This is taking too long!

[greensinestro]

I hate impatient customers. Had a jewel the other day who was reporting his Internet circuit down, but a) had no information to look up his service, and b) was getting upset about the required troubleshooting questions. It went like this:

Me: Repair, this is greensinestro.
SC: I need to report my Internet down. I'm Asshole with Shitheads R Us.
Me: OK. I need to ask for your circuit ID please.
SC: It's in your computer. Ugh! This is taking too long. Let me talk to S! He never gives me a hard time like you are.
Me: I'm sorry Mr. Asshole, but S isn't in at the moment. You'll have to report this to me, plus you have several circuits with us. I need the actual circuit ID or the address so I don't open a report on the wrong circuit.
SC: This is taking way too long. Get me S so I can get off this phone.
Me: Mr Asshole, I just told you S isn't in, and I need this information to help you with this outage.
SC: Fine! It's 155 I'm A Fuckface Lane. This is taking too long! Put S on the phone!
Me: Mr Asshole, he isn't here and gets in later. I can't put him on if he's not in. Now, I need to ask you what you see on your equipment to find out why it's down.
SC: Never mind. I'll just speak to S later.

I actually handled this to the end, but with the time it took to deal with Mr Asshole's impatience, not to mention his asking for my co-worker S three times after I told him he wasn't in, we could have solved this problem.

He also has ten locations, but we aren't supposed to ask for address information or anything helpful. Next time, I'll just open ten trouble tickets, then charge him for ten repair visits. Make himthink twice about being Mr Asshole with Shitheads R Us at 155 I'm A Fuckface Lane.

[jjc927]

Well, you can't expect an SC like this to actually listen to what you say can you? Sounds like you've described him to a T.

[Moirae]

I'm amazed at your patience.

[loyaltoapoint]

OMG I totally go through that ALL the time the "this is taking too long". However, they don't have time (at my job) to go thru an hour of troubleshooting, but they can wait 1 to 2 business days for their friggin smartphone?

[Blade_Raver]

There may be more to this.

If these are T1 circuits that are down and are bound to a Service Level Agreement (SLA). It sounds like this guy is trying to indirectly cause your company to violate the SLA and try to get money knocked off his bill.

The suck strategy goes like this:

SC goes to the T1 SmartJack/CSU and does something to it to cause it to fail. (Unplugs a wire, unseats a card, pours water on it, shocks it, etc.)

SC intentionally calls up Telco and gets pushy (just like you experienced here.) and eventually hangs up already knowing he's going to get nowhere. Since the information wasn't complete, Telco can't log the call.

SC waits a few days, calls back Telco and complains again about the first call. While complaining he makes a few things up along the way to try to make the Telco rep to think they're in the wrong. Gives all pertinent information. Trouble call gets placed, tech goes out to site, fixes the problem and restores service.

After issue is fixed, SC calls Telco back and raises hell complaining of an SLA violation and starts demanding compensation.

Telco has no logs of 1st call and therefore cannot disprove SC's story, they panic and compensate SC. SC's plan works as he gets free internet service at the cost of a few days of downtime.

A dirty tactic by the SC causing Telco to raise prices to recoup for lost profits.

Anyways, that's my $0.02. Hope it helps.

Of course, if I'm wrong, I will stand corrected.

[EricKei]

BR: In other words. you're saying that a particularly clever SC might do something like this in order to get something for nothing, knowing full well that it could cost workers their jobs in the long run.

Sounds quite possible to me.

[Blade_Raver]

Pretty much.

I don't put anything past sucky customers these days..

I hope this isn't the case though..

[greensinestro]

The trickery theory is probably correct. We do have the SLA with these people, and Asshole's like this often take advantage. Out tickets have a field for this, and almost all of his tickets get it checked off. It then creates more work just to prove how unjustified the claim is.

[Blade_Raver]

It's a shame companies are shady like that.

Greensinestro, my sincere sympathy for having to deal with customers like that.

[EricKei]

Any chance you can gather up all of his past tickets, along with evidence of his past BS, and fire him as a customer? he may very well be costing your company more $ than he brings in...and THAT is something the brass tends to actually take seriously

[greensinestro]

Funny you should ask that. I found out we are firing him and he will be gone at the end if this month due to the money our company has lost. He called again this week and tried pulling the same shit one last time. Our CEO isn't too interested in whether we fix his problems or not up until that time.

[EricKei]

Funny you should ask that. I found out we are firing him and he will be gone at the end if this month due to the money our company has lost.

Score! To whomever over there got the ball rolling on this turd in desperate need of a polish.

[Blade_Raver]

Nicely done!

[greensinestro]

For some reason in the past two weeks, this guy has been having "problems" with his circuits. We get rid of him on May 31, yet he has called at least three times, antagonizing anyone he talks to with his same "this is taking too long" spiel. What we think he's doing is he's probably making up these problems so we can be guilty of violating our agreement to not disconnect him until then. This way, he can make a few more bucks before going to his new company.

Can't wait until the end of the month.

[Blade_Raver]

I wonder if there's a way your company can spread the word to competitors about this guy and ban him from SLAs with other telcos.