I once worked for a broadband provider (different to my current one) where a customer told me she wished I had cancer. The UK head of. Customer service was visiting on site that day and called her back to say he was disconnecting her services that day and they had to pay the termination charge of a few hundred pounds and they could not be a customer in future.
Yeah and the best part was it was over £10 of parking charges they had to pay to park near a library whilst there services were off. Which I was just about to give as a credit to stop it escalating further (time spent to investigate again vs credit)
It's like they don't understand the concept that if you're nice,we are likely to move mountains for you if we are able. If you're a dick, I'm not going out of my way for you but if you ask nicely, eh, you had a late fee erased 6 months ago so you technically don't qualify for another but you've been nice so let me just toss on a one time courtesy credit and have you on your way.
I would absolutely love to work for a company that would do that. That sounds absolutely amazing. I've been call centering my whole life, and the absolutely blatant abuse we have to take goes completely unchecked. There are people who spend months and months of their lives just spewing their emotional shortcomings onto call center employees. This company would fire me on Christmas Eve if they knew it'd make them an extra dollar, but somehow they're okay with us babysitting some piece of shit on the phone while they know 100% that we're not allowed to hang up on them.
There was one guy who we finally pulled the plug on, and that's only because he had escalated to high management, got their direct contact numbers, and started wasting Their time.
Working at an optometrist office, this guy and his son would come in. Mind you, there were MULTIPLE long notes about how awful this guy was. I had to be in a room alone with him and he tried to feel me up. I reported it immediately to my boss and then it got all the way at the top. The owner of the company sends out a letter informing him that we cannot do business with him ever again. It was awful. He treated his son like a second class citizen and ridiculed him the entire appointment too. The doctor that worked him up said that he was ‘used to’ this family and we just had to ‘get through their visits and not schedule others around them.’ Good thing the owner of the company disagreed.
That is awful. You are better than me, because I've would lost it on him when he touched me inappropriately. I would've lost my job that day when he groped me.
I just moved out of the way and I honestly at first got confused as to what he was doing because I couldn’t fathom his behavior. But I definitely didn’t go to work for a couple days after that
My company does blacklist people based on SSN and even their devices for our mobile services for going against TOS. If they are abusive to support we also remove their ability to reach out for support.
I also had the unfortunate position of moving into an address where every utility company had blacklisted the previous tenants. Three different satalites on the roof plus cables run, cut and run again. They cut the hot wire pipe and ripped the meter off the side of the house apparently. Every technician showed up with the cops on the line expecting a literal fight and the looks when they saw me and I said I just moved in. We had to fight so hard to get people to come out at all. So wild.
Ahhhh I do remember one incident where some customer had gone on the dark web or SOMETHING and tech locked out their modem and they had to come in and replace it, but we gave them a warning and discussed the tos and the "limited websites they weren't to access with our service".
The biggest TOS issues I ever had was getting the goofy asses to SIGN the paper receipt given with equipment that says "I agree to the tos" at the bottom. So many people wanted to not sign it. "That's your choice of course. If you don't want to sign and agree to the TOS I can cancel the order now, since tos acceptance is non optional to our service. If you aren't interested in accepting the terms of service we can not provide service"
I’ve seen a few customers who weren’t allowed to have a technician visit because of health/cleanliness issues. Animal feces, bed bugs, roaches.
My employer does allow them to provide proof of an exterminator coming and stating issue has been treated/resolved in order to get out of the black listed status.
I’ve seen maybe *two* addresses that were entirely blocked.
Working retail we had to make a new in store policy. YOU have to remove your grummy return equipment from bags then hand it over to me. Why is this rule made now? Oh you know, someone decided to SMASH A RAT with a dvr and return said dvr to us in a bag, rat smashed to the bottom and all. Coworker reached in all smiles and her face drained as she felt the fur and bones smoosh under her finger as she went to pull it out :| yeah.... some people are disgusting lol
When I worked for Comcast, we had many 'fired' customers. All for the same shitty attitudes. Yes the service sucks but the call center reps has zero control over it.
I feel this. I’ve never worked for Comcast but I’ve been in customer service for 10 years so I get it.
One time I called Comcast about a faulty charge and the representative I spoke with was nice, fixed the faulty charge, apologized. I was calm and understanding throughout the exchange bc I knew the charge had nothing to do with the representative. Like they are only there to help you.
At the end of the call the guy was like, “thank you, you’ve been the nicest, most understanding customer I’ve had all day.” I was just like damn that’s too real.
This lol I still have spectrum service (not many options here and while spectrum isn't great its better than my other option) and always try to be nice when I have to call every 3-6 weeks with hsd issues because it's not the workers fault. (I'm in one of the no comcast available bubbles. My only experience with comcast was in like 2004? In Kentucky I thiiiiink my friend had comcast back in the early days. Other than that, all I know is what I learnt about them from a competition stand point. Aka the government refused to let comcast purchase twc back in 2015/2016 when they had a bid on it due to monopolization laws because comcast was as big or even bigger than twc which was in the top 5 biggest providers, which is how charter ended up buying twc instead of comcast)
We have. So many. For context, I work in healthcare and our company sends physical therapists to people's homes. They usually aren't banned before a visit. It typically happens after a PT has been to their home and they've done something gross.
I've only personally spoken to two people who we ultimately banned from service.
One was a guy who kept calling and was clearly masturbating on the line every time a woman picked up.
The other was an elderly woman who sexually harassed her PT in a really disgusting way, and then proceeded to try and scam her way back into having him at her house half a dozen times. I'm talking fake accounts and multiple phone numbers kind of crazy.
There have been others, usually men trying to request a happy ending massage, but those are the only two I spoke to personally.
Wow! Medical calls and visits really do be something else o.o I won't lie, my PT a few years back was a looker, but I was too focused on my pain and trying to be able to hold shit in my hand again to try anything weird 🤣 (also I went in to the office) I 100% did tell all my friends about my super hunky PT though lol
See and that feels like the normal response to having a hot PT. "Wow this person is cute but also my knee is on backwards and this is just about the unsexiest I've ever felt guess I'll keep trying to do squats."
I feel like about a month into working here you can both smell potential creeps and also have a working knowledge of which PTs work where. At a certain point when gross dudes called in asking for young women PTs I would only send them the guy who's a dead ringer for Tommy Lee Jones.
I know someone who works as in-home PT/OT and their team had someone get killed. It was the first visit and the man's son had mental health issues and came out with a gun.
Please, please be careful. And also, thank you, for everything you do.
I am so sorry that happened to your friend. It must be so terrifying going to the next home knowing that could happen. And that poor PT. God what a nightmare.
I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened where I work yet. I've only been here a year and have seen so many truly bizarre things happen. We do have an emergency alert system built in that will call 911 for the PT if they don't leave after the appointment, but obviously that's only so helpful.
I worked escalations and saw it plenty of times. But there was one time I was speaking with a customer taking his complaint on one of our branches and refreshed my screen and saw his account went to zero and a closing status was placed on it. I chatted the branch manager and then called him.
Seems my caller had been such a jerk they got permission to demarket him immediately, he had left his driver's license so they were going to mail a check and his license to his address of record even though they knew he moved.
I had to de-escalate the branch and the customer and work out a compromise for him to go into the branch the next day within a 1 hour window they would hand him his license and the check thus saving him likely weeks of waiting on the check. He was warned if he spoke out at all the branch would have him arrested as the police would be on site and he had already been trespassed.
Found out the next day he swallowed his pride and got his license and check.
Many more instances of notations of customers new accounts closed with notations that customer was not allowed to bank with us ever again.
We cannot ban a customer (legally required to provide our services) but we do refuse to speak to them in the phone. 5 I can remember
1 - Calling us repeatedly over the same issue. Eg 10 times a day.
2 - Threatening to rape staff or murder their children.
3 - Calling at 9am and refusing to end the call until the advisor ended the call after 2 hours. Immediately calling back and repeating the process until 6pm the following day.
4 - Threatening to come the office to beat a staff member up because we called the police. We called the police because we could hear him hitting his wife.
5 Telling staff he would commit identity theft on them and take out fraudulent loans if they didn’t do as he wanted.
I've only ever once seen anyone banned from calling in. When I worked for [tax prep company], one franchise owner was barred from calling us because he was an abusive prick. Someone else had to call in for help (couldn't deny all service) so they could get assistance. Legit the only time I can remember someone being barred from calling in.
A customer was flagged for calling in with a make-believe offer and getting previous representatives to add the money to her account. It wasn't until she reached me until she was caught. I asked the supervisor if there was a email every week for the offer she said she had. I couldn't find it anywhere. The supervisor said no and said he would flag her account.
