they need to do is cancel their request and submit a new one. This really should be a simple 5 minute or less solution. The CSR said ok and hung up with me.
10 minutes later I get a call from another CSR about the same port request. I repeat the same solution.
I get calls like this no less than 6 times in the space of 50 minutes
and then eventually ask the CSR to patch the rep from OC through to me. After two more similar calls I finally asked the rep from OC calling me to put me through to their supervisor, explain the situation to the supervisor who proceeds to actually do what I suggested and the problem was solved in less than 2 minutes. 
I mean seriously how hard is it to just try what we are suggesting rather than keep telling me I need to issue you a response and everything should be fine.
Quick Background: I work in a call center for a prepaid cellular phone service.
You mean I have to pay for it
So a customer of ours had his phone stolen apparently. Amazingly enough our warranty does not cover theft. As a courtesy my boss offered him a discount on a replacement phone, the same model he had (Motorola Razr) for half price.
The guy didn't have a credit card or anything like that so Boss man took it a step further and said if he loads prepaid airtime equivalent to the price of the half off replacement phone we will deduct the money from his account and ship a phone to him. - This offer was made at the beginning of May.
Customer was not happy that we weren't replacing the phone for free. He called today and spoke with me.
Me: Well sir I see per the notes on the account that my boss offered you a half price Motorola Razr, and all you need to do to pay for it is load airtime to the account equivalent to the price and we will ship it to you.
SC: Can you leave a message for your boss that if he ships the phone today I can have the money on the phone by Monday. I'm in the hospital right now so I can't get the money on there just yet.
Me:
(mm hmm and I have a very nice piece of ocean front property in Ohio to sell you) I'm sorry sir, but without a payment being made nothing can be shipped.Rinse-Lather-Lather Some more-Repeat a few times
After about 5 minutes of this round about he hung up on me. In the background I heard him say "Stupid ass" just before he hung up.
Yes amazingly enough, we expect you to pay for something before we will put it in the mail.
Smart ass comments
This call was for a wireless number port.
SC: Yes, I'm calling about a Port from Alltel.
Me: OK, is this regarding a new port request or one that you have already started?
SC: [sarcasm]Well I'm just now calling so what do you think?
Me: I think its entirely possible that you may have called a request in already hence my first question. What's the number you'd like to port.
Amazingly enough the call was normal from there on out. I haven't heard anything about a complaint yet either
Occasionally we know what we're talking about
This issue was another one regarding a wireless number port. This happened to be for a transfer from my company to another company which shall remain nameless to protect the ignorant.
The issue was the other company OC had submitted the wrong account security PIN on their first request. So they sent a response on that request with the correct PIN. We tried to issue a confirmation which was rejected by their computer system. The response their system was giving on the rejection was invalid TP (invalid trading partner, IE their system was saying we as a company were not a telephone service provider they recognized). Now per OC own tier 3 technical support this is a known bug in their system which we have encountered when porting number from OC to my company. The solution is always cancel the port request and submit a new one.
Short technical explanation. All Porting requests have a request number associated with them. This usually contains the FCC ID number of the provider making the request. The issue with OC's system is that somehow or someway it is misreading the FCC ID on requests that have more than 4 request lines (each response constitutes a request line IE: We submit a port, that is line 1, OC responds with wrong account number, that is line 2, we submit a response with the correct account number that is line 3 and so on). Once it hits more than 4 lines their system for some reason or another stops recognizing the FCC ID and kicks back the invalid trading partner response.
So anyhow, we get a call today about a number transferring from my company to OC, I did not take the original call. At my company when it comes to concerns with the porting software I'm the last line of support before we escalate issues to the technical support for the porting software which is a third party. So the CSR who took the call asked me what to do with the invalid trading partner response on the port out. I took the time to explain the above and said all they need to do is cancel their request and submit a new one. This really should be a simple 5 minute or less solution. The CSR said ok and hung up with me.
10 minutes later I get a call from another CSR about the same port request. I repeat the same solution.
I get calls like this no less than 6 times in the space of 50 minutes
and then eventually ask the CSR to patch the rep from OC through to me. After two more similar calls I finally asked the rep from OC calling me to put me through to their supervisor, explain the situation to the supervisor who proceeds to actually do what I suggested and the problem was solved in less than 2 minutes. I mean seriously how hard is it to just try what we are suggesting rather than keep telling me I need to issue you a response and everything should be fine.
Comment