The rudest customer I've ever spoken to....

[emax4]

You can reply, "At least I know I'll have water/gas/electricity in my long and hateful life, and that'll make me VERY happy.."

[Merriweather]

Can you believe he actually wished me a "long and hateful life?" I was stunned! How is that possibly not personal? Anyway, yeah I was pretty irritated after that call, I had to take a breather. It's scary to know that I read about worse situations here though, I feel so bad for some people here!

I think I'd have said a quick "and you, too, Sir" - you can always blame it later on automatic reflex

[purplecat41877]

why don't they just cut off his account?!

(hands over a pair of scissors)

[lvceline]

Can you believe he actually wished me a "long and hateful life?" I was stunned! How is that possibly not personal? Anyway, yeah I was pretty irritated after that call, I had to take a breather. It's scary to know that I read about worse situations here though, I feel so bad for some people here!

[rose_metal_nz]

Gah. If everyone knows the guy is an asshat, why don't they just cut off his account?!

[MoonCat]

You can't make a guy like that happy. He's miserable and hates his life, so he takes it out on everyone else. If he put that energy into fixing whatever's wrong he might be happier, but no...it's easier and more satisfying to ruin someone else's day.

Don't take it personally and just remind yourself that you will probably never be as unhappy as that guy, because he makes his life worse by being an asshole.

[Redbeard]

Ah yes, the "I'll be an asshat until I get what I want" type.
The sad part is, it generally works.

[lvceline]

Hey guys,

On Friday I had the biggest jerk customer! A little background on me first...I work for a utility company in their customer care department which is basically a call center.

Anyway, the call came in and I give my usual opening line "such and such utility company, this is lvceline, how can I help you?" So he starts in with something like "how can you help me? Well first start by getting rid of those cans...cans of beans, cans of corn..." in my head I was like "what in the world is he talking about?" Then I realized he was referring to the way I answered the phone and said "can" instead of "may." Well, I thought he was joking so I was just going to take it in stride and jokingly said "okay so you must be an English teach" to which he replied "no, I just speak English, it's a beautiful language." He had such a snotty tone at that point and I could tell he was being nothing but condescending. I figured this was the start of something bad.

Next, I pull up his account and immediately notice there's an alert stating "ABUSIVE CUSTOMER" which of course makes me nervous but I could already tell we were going to have problems.

I get through verifying his information and he's past due on his utility and is in jeopardy of having his service shut off. He had received a 48 hour shut off notice 48 hours ago and was calling to make a payment. I told him I could take a payment for him no problem, but advised him that it costs $1.99 to pay over the phone, and that's when he lost it. Now, normally we can give the customer an extension while we wait for payment if they don't want to do it that way, but he has broken commitments to the point we weren't going to offer an extension and we needed payment up front to be able to prevent shut off. He's called in before and knows the extra cost...I don't blame anyone for not liking it but just that information he already knew set him off.

He started laying into me about how can I sleep at night asking people to pay money to pay their bill and he's not going to pay that fee. He also asked me how I could work for such a company and that I was just a mindless monkey and my company was pulling the strings. I told him he's making it personal and it's not about that. I tried to steer it away but at that point he wanted someone else who was going to tell him something different so I was about to get a supervisor and as I told him I was going to put him on hold for a moment he wished me a long and hateful life! I couldn't believe how rude he was! I couldn't say anything to him, he was just rude and nasty no matter what came out of my mouth.

Fortunately I don't get this league of customer very often, but I just couldn't believe how rude he was being to me for no reason. Looking over his account even going back as far as 10 years, every single comment is about how rude and abusive he was and how almost everyone who had to talk to him threatened to hang up on him including the supervisor I transferred him to. I wish we could stop servicing customer's like that. I kept thinking about how sorry I feel for his wife and kids and what a jerk he must be to everyone he talks to..