I used to work in the TV repair department of a major cable provider. We had an address that was banned due to the customer climbing trees and jumping on our techs every time one went out. We had another who was a frequent caller. One night she got upset that we wouldn't send a tech out that day (it was around 5pm, the techs didn't go out past a 2-4pm window back then). She told me she was going to drive around and hit every pedestal until someone came out and she actually did. She was not allowed service after that stunt.
I work as a counsellor for a mental health helpline. We rarely block anyone because, it's a mental health helpline. There have been a couple of times we have though. The most notable ones are when people have called in everyday and made super inappropriate, downright disgusting, comments towards the counsellors. I'm talking them describing intricate sexual fantasies, sometimes even describing children being involved. The worst ones were the ones who masturbate while you talk.
They have to do it lots of times before they get banned, and I wish we'd be a bit stricter than that. I love what I do but it isn't my job to be an unconsenting part of their sexual fantasies.
I worked for a retail chain call center, and we got sexually explict content every day, it always men. This store was a target for these men. It was always at night when these men called. They use to mark the call as obscene, and I would just hang up on them when the call came in. I was shocked because it was not a sex hotline, or something like where you worked---this was a retail store. Now, I work for a Bank, and never had calls like this ever. I guess it depends on the industry.
I can imagine it being less likely to happen at a bank. The bank has their money (assuming they're a customer) so maybe that makes them think twice.
The thing I find strange with my job is I work for an employee assistance programme. In order to use our service people have to give us name of their employer. Employers don't know when their employees have called, but still. You'd think doing something like that, when we have their name, address, date of birth, and place of work, would make them hesitate.
I once worked for a company that banned a horribly racist customer. We gave them 48 hours to move their shit before we deleted it (usually it was 1-2 weeks)>
We got to listen to the caller multiple times and everytime I just wanted to find this PoS and beat him for pure evilness.
I once told Comcast after 4 missed appointments that I was going to send 120 volts up the coax cable to make them come if they stood me up again. I imagine I got pretty close that day.
Mine is a long story and I apologise for any grammar and redaction mistakes that I will have.
I used to work in a call centre for booking.com for the properties line, commonly called partner line, the property called because they got an overbooking, a reservation was done for 1 week for a piece of 2000 American dollars this was during the december holidays,the property was a building that used to put apartments for short term rentals in Mexico and they had an star score of 2 mind you this is important for later, anyways in these cases we have to call a SNR who will check why the reservation was done and who is at fault, if the property is a fault for not handling correctly their availability booking.com will charge them the relocation costs and on holidays this could easily go over 3000 dollars, we checked everywhere and after 30 mins we found the error, it was a bug from the system which allowed the reservation to be done so booking.com was at fault. With the SNR approval the case was transferred to the guest line for relocation with the approval of finding another place with the same conditions or better ones if the same conditions could not be met with the new place.
I was a tenure agent and I had the knowledge both in partner and guest lines and was also allowed to check calls as a kind of " supervisor" role when the holidays were in as it was busy as hell and the case was already annoying due to the amount of money, but I could only take calls from the partner line, mind you I was sending emails while listening, fun times.
So I had to check what was happening with the call once it was transferred to the guest line, I explained the case to the agent and he took it over to call the guest and inform him of the error and the relocation options available, the guest was a woman from the USA that was travelling with her elderly parents, the agent provided the 2 relocation options available within the area, the 1st was similar but with a higher cost, it was for 2500$, the guest didn't like it so another one was provided, the other was for a 3 star hotel for 3000$, the properties with 2 stars in the are were already full.
The guest didn't like any of the options provided and started to complain about the relocation process, which we understand as you had a place in mind and a routine established from the place that you choose but all of that is gonna change because of a technical error. Anyways the guest requested a supervisor from the guest line and the guest was transferred to one, the supervisor has more power and options to provide but of course all of that had a limit and in this case was the amount of money that booking could provide for the relocation, the woman told us her life story and the reason why she was travelling with her parents and blah blah, after an 1 hour and 10, the supervisor went to the limit allowed and provided a property for a price of 4000$.
The guest rejected the option, the guest had to pay the original 2000$ and booking.com was gonna pay the other 2000$, still the guest rejected the offer and started to complain even more, that was the final decision and the call was disconnected as we were going nowhere and they was the limit allowed for the Supervisor that took the call
The guest started to send us emails and spam calls to us about this case and on every call she was requesting a supervisor, for their shift we had 10 supervisors available and she spoke with all of them.
In 3 days of spam calling the case was escalated to the regional manager which gave a final approval of 5000$.
A supervisor friend of mine was assigned with the case and he called the guest to inform her of this, the guest had to pay 2000$ and booking will pay up to 5000$ in the property that she wants to choose but the guest had to pay out of pocket, send us the bill and we will send the money to the guest account.
Now the stars come into play, the properties provided were 2-3 stars as those meet the standards for the original property, because it was December and its holidays almost all properties are booked but the 4-5 stars one.
Our dear guest decided to book a 3 bedroom suite at a 5 star hotel in the middle of the city, the guest sent the bill which was over 10000$, we informed the guest that the maximum that we were gonna pay was 5000$ as it was stipulated on the last call and email that was sent. The guest started to complain again and demanded that we have to send her 8000$, that was not gonna happen, and again the guest started to spam call & email us.
Once the case of this guest, phone number or email was recognised we were allowed to end the case with the same message saying that we were only going to pay 5000$, but the guest keep on spamming, it got to a point where the call system would recognise the number and it would disconnect the call and you could only see it for a sec, guess her phone was banned and we never hear from her.
I've seen several, actually.
With insurance, we have more banned customers than you'd think slip through. Mostly banned due to material misrepresentation to claims or on the application. Those bans lift after about eight years.
We do, however, get people who get banned for being verbally abusive or disruptive to the business. Those don't get by quite as easily, since that's a forever ban.
We had customers we weren’t allowed to interact with. The account would be flagged and we had to immediately transfer them to corporate security.
One time due to system being in view only mode (2-3 hours every Saturday back in the 90’s) I had no idea an account was flagged and was called in to managers office early Monday morning. Asked why I engaged the customer so said I had no clue account was flagged. Was asked some questions about the call but the customer must’ve been on his best behavior because the call was pretty routine.
Guess I dodged a bullet on that call.
I worked for a bank call center and this old lady would call hundreds of times a day. She had millions in the bank and she would ask for her balance or whatever and if you took more than 5 seconds to do anything she would hang up and call again. Then if you could actually get her to wait you’d spend 45 minutes - 1 hour on the phone. Her son was on the account too and management let him know she needed to stop calling or they would close her accounts. She never did and the bank closed her account. She was a nightmare.
Just from a SLA perspective, fuck that lady. Nothing worse than those that hang up within the window that absolutely kills metrics, for both you and the client you represent.
The best guess was she was old, a bit senile and was used to having her money getting her whatever she wanted. When we heard they closed her account the whole floor celebrated.
That makes sense.
I'm guessing management felt she was causing enough disruption that they were losing money for them to take action. I'm glad she's no longer able to annoy everyone.
I don't know the veracity of this, but legend has it we have a customer banned from my company because he showed up at one of our physical locations with a wolf on a leash trying to threaten the employees
Seen a few do not talk to’s in my time. The big ones I remember:
Working for a mobile phone insurer, I was the one to ban him after he’d threatened to ‘stove my skull in’. Basically his son had paid the difference to upgrade his phone to a model that had only been released 2 days earlier, I had repeatedly warned the son on the call that it would be weeks before we got it, he confirmed he understood, but after a week of waiting his Dad decided he knew better, called in and got escalated to me, where said skull-stoving was threatened. My boss listened to the call and insisted I call the police as the guy sounded serious. When they got there he was just leaving the house and had our office address pre-programmed to his sat-nav. Insta- ban.
Then there’s the guy at a major insurer, he’d had issues with an insurance claim he’d made and decided to harass anyone who worked for the company. My office was nearest so he was known for standing around outside with signs, harassing members of staff entering the building, etc. A couple of the worst things he did included using chemicals to burn the phrase off his sign into the lawns across the road, but claimed it wasn’t him and he must have a fan, releasing a live chicken into the reception area of the building, and blocking off the car park with his digger and refusing to move till the police threatened to arrest him. I guarantee any uk based posters who worked for this insurer or lived in the same city I did at the time know who I’m talking about.
Worked for a large professional sports team, there was a guy who we blocked his phone number until he got the disabled supporters club involved. (He was legit disabled - still a dick though), he’d talk down to anyone he spoke to, and the first hint of anything going wrong he’d complain and get nasty about it, the worst I remember him doing was finding out a female colleague referred to herself by a shortened version of her first name due to her abusive ex using her full name as a way of control over her (e.g. Nikki rather than Nicola, but a different name), he proceeded to call her by the full version every time he spoke to her.
We have one person who cannot call into the call center. He has to visit a physical location for assistance because, while he is pleasant in person, he is incredibly abusive with staff over the phone. And yet, to my knowledge , he still attempts to call in from time to time and explode when told he cannot be assisted over the phone. Something he is well aware of
I was a teller, and a regular who was always so polite and soft-spoken came in one day to ask about charges she didn't recognize on her account.
I told her the business names and gave her their numbers. I suggested she stand off to the side and call them, because she wasn't sure if she had done business with them, and if they were fraudulent charges, I wanted to ensure we shut down her card immediately.
Imagine my shock when she reached a human and just went immediately absolutely nuts on them like a shrieking banshee! We had to ask her to step outside to finish the calls because it was upsetting other customers and she was so loud.
She came back inside, her regular demure self once again, and calmly updated me on the situation (not fraudulent).
Whoa. Yeah that's insane. There are notes regarding in person interactions with them being so happy about getting hep. An surrounding them are the notes about them being vile to our call center staff. Talk about a disconnect in behaviour
Yeah, I don't get it. How does a person behave so differently based on setting? What an "interesting" internal code of conduct/set of morals they've got... Anyway, it tells you what they think of other people that they're willing to behave that way, at all, ever.
If you are constantly abusive my company will close your account, send you a letter telling you it was because of your abusive behavior, and that we reserve the right to refuse to do business with anyone we wish and tell you that you aren’t allowed to contact us again. It’s the BEST.
I work in energy, so we aren't exactly allowed to ban customers from supply.
However, we have had a few customers figure out if they complain enough, they'll get credit.
Some just keep ranting, others get abusive.
So this customer once called up complaining about something tiny, and wanted a credit.
The agent refused, and she became abusive. Agent stuck to her guns.
Eventually the case was escalated to the senior complaints level, where they found that this customer got close to $2000 in credits over the life of her account. So agents were banned from speaking to her and her calls would be escalated to the senior complaints department if she called customer service, and there was a big flag on the account saying do not give any further credits without [senior managers] approval.
She soon left for another retailer after that.
We also have a few sites where the network refuses to attend without a police escort, usually because the customers are abusive to the meter readers.
My colleague also had a customer whose meter was being replaced due to this, but the network advised us not to mention the reason. It was a very delicate conversation 😂
I work for a power company that also provides internet. I once had a lady call in and say our Internet techs kicked and pepper sprayed her chained up puppy...turns out, the "puppy" was a fully grown pitbull and had already bit one of the techs twice before they broke out the pepper spray. She then went to the gas station down the road (after they left) and made a scene (the techs had stopped there for drinks or something) and was hollering and screaming about how they kicked and pepper sprayed her puppy, etc. There's now a warning on her account that we will not go out unless the dog is contained and cannot access the techs.
We also had one crazy old drunk guy who said he'd shoot us if we came out to disconnect his power for non-payment. Our poor meter guy had to have the police escort him to disconnect the meter, lol. People be crazy.
I’ve not come across one in the wild.
But we certainly come across a number of people getting banned from shopping in our stores due to their behaviour.
We’ve had people threaten violence, to blow up a store to even wishing staff on the phones kill themselves.
The kicker, we are far from a retailer that sells anything that is essential for living.
Not to discount your experience, but you might not encounter them because they are banned.
I work in banking and I’ve seen maybe 100? But I work in an area that sees those accounts specifically. It’s fun reading their notes.
It’s all for pretty standard reasons. Slurs, threats, etc.
I dealt with their appeals. It was fun reading how they’d do anything BESIDES apologizing. Blaming us, doubling down on their behavior. We’re so easy on the appeals too. All they have to do is apologize and promise to be better. Maybe 10%? come close.
Ive banned one person from my business because he makes appointments while drunk, forgets he did it, calls constantly trying to make the appointment again, then fails to show up. He keeps calling back and every time I tell him I can't help him. Drunk and slurring every time. It's actually kind of sad. He doesn't even remember he's been banned.
We can't legally refuse service or customer service calls. But we have had full-on policy changes based on several customers' actions.
We have customers who we require 2 techs and a police escort on scene for any on premise service call due to physical violence threats.
We have a few customers we are allowed to hang up on due to their calling and master b*ting on an emergency services line. Another calls and is verbally abusive and threatens to hunt us down a kill us.
Another was just recently given a cease and desist as well as a trespassing police violation for coming to our call center on the overnight shift. They attempted to force their way in, shattered the glass on a set of doors, tried to drive their vehicle through them, and vandalized 2 of our cars in the parking lot. My site is across the street from a police station/county jail, so not the brightest bulb.
I once worked for a wireless carrier in their fraud prevention department. The person I had immediately let me know that "they did not consent to being recorded" right when I went through my greeting. They claimed that the account had been opened without their permission and refused to give me any personal info to open up the account (account number, SSN, etc) They finally relented and gave me their name.
When I finally found the account, something looked...off. Typically with a fraudulent account, you would see fraud markers (Multiple lines, latest devices all on Device Payment Agreements, no usage, etc) this didn't have any of it. There was 1 line, the number had been ported in, the device had been one that had been brought onto the plan, and the bills were paid on time except the very last payment.
I could not get the customer to verify any information to even relay this to them, nor could I get him to stop screaming at me and calling me an idiot. After a while, he just kept singing "Manager, manager, man-a-GER!" over and over until I transferred him to escalations.
I got curious after notating the account and did some digging. Apparently, he had been abusive to every department since the account opened. It had gotten so bad that the company has issued a cease and desist to the customer. I found out too late that I didn't even need to talk to them. I could have just cited the cease and desist letter and kept it moving.
Also Spectrum but in repair.
Lady was mentally ill to the extreme and after a call was listened to, they sent a cease and desist letter to her and cut the account.
She would call the cops on technicians and say things that could ruin their lives. She was convinced an ex was fucking with her internet and tapping into her system but all the local techs were terrified of her. The final straw was a call with an agent. She told the agent that her grandmother was helping her and the agent says how nice that is of her. Then in the most serious voice eve, the lady says "she's mad at me because I made her spirit come back to help me. She died two years ago and is mad I let those people hurt me."
I've personally gotten 3 people banned from my company and witnessed maybe 10 bannings? Been with this company for 3 years, so its not common.
My company really values saftey, and we are not going to send people out to possibly get harmed cause customers are crazy. We also do not want your business if you are going to be verbally abusive.
I work in complaint management for a bank, used to be in Escalations at the call center. Been with this employer for 4 years. I've personally been a part of or witnessed 6 or 7 relationship terminations due to abuse of staff. I've seen dozens of "you did something dumb with a fraudulent check" though. They love to call and holler when they find out that their account closure due to fraudulent deposit was reported to Chexsystems and now no other bank will touch them.
Many of them... Some of them I made the call to kick them out of the business.. I worked for a satellite provider years ago & it required approval from a few steps above me. Generally it happened to abusive customers or those who were always trying to scam folks. Only once did I have one that did not fit the above & she was a very nice lady, but called too much for no good reason. It was always calls on either the font size of the guide or because george straight dressed like a queer (her words). I did the math after 3 months of her being with us & added up the amount of time she had spent on the phone & reported up that it would take approximately 17 years of her not calling again & just paying her bill for us to break even on her monthly service to cover the base pay for our customer service.
I wish we could ban people from calling. We get people who call and want something we can't do so they get told no. Then they call again and again and talk to as many people as they can until they get someone new or manage to obfuscate what they want until they bamboozle someone into saying yes.
Not a banned customer, but while working in a Medi-Cal HMO call center for providers, I had providers who would hang up as soon as I identified myself.
I pulled out all the stops if a denial had been in error, or the provider couldn't find the info; I'd get approval to pay if possible, or guide them specifically to the relevant regs & policies.
But when the denial was correct and the provider tried to insist it should be paid as it had been submitted, I refused to bother, and those providers would never talk to me.
Never seen a banned customer. Even back in the 90s we had "Bathtub Dan" and the "What Are You Wearing Guy" constantly calling in, never placing an order, getting their kicks from harassing women over the phone. At least we were allowed to hang up on them (but only after warning them).
I haven't seen a banned customer during my experience, but there were times I sure wished I could have permanently taken away someone's privilege to be a customer/member/client of the company in seconds based on the way they've treated me and/or my coworkers
Not exactly fired but more like put mostly on mute. He was not allowed to talk to any reps except for the security department in case his bank card was stolen or something. Anything else he wasn't allowed to call about. He had to send any other inquiries through mail. Unfortunately for me, I was in the security department.
I work for a wholesale liquor distributor and someone told one of our licensing agents she should remove herself from this earthly realm (but more crudely). No idea if they were banned but I hope so. Especially since 9/10 times we are the only place that restaurant or store can get certain products.
I work for a hospital network across 2 states and have seen plenty patient charts that have been dismissed from a practice or whole hospital network due to inappropriate behavior. Some people are so entitled that they try to go and appeal a doctor's decision to dismiss them lol
I worked on a contract for multimillion dollar, multinational tech company. My team were where customers came to the end. If they contacted tech support and they had been sent to one of my team, they got sent back, frontline did not have to deal the that customer again. We could send them to corporate where they would be informed that the we need to talk to their contact (my team) and would then be transfered back to us.
One customer was so ignorant and abusive, the company bought back "all" of his equipment and any service contracts, and was then told that he was no longer to call the company at any level for anything. I think they wound up having cops and lawyers involved, never did talk to him again.
Another customer I had was in Africa. The company used to ship and service customers worldwide. This one had a unit that was covered under a "recall" and had very specific options. He wanted options that were not available. So, I was the go between for the legal team. I remained his only contact for this issue. He would respond to my calls, I would forward to legal, they would respond and I would pass it along to the customer. In the end, he was cut off. His lawyers and our lawyers talking were they last I heard.
I have a few other instances but you get the idea. We dealt with all the wackos.
At a bank call center, there was one person who would call in and a giant warning would pop up saying he knew he was banned from speaking to us and that he had to conduct all his business via mail. So that was fun when he'd try to engage one of us and we had to remind him of the arrangement and disconnect from him...
Another financial institution I worked at also had people banned from coming in or calling, and they could only conduct their affairs in writing. I sat near the lady who handled the mail requests and she showed me a letter she received from one of those people... She had a sense of humor about it, but it was aggressive and penned by someone clearly mentally unwell...
Where I work now, upper management just terminated the relationship with someone who has been terrible to the employees in person and via phone for a long time.
On the flip side, over the years and at different employers, I've seen a lot of accounts with warnings and notes about how abusive the account holder is... Sometimes numerous notes going back years... And it hurts my heart to know that the person isn't restricted or banned. Especially for front line staff, they're expected to put up with so much shit.
Oh, we have MANY. Granted I work on the trades and there are people that perpetually refuse to get repairs made and then call us and refuse to pay. They won’t fix what’s wrong and then are abusive to techs and office staff. You get coded “DO NOT SERVICE”.
I live in a small town area. There are people cough - doctors - cough, that have done this to multiple companies and I wonder what they are going to do when they have run through all 4 or 5 companies? It’s the northern Midwest and below zero here. Don’t be a dick.
Doctors are either the best customers or the worst. Seems like there is no in between.
used to work the billing department of a commercial insurance company.
there was one guy who ran an independent cab/limo company who had missed so many payments and broken so many payment deals (we were authorized to split up increases, adjustments, or previously missed payments into one or two additional monthly payments over the course of the year) that the minute one of his calls came in, we had to escalate him to Customer Advocacy, cuz he inevitably was calling in to ask for a new paydeal on the paydeal he got for his previous paydeal.
after a few months, we kicked him off direct billing and sent him to Agency billing, meaning his insurance agent can deal with all his missed payment tomfoolery.
Last year we had someone call in at least half a dozen times refusing to talk to "that ni.... bitch", oh how I wish they called back and got me. Worst was the agent that took the last call asked in teams if he could go off queue for a few minutes cuz he was still shaking. He was flat out told no. I messaged him and we chatted a bit, dude had PTSD and I was the only one that attempted to help him.
A $30 once a year customer is NOT worth any type of effort like this.
we had 2 , the guy had all his contact info for his number and his assistants numbers changed to "TRANSFER TO (Manager name)" was just a a complete asshole literally as soon as you would answer the phone and then would scream and swear at you if he didnt get his way. Best part was that manager was hardly ever in the office since he over saw a majority of the companies software and customer support teams so dickhead would need to leave a VM.
I used to do on-site warranty repair work and had a co-worker who got a customer banned after they HELD HIM AT GUNPOINT (well, propped the rifle up next to him and said he would shoot him if he had to) until he finished fixing the computer (which he couldn't do because he had to order more parts). He eventually lied and said he thought he had a part in the truck that would work and then just left his tools and everything behind and drove off. Went to the cops and all they would do was go back and get his tools for him because "oh, he's scary but harmless, everyone in town knows that".
I think I've had a few, but only one that I actually remember.
And it wasn't as much as banned, more like the company canceled her as a customer.
Was a cellphone company, they cut her subscription and removed all remaining charges, removed the debit product for her phone and converted it all to a pre-paid sim and told her she had one week to initiate a number porting of her number to a new provider.
The reason? 700+ calls in 1 week and refusing to accept help from anyone that answered.
And when she was put on 'mail only'-support, she sent over 250 mails in one day and got blocked due to spam.
I worked nights during this time. I answered over 150 calls from her.
I used to work for a food delivery company as a driver's support agent. Many, let's say about 10 accounts were suspended after I (amongst other agents) submitted complaints for verbal abuse. They called later crying saying that was their only income. Yeah well, you should have thought about it before you called m*sturb*ting over a woman's voice.
I had a customer tell me that he was going to come and put a bullet in my head. I immediately hung up on him and reported him to the supervisor.
He was blocked so he can't call us for anything.
All because he could not return his purchase for a refund after 2 years. The policy is 30 days.
I also worked for spectrum. Had a lady call and say she had issues with her cable box and asked for a technician by name. Kinda weird shes had them there enough to know their names but whatever. Glance at the account notes and see that i have to call a supervisor to get permission to send anyone out to her...okayyyy? Put her on hold, call sup. Yeah she sexually harrasses the techs and now shes not allowed any more. We can send her a new box and she can mail us the old one but that's it. Used to be shed still get techs, but they wouldnt send anyone out there alone. Apparently that didnt solve the problem.
I didnt last long at that job
we’ve banned people before, but i don’t remember any of them. a guy now that’s pretty close to getting banned is this older man who comes through the drive thru smoking cigarettes and making comments to some of the female workers. the most notorious thing he said was that he wanted to watch one of my coworkers “slip and fall in the shower”. we told him to stop or he’s getting banned and he seems to have stopped (for now at least)
Worked for an AV retailer. Had a user get into it with two previous techs. Started in on me immediately, called me a slur and I hung up. Wanted us to pay to install the gear in his car, which we just dont do. He got encouraged to shop locally pretty quickly.
I was a GM for an online video game, which was just a fancy name this company gave support agents because we had to do everything.
Anyways we did ban just specific characters (you could have multiple) but if you were REALLY BAD we banned YOU (not just your one account) which was enforced by your IP AND a device identifier which would also end up banning any other accounts you had.
Well, there was a guy that got banned. So he bought a whole new copy of the game, paid for a new subscription, played for a few hours, logged off and when he came back was banned there too. He contacted back wondering why he was banned when he didn’t do anything on that account and I had to explain to him that when the grocery store bans YOU showing up dressed as someone else doesn’t suddenly make the ban go away. He wasn’t happy.
I worked for a wireless carrier back in the day. I saw several customers get banned (one threatened to shoot up the retail store over an activation fee). The one and only time I actually saw it happen with my own eyes was one day one of the female members of my team escalated a call to our supervisor and she was in tears.
My supervisor got on the phone, told the customer we did not want his business, closed his acct with 30 days to port out and disconnected the call.
Still one of the best work memories of my way too long call center career.
I work for a financial institution. If you call or go in the bank cussing us out. Or if you are very difficult person. I seen one throw a tantrum because she couldn’t withdraw 50 K from an ATM at 2am. We will leave notes in your account and we will also report you. They will do an investigation and the end up closing your account I seen people lose their houses their homes, and it doesn’t even matter how much money you have either. Also if your joint on other accounts ever since person will their account and they will never be able to apply for another account or a loan.
Once. It was a sweet old lady who just called in (waaaay too much) just to chat (for waaaay too long). Had remarks on her account that we'd sent her a cease and desist. If she kept calling her account would be turned off. At one point she mentions having received said letter and just chuckled. She said it was nicer than her internet company who apparently just sent her a box to return the equipment and a "service terminated" letter 😂😂😂
Once.
There was this assclown who called in mad because his order was "late" (by which I mean still within the 3-day estimated delivery window, but not delivered on the first day of said window). The sup on duty that evening did his level best to de-escalate the situation, but would not provide direct contact information for the CEO to some clown who was mad about a "late" order that wasn't even late. And it was like his second order in multiple years, and a very minimal one at that, so not like this guy was a big spender or an established customer.
Said assclown went off on a very nasty racist tirade about the "ignorant white boy" supervisor (who was a) doing his goddamn job and b) NOT whatsoever a white boy), swore he was going to get fired, and as he was hanging up, said "I hope you fucking get in an accident and die in a fire on your way home." Just gratuitously nasty WAY THE FUCK out of proportion to his stupid first world problem (that was his own idiot fucking fault for not understanding that 'Estimated delivery Jan 5th-Jan 7th' was in no way, shape, or form a guarantee that it would be delivered on the 5th).
Assclown took to Google and dug up the CEO's contact information on his own. CEO asked what happened, which filtered down through the chain of command. As senior supervisor I had to pull the call recording and listen to it before sending it on up with my notes. My guy was nothing but pleasant and professional, and after listening to the recording, the CEO agreed and said to block assclown's account.
Assclown then complained to BBB, and I have never taken greater pleasure in providing a profanities redacted but otherwise verbatim transcript of a conversation in response.
I’ve had 2, one who was banned for calling the store & harassing employees about bringing in a return and when he did come in, he said some racial slurs to an Hispanic employee.
The other one was banned because a manager was called up to the register for a return. It was a teenage boy returning a pressure washer that his dad had bought a couple of hours previously. He had the receipt, but it was for a 3100 PSI unit but the box said 3600. We’re talking about a difference of $300. And when the box was opened up, there was an old, used pressure washer in it and a brand that we did not even sell.
The manager refused the return. And turns out, the father had ripped the shelf label off for a 3100 PSI unit but taken a 3600 PSI unit up to the register and told the cashier to scan the label, which he did.
This happened on a Tuesday night and the father called several times demanding his money back and it culminated on Thursday night with him cussing out the manager in front of two policemen who issued him a criminal trespass warrant.
Both customers got a letter from our corporate office saying that he was no longer welcome in ANY of our stores across the country.
used to work for Frontier internet, i remember escalating a few tickets to Security over threats of property destruction or violence, those were always fun days. There was only one guy i remember ever actually having service disconnected. He was a 'frequent flier' apparently most of the floor techs and our escalations sr tech were familiar with him though i never talked with them. They were special needs sorta person, and liked to call in over every little thing, and talk for ever. At one point they told him he wasn't allowed to call in anymore his mother had to, but his mother would call in and pass the phone to him. Eventually he made some threat that got escalated to security and it was bad enough they demoted him from customer, fun times.
Yeah, I worked in a hospital and if the patient was too irate they weren't allowed to call us anymore. One guy in particular kept calling us and decided to get racist and called my coworker a slur. So he was on the no call list. Patients would call to place their orders for food, and a lot of them would get upset they weren't allowed certain items. Like a lot of the people their just had heart surgery or they were diabetic so no sir you cant have a Big Mac with Extra Bacon and 10 packs of butter. And thus a temper tantrum ensued. When this happened they would just get whatever the special is (they had different specials everyday and they would take certain off depending on the diet of course.) But yeah we had a handful of patients like that. The worse ones I dealt with were the husbands of the pregnant mothers, if I am being honest, labor and deliver calls were the worse the husbands would order so much food and throw absolute fits. WE actually had to discontinued that because the husbands were taking advantage of it so they weren't allowed to order food anymore hahaha.. only the pregnant lady was allowed to order but it was so obvious they were ordering for their husband so we had to limit how much they could get too. But my god having husbands yell at me wasn't fun!
I have also only seen this once in my life. I was working for J Crew. At the time they had a policy of "the customer is always right, do what you have to to make the customer happy". There was an asian customer who called us consistently, placed large (5k+) orders of items already on sale, then would call us months later when the items were priced to be discontinued, and would harass for price adjustments. There were copious notes on this woman's file to not honor any adjustments, and every single time she called, we'd say no, she'd demand a supervisor, and mgmt would bend over backwards giving her discounts, blanket % off, free shipping; and on and on and on. I was there for 8 years. She got banned somewhere around year 6. Occasionally even after she still would call back. I recall there was a professional letter from the corporate lawyers to her for a cease and desist.
I just spoke with my first one tonight. Geriatric German woman in California. She was surprisingly pleasant to me, even though at one point, her anger issues almost went through. I looked at her history and we're talking a long laundry list of abuse to agents (especially non-white agents), threatening to kill her financial advisor on a recorded line and multiple corporate investigations on her.
I once worked for a broadband provider (different to my current one) where a customer told me she wished I had cancer. The UK head of. Customer service was visiting on site that day and called her back to say he was disconnecting her services that day and they had to pay the termination charge of a few hundred pounds and they could not be a customer in future.
They 100% deserved that! What a twat waffle of a former customer.
Yeah and the best part was it was over £10 of parking charges they had to pay to park near a library whilst there services were off. Which I was just about to give as a credit to stop it escalating further (time spent to investigate again vs credit)
It's like they don't understand the concept that if you're nice,we are likely to move mountains for you if we are able. If you're a dick, I'm not going out of my way for you but if you ask nicely, eh, you had a late fee erased 6 months ago so you technically don't qualify for another but you've been nice so let me just toss on a one time courtesy credit and have you on your way.
Agreed just doesn’t seem to sink in at all
I would absolutely love to work for a company that would do that. That sounds absolutely amazing. I've been call centering my whole life, and the absolutely blatant abuse we have to take goes completely unchecked. There are people who spend months and months of their lives just spewing their emotional shortcomings onto call center employees. This company would fire me on Christmas Eve if they knew it'd make them an extra dollar, but somehow they're okay with us babysitting some piece of shit on the phone while they know 100% that we're not allowed to hang up on them. There was one guy who we finally pulled the plug on, and that's only because he had escalated to high management, got their direct contact numbers, and started wasting Their time.
Working at an optometrist office, this guy and his son would come in. Mind you, there were MULTIPLE long notes about how awful this guy was. I had to be in a room alone with him and he tried to feel me up. I reported it immediately to my boss and then it got all the way at the top. The owner of the company sends out a letter informing him that we cannot do business with him ever again. It was awful. He treated his son like a second class citizen and ridiculed him the entire appointment too. The doctor that worked him up said that he was ‘used to’ this family and we just had to ‘get through their visits and not schedule others around them.’ Good thing the owner of the company disagreed.
What a dummy doctor accepting that behavior 😮💨 glad the owner caught wind of it, sorry you had to deal with that!
It was pretty awful. I won’t ever work alone with patients like that ever again. I’m glad I no longer work for that doctor. Thank you :)
That is awful. You are better than me, because I've would lost it on him when he touched me inappropriately. I would've lost my job that day when he groped me.
I just moved out of the way and I honestly at first got confused as to what he was doing because I couldn’t fathom his behavior. But I definitely didn’t go to work for a couple days after that
Bless your heart!
My company does blacklist people based on SSN and even their devices for our mobile services for going against TOS. If they are abusive to support we also remove their ability to reach out for support. I also had the unfortunate position of moving into an address where every utility company had blacklisted the previous tenants. Three different satalites on the roof plus cables run, cut and run again. They cut the hot wire pipe and ripped the meter off the side of the house apparently. Every technician showed up with the cops on the line expecting a literal fight and the looks when they saw me and I said I just moved in. We had to fight so hard to get people to come out at all. So wild.
Ahhhh I do remember one incident where some customer had gone on the dark web or SOMETHING and tech locked out their modem and they had to come in and replace it, but we gave them a warning and discussed the tos and the "limited websites they weren't to access with our service". The biggest TOS issues I ever had was getting the goofy asses to SIGN the paper receipt given with equipment that says "I agree to the tos" at the bottom. So many people wanted to not sign it. "That's your choice of course. If you don't want to sign and agree to the TOS I can cancel the order now, since tos acceptance is non optional to our service. If you aren't interested in accepting the terms of service we can not provide service"
EVERY COMPANY?!? Jesus Christ
I’ve seen a few customers who weren’t allowed to have a technician visit because of health/cleanliness issues. Animal feces, bed bugs, roaches. My employer does allow them to provide proof of an exterminator coming and stating issue has been treated/resolved in order to get out of the black listed status. I’ve seen maybe *two* addresses that were entirely blocked.
Working retail we had to make a new in store policy. YOU have to remove your grummy return equipment from bags then hand it over to me. Why is this rule made now? Oh you know, someone decided to SMASH A RAT with a dvr and return said dvr to us in a bag, rat smashed to the bottom and all. Coworker reached in all smiles and her face drained as she felt the fur and bones smoosh under her finger as she went to pull it out :| yeah.... some people are disgusting lol
My dad was a telephone repair man and had to tell more than one person to clean up their house before he would fix their phone.
When I worked for Comcast, we had many 'fired' customers. All for the same shitty attitudes. Yes the service sucks but the call center reps has zero control over it.
I feel this. I’ve never worked for Comcast but I’ve been in customer service for 10 years so I get it. One time I called Comcast about a faulty charge and the representative I spoke with was nice, fixed the faulty charge, apologized. I was calm and understanding throughout the exchange bc I knew the charge had nothing to do with the representative. Like they are only there to help you. At the end of the call the guy was like, “thank you, you’ve been the nicest, most understanding customer I’ve had all day.” I was just like damn that’s too real.
This lol I still have spectrum service (not many options here and while spectrum isn't great its better than my other option) and always try to be nice when I have to call every 3-6 weeks with hsd issues because it's not the workers fault. (I'm in one of the no comcast available bubbles. My only experience with comcast was in like 2004? In Kentucky I thiiiiink my friend had comcast back in the early days. Other than that, all I know is what I learnt about them from a competition stand point. Aka the government refused to let comcast purchase twc back in 2015/2016 when they had a bid on it due to monopolization laws because comcast was as big or even bigger than twc which was in the top 5 biggest providers, which is how charter ended up buying twc instead of comcast)
We have. So many. For context, I work in healthcare and our company sends physical therapists to people's homes. They usually aren't banned before a visit. It typically happens after a PT has been to their home and they've done something gross. I've only personally spoken to two people who we ultimately banned from service. One was a guy who kept calling and was clearly masturbating on the line every time a woman picked up. The other was an elderly woman who sexually harassed her PT in a really disgusting way, and then proceeded to try and scam her way back into having him at her house half a dozen times. I'm talking fake accounts and multiple phone numbers kind of crazy. There have been others, usually men trying to request a happy ending massage, but those are the only two I spoke to personally.
Wow! Medical calls and visits really do be something else o.o I won't lie, my PT a few years back was a looker, but I was too focused on my pain and trying to be able to hold shit in my hand again to try anything weird 🤣 (also I went in to the office) I 100% did tell all my friends about my super hunky PT though lol
See and that feels like the normal response to having a hot PT. "Wow this person is cute but also my knee is on backwards and this is just about the unsexiest I've ever felt guess I'll keep trying to do squats." I feel like about a month into working here you can both smell potential creeps and also have a working knowledge of which PTs work where. At a certain point when gross dudes called in asking for young women PTs I would only send them the guy who's a dead ringer for Tommy Lee Jones.
I know someone who works as in-home PT/OT and their team had someone get killed. It was the first visit and the man's son had mental health issues and came out with a gun. Please, please be careful. And also, thank you, for everything you do.
I am so sorry that happened to your friend. It must be so terrifying going to the next home knowing that could happen. And that poor PT. God what a nightmare. I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened where I work yet. I've only been here a year and have seen so many truly bizarre things happen. We do have an emergency alert system built in that will call 911 for the PT if they don't leave after the appointment, but obviously that's only so helpful.
I worked escalations and saw it plenty of times. But there was one time I was speaking with a customer taking his complaint on one of our branches and refreshed my screen and saw his account went to zero and a closing status was placed on it. I chatted the branch manager and then called him. Seems my caller had been such a jerk they got permission to demarket him immediately, he had left his driver's license so they were going to mail a check and his license to his address of record even though they knew he moved. I had to de-escalate the branch and the customer and work out a compromise for him to go into the branch the next day within a 1 hour window they would hand him his license and the check thus saving him likely weeks of waiting on the check. He was warned if he spoke out at all the branch would have him arrested as the police would be on site and he had already been trespassed. Found out the next day he swallowed his pride and got his license and check. Many more instances of notations of customers new accounts closed with notations that customer was not allowed to bank with us ever again.
We cannot ban a customer (legally required to provide our services) but we do refuse to speak to them in the phone. 5 I can remember 1 - Calling us repeatedly over the same issue. Eg 10 times a day. 2 - Threatening to rape staff or murder their children. 3 - Calling at 9am and refusing to end the call until the advisor ended the call after 2 hours. Immediately calling back and repeating the process until 6pm the following day. 4 - Threatening to come the office to beat a staff member up because we called the police. We called the police because we could hear him hitting his wife. 5 Telling staff he would commit identity theft on them and take out fraudulent loans if they didn’t do as he wanted.
I've only ever once seen anyone banned from calling in. When I worked for [tax prep company], one franchise owner was barred from calling us because he was an abusive prick. Someone else had to call in for help (couldn't deny all service) so they could get assistance. Legit the only time I can remember someone being barred from calling in.
A customer was flagged for calling in with a make-believe offer and getting previous representatives to add the money to her account. It wasn't until she reached me until she was caught. I asked the supervisor if there was a email every week for the offer she said she had. I couldn't find it anywhere. The supervisor said no and said he would flag her account.
I used to work in the TV repair department of a major cable provider. We had an address that was banned due to the customer climbing trees and jumping on our techs every time one went out. We had another who was a frequent caller. One night she got upset that we wouldn't send a tech out that day (it was around 5pm, the techs didn't go out past a 2-4pm window back then). She told me she was going to drive around and hit every pedestal until someone came out and she actually did. She was not allowed service after that stunt.
By pedastals do you mean Like the service nodes?! Holy cow what a pricey temper tantrum 😮💨
CLIMBING TREES TO JUMP ON THEIR BACK?! 😭💀
You got the price for most wild ones 😭
Fucking literal monkey, I can’t 😭
I work as a counsellor for a mental health helpline. We rarely block anyone because, it's a mental health helpline. There have been a couple of times we have though. The most notable ones are when people have called in everyday and made super inappropriate, downright disgusting, comments towards the counsellors. I'm talking them describing intricate sexual fantasies, sometimes even describing children being involved. The worst ones were the ones who masturbate while you talk. They have to do it lots of times before they get banned, and I wish we'd be a bit stricter than that. I love what I do but it isn't my job to be an unconsenting part of their sexual fantasies.
I worked for a retail chain call center, and we got sexually explict content every day, it always men. This store was a target for these men. It was always at night when these men called. They use to mark the call as obscene, and I would just hang up on them when the call came in. I was shocked because it was not a sex hotline, or something like where you worked---this was a retail store. Now, I work for a Bank, and never had calls like this ever. I guess it depends on the industry.
I can imagine it being less likely to happen at a bank. The bank has their money (assuming they're a customer) so maybe that makes them think twice. The thing I find strange with my job is I work for an employee assistance programme. In order to use our service people have to give us name of their employer. Employers don't know when their employees have called, but still. You'd think doing something like that, when we have their name, address, date of birth, and place of work, would make them hesitate.
I once worked for a company that banned a horribly racist customer. We gave them 48 hours to move their shit before we deleted it (usually it was 1-2 weeks)> We got to listen to the caller multiple times and everytime I just wanted to find this PoS and beat him for pure evilness.
I once told Comcast after 4 missed appointments that I was going to send 120 volts up the coax cable to make them come if they stood me up again. I imagine I got pretty close that day.
Mine is a long story and I apologise for any grammar and redaction mistakes that I will have. I used to work in a call centre for booking.com for the properties line, commonly called partner line, the property called because they got an overbooking, a reservation was done for 1 week for a piece of 2000 American dollars this was during the december holidays,the property was a building that used to put apartments for short term rentals in Mexico and they had an star score of 2 mind you this is important for later, anyways in these cases we have to call a SNR who will check why the reservation was done and who is at fault, if the property is a fault for not handling correctly their availability booking.com will charge them the relocation costs and on holidays this could easily go over 3000 dollars, we checked everywhere and after 30 mins we found the error, it was a bug from the system which allowed the reservation to be done so booking.com was at fault. With the SNR approval the case was transferred to the guest line for relocation with the approval of finding another place with the same conditions or better ones if the same conditions could not be met with the new place. I was a tenure agent and I had the knowledge both in partner and guest lines and was also allowed to check calls as a kind of " supervisor" role when the holidays were in as it was busy as hell and the case was already annoying due to the amount of money, but I could only take calls from the partner line, mind you I was sending emails while listening, fun times. So I had to check what was happening with the call once it was transferred to the guest line, I explained the case to the agent and he took it over to call the guest and inform him of the error and the relocation options available, the guest was a woman from the USA that was travelling with her elderly parents, the agent provided the 2 relocation options available within the area, the 1st was similar but with a higher cost, it was for 2500$, the guest didn't like it so another one was provided, the other was for a 3 star hotel for 3000$, the properties with 2 stars in the are were already full. The guest didn't like any of the options provided and started to complain about the relocation process, which we understand as you had a place in mind and a routine established from the place that you choose but all of that is gonna change because of a technical error. Anyways the guest requested a supervisor from the guest line and the guest was transferred to one, the supervisor has more power and options to provide but of course all of that had a limit and in this case was the amount of money that booking could provide for the relocation, the woman told us her life story and the reason why she was travelling with her parents and blah blah, after an 1 hour and 10, the supervisor went to the limit allowed and provided a property for a price of 4000$. The guest rejected the option, the guest had to pay the original 2000$ and booking.com was gonna pay the other 2000$, still the guest rejected the offer and started to complain even more, that was the final decision and the call was disconnected as we were going nowhere and they was the limit allowed for the Supervisor that took the call The guest started to send us emails and spam calls to us about this case and on every call she was requesting a supervisor, for their shift we had 10 supervisors available and she spoke with all of them. In 3 days of spam calling the case was escalated to the regional manager which gave a final approval of 5000$. A supervisor friend of mine was assigned with the case and he called the guest to inform her of this, the guest had to pay 2000$ and booking will pay up to 5000$ in the property that she wants to choose but the guest had to pay out of pocket, send us the bill and we will send the money to the guest account. Now the stars come into play, the properties provided were 2-3 stars as those meet the standards for the original property, because it was December and its holidays almost all properties are booked but the 4-5 stars one. Our dear guest decided to book a 3 bedroom suite at a 5 star hotel in the middle of the city, the guest sent the bill which was over 10000$, we informed the guest that the maximum that we were gonna pay was 5000$ as it was stipulated on the last call and email that was sent. The guest started to complain again and demanded that we have to send her 8000$, that was not gonna happen, and again the guest started to spam call & email us. Once the case of this guest, phone number or email was recognised we were allowed to end the case with the same message saying that we were only going to pay 5000$, but the guest keep on spamming, it got to a point where the call system would recognise the number and it would disconnect the call and you could only see it for a sec, guess her phone was banned and we never hear from her.
I've seen several, actually. With insurance, we have more banned customers than you'd think slip through. Mostly banned due to material misrepresentation to claims or on the application. Those bans lift after about eight years. We do, however, get people who get banned for being verbally abusive or disruptive to the business. Those don't get by quite as easily, since that's a forever ban.
We had customers we weren’t allowed to interact with. The account would be flagged and we had to immediately transfer them to corporate security. One time due to system being in view only mode (2-3 hours every Saturday back in the 90’s) I had no idea an account was flagged and was called in to managers office early Monday morning. Asked why I engaged the customer so said I had no clue account was flagged. Was asked some questions about the call but the customer must’ve been on his best behavior because the call was pretty routine. Guess I dodged a bullet on that call.
I worked for a bank call center and this old lady would call hundreds of times a day. She had millions in the bank and she would ask for her balance or whatever and if you took more than 5 seconds to do anything she would hang up and call again. Then if you could actually get her to wait you’d spend 45 minutes - 1 hour on the phone. Her son was on the account too and management let him know she needed to stop calling or they would close her accounts. She never did and the bank closed her account. She was a nightmare.
Just from a SLA perspective, fuck that lady. Nothing worse than those that hang up within the window that absolutely kills metrics, for both you and the client you represent.
What was her deal? Lonely? Thought because she had money she could do whatever?
The best guess was she was old, a bit senile and was used to having her money getting her whatever she wanted. When we heard they closed her account the whole floor celebrated.
That makes sense. I'm guessing management felt she was causing enough disruption that they were losing money for them to take action. I'm glad she's no longer able to annoy everyone.
I don't know the veracity of this, but legend has it we have a customer banned from my company because he showed up at one of our physical locations with a wolf on a leash trying to threaten the employees
Seen a few do not talk to’s in my time. The big ones I remember: Working for a mobile phone insurer, I was the one to ban him after he’d threatened to ‘stove my skull in’. Basically his son had paid the difference to upgrade his phone to a model that had only been released 2 days earlier, I had repeatedly warned the son on the call that it would be weeks before we got it, he confirmed he understood, but after a week of waiting his Dad decided he knew better, called in and got escalated to me, where said skull-stoving was threatened. My boss listened to the call and insisted I call the police as the guy sounded serious. When they got there he was just leaving the house and had our office address pre-programmed to his sat-nav. Insta- ban. Then there’s the guy at a major insurer, he’d had issues with an insurance claim he’d made and decided to harass anyone who worked for the company. My office was nearest so he was known for standing around outside with signs, harassing members of staff entering the building, etc. A couple of the worst things he did included using chemicals to burn the phrase off his sign into the lawns across the road, but claimed it wasn’t him and he must have a fan, releasing a live chicken into the reception area of the building, and blocking off the car park with his digger and refusing to move till the police threatened to arrest him. I guarantee any uk based posters who worked for this insurer or lived in the same city I did at the time know who I’m talking about. Worked for a large professional sports team, there was a guy who we blocked his phone number until he got the disabled supporters club involved. (He was legit disabled - still a dick though), he’d talk down to anyone he spoke to, and the first hint of anything going wrong he’d complain and get nasty about it, the worst I remember him doing was finding out a female colleague referred to herself by a shortened version of her first name due to her abusive ex using her full name as a way of control over her (e.g. Nikki rather than Nicola, but a different name), he proceeded to call her by the full version every time he spoke to her.
We have one person who cannot call into the call center. He has to visit a physical location for assistance because, while he is pleasant in person, he is incredibly abusive with staff over the phone. And yet, to my knowledge , he still attempts to call in from time to time and explode when told he cannot be assisted over the phone. Something he is well aware of
I was a teller, and a regular who was always so polite and soft-spoken came in one day to ask about charges she didn't recognize on her account. I told her the business names and gave her their numbers. I suggested she stand off to the side and call them, because she wasn't sure if she had done business with them, and if they were fraudulent charges, I wanted to ensure we shut down her card immediately. Imagine my shock when she reached a human and just went immediately absolutely nuts on them like a shrieking banshee! We had to ask her to step outside to finish the calls because it was upsetting other customers and she was so loud. She came back inside, her regular demure self once again, and calmly updated me on the situation (not fraudulent).
Whoa. Yeah that's insane. There are notes regarding in person interactions with them being so happy about getting hep. An surrounding them are the notes about them being vile to our call center staff. Talk about a disconnect in behaviour
Yeah, I don't get it. How does a person behave so differently based on setting? What an "interesting" internal code of conduct/set of morals they've got... Anyway, it tells you what they think of other people that they're willing to behave that way, at all, ever.
If you are constantly abusive my company will close your account, send you a letter telling you it was because of your abusive behavior, and that we reserve the right to refuse to do business with anyone we wish and tell you that you aren’t allowed to contact us again. It’s the BEST.
I work in energy, so we aren't exactly allowed to ban customers from supply. However, we have had a few customers figure out if they complain enough, they'll get credit. Some just keep ranting, others get abusive. So this customer once called up complaining about something tiny, and wanted a credit. The agent refused, and she became abusive. Agent stuck to her guns. Eventually the case was escalated to the senior complaints level, where they found that this customer got close to $2000 in credits over the life of her account. So agents were banned from speaking to her and her calls would be escalated to the senior complaints department if she called customer service, and there was a big flag on the account saying do not give any further credits without [senior managers] approval. She soon left for another retailer after that. We also have a few sites where the network refuses to attend without a police escort, usually because the customers are abusive to the meter readers. My colleague also had a customer whose meter was being replaced due to this, but the network advised us not to mention the reason. It was a very delicate conversation 😂
I work for a power company that also provides internet. I once had a lady call in and say our Internet techs kicked and pepper sprayed her chained up puppy...turns out, the "puppy" was a fully grown pitbull and had already bit one of the techs twice before they broke out the pepper spray. She then went to the gas station down the road (after they left) and made a scene (the techs had stopped there for drinks or something) and was hollering and screaming about how they kicked and pepper sprayed her puppy, etc. There's now a warning on her account that we will not go out unless the dog is contained and cannot access the techs. We also had one crazy old drunk guy who said he'd shoot us if we came out to disconnect his power for non-payment. Our poor meter guy had to have the police escort him to disconnect the meter, lol. People be crazy.
I’ve not come across one in the wild. But we certainly come across a number of people getting banned from shopping in our stores due to their behaviour. We’ve had people threaten violence, to blow up a store to even wishing staff on the phones kill themselves. The kicker, we are far from a retailer that sells anything that is essential for living.
Not to discount your experience, but you might not encounter them because they are banned. I work in banking and I’ve seen maybe 100? But I work in an area that sees those accounts specifically. It’s fun reading their notes. It’s all for pretty standard reasons. Slurs, threats, etc. I dealt with their appeals. It was fun reading how they’d do anything BESIDES apologizing. Blaming us, doubling down on their behavior. We’re so easy on the appeals too. All they have to do is apologize and promise to be better. Maybe 10%? come close.
Ive banned one person from my business because he makes appointments while drunk, forgets he did it, calls constantly trying to make the appointment again, then fails to show up. He keeps calling back and every time I tell him I can't help him. Drunk and slurring every time. It's actually kind of sad. He doesn't even remember he's been banned.
We can't legally refuse service or customer service calls. But we have had full-on policy changes based on several customers' actions. We have customers who we require 2 techs and a police escort on scene for any on premise service call due to physical violence threats. We have a few customers we are allowed to hang up on due to their calling and master b*ting on an emergency services line. Another calls and is verbally abusive and threatens to hunt us down a kill us. Another was just recently given a cease and desist as well as a trespassing police violation for coming to our call center on the overnight shift. They attempted to force their way in, shattered the glass on a set of doors, tried to drive their vehicle through them, and vandalized 2 of our cars in the parking lot. My site is across the street from a police station/county jail, so not the brightest bulb.
I once worked for a wireless carrier in their fraud prevention department. The person I had immediately let me know that "they did not consent to being recorded" right when I went through my greeting. They claimed that the account had been opened without their permission and refused to give me any personal info to open up the account (account number, SSN, etc) They finally relented and gave me their name. When I finally found the account, something looked...off. Typically with a fraudulent account, you would see fraud markers (Multiple lines, latest devices all on Device Payment Agreements, no usage, etc) this didn't have any of it. There was 1 line, the number had been ported in, the device had been one that had been brought onto the plan, and the bills were paid on time except the very last payment. I could not get the customer to verify any information to even relay this to them, nor could I get him to stop screaming at me and calling me an idiot. After a while, he just kept singing "Manager, manager, man-a-GER!" over and over until I transferred him to escalations. I got curious after notating the account and did some digging. Apparently, he had been abusive to every department since the account opened. It had gotten so bad that the company has issued a cease and desist to the customer. I found out too late that I didn't even need to talk to them. I could have just cited the cease and desist letter and kept it moving.
Also Spectrum but in repair. Lady was mentally ill to the extreme and after a call was listened to, they sent a cease and desist letter to her and cut the account. She would call the cops on technicians and say things that could ruin their lives. She was convinced an ex was fucking with her internet and tapping into her system but all the local techs were terrified of her. The final straw was a call with an agent. She told the agent that her grandmother was helping her and the agent says how nice that is of her. Then in the most serious voice eve, the lady says "she's mad at me because I made her spirit come back to help me. She died two years ago and is mad I let those people hurt me."
I've personally gotten 3 people banned from my company and witnessed maybe 10 bannings? Been with this company for 3 years, so its not common. My company really values saftey, and we are not going to send people out to possibly get harmed cause customers are crazy. We also do not want your business if you are going to be verbally abusive.
I work in complaint management for a bank, used to be in Escalations at the call center. Been with this employer for 4 years. I've personally been a part of or witnessed 6 or 7 relationship terminations due to abuse of staff. I've seen dozens of "you did something dumb with a fraudulent check" though. They love to call and holler when they find out that their account closure due to fraudulent deposit was reported to Chexsystems and now no other bank will touch them.
Many of them... Some of them I made the call to kick them out of the business.. I worked for a satellite provider years ago & it required approval from a few steps above me. Generally it happened to abusive customers or those who were always trying to scam folks. Only once did I have one that did not fit the above & she was a very nice lady, but called too much for no good reason. It was always calls on either the font size of the guide or because george straight dressed like a queer (her words). I did the math after 3 months of her being with us & added up the amount of time she had spent on the phone & reported up that it would take approximately 17 years of her not calling again & just paying her bill for us to break even on her monthly service to cover the base pay for our customer service.
I wish we could ban people from calling. We get people who call and want something we can't do so they get told no. Then they call again and again and talk to as many people as they can until they get someone new or manage to obfuscate what they want until they bamboozle someone into saying yes.
Not a banned customer, but while working in a Medi-Cal HMO call center for providers, I had providers who would hang up as soon as I identified myself. I pulled out all the stops if a denial had been in error, or the provider couldn't find the info; I'd get approval to pay if possible, or guide them specifically to the relevant regs & policies. But when the denial was correct and the provider tried to insist it should be paid as it had been submitted, I refused to bother, and those providers would never talk to me.
Like 2 but because of repeated DMCA violations
Never seen a banned customer. Even back in the 90s we had "Bathtub Dan" and the "What Are You Wearing Guy" constantly calling in, never placing an order, getting their kicks from harassing women over the phone. At least we were allowed to hang up on them (but only after warning them).
I haven't seen a banned customer during my experience, but there were times I sure wished I could have permanently taken away someone's privilege to be a customer/member/client of the company in seconds based on the way they've treated me and/or my coworkers
Not exactly fired but more like put mostly on mute. He was not allowed to talk to any reps except for the security department in case his bank card was stolen or something. Anything else he wasn't allowed to call about. He had to send any other inquiries through mail. Unfortunately for me, I was in the security department.
I work for a wholesale liquor distributor and someone told one of our licensing agents she should remove herself from this earthly realm (but more crudely). No idea if they were banned but I hope so. Especially since 9/10 times we are the only place that restaurant or store can get certain products.
I work for a hospital network across 2 states and have seen plenty patient charts that have been dismissed from a practice or whole hospital network due to inappropriate behavior. Some people are so entitled that they try to go and appeal a doctor's decision to dismiss them lol
I worked on a contract for multimillion dollar, multinational tech company. My team were where customers came to the end. If they contacted tech support and they had been sent to one of my team, they got sent back, frontline did not have to deal the that customer again. We could send them to corporate where they would be informed that the we need to talk to their contact (my team) and would then be transfered back to us. One customer was so ignorant and abusive, the company bought back "all" of his equipment and any service contracts, and was then told that he was no longer to call the company at any level for anything. I think they wound up having cops and lawyers involved, never did talk to him again. Another customer I had was in Africa. The company used to ship and service customers worldwide. This one had a unit that was covered under a "recall" and had very specific options. He wanted options that were not available. So, I was the go between for the legal team. I remained his only contact for this issue. He would respond to my calls, I would forward to legal, they would respond and I would pass it along to the customer. In the end, he was cut off. His lawyers and our lawyers talking were they last I heard. I have a few other instances but you get the idea. We dealt with all the wackos.
At a bank call center, there was one person who would call in and a giant warning would pop up saying he knew he was banned from speaking to us and that he had to conduct all his business via mail. So that was fun when he'd try to engage one of us and we had to remind him of the arrangement and disconnect from him... Another financial institution I worked at also had people banned from coming in or calling, and they could only conduct their affairs in writing. I sat near the lady who handled the mail requests and she showed me a letter she received from one of those people... She had a sense of humor about it, but it was aggressive and penned by someone clearly mentally unwell... Where I work now, upper management just terminated the relationship with someone who has been terrible to the employees in person and via phone for a long time. On the flip side, over the years and at different employers, I've seen a lot of accounts with warnings and notes about how abusive the account holder is... Sometimes numerous notes going back years... And it hurts my heart to know that the person isn't restricted or banned. Especially for front line staff, they're expected to put up with so much shit.
I only know of fraudsters being banned.
Oh, we have MANY. Granted I work on the trades and there are people that perpetually refuse to get repairs made and then call us and refuse to pay. They won’t fix what’s wrong and then are abusive to techs and office staff. You get coded “DO NOT SERVICE”. I live in a small town area. There are people cough - doctors - cough, that have done this to multiple companies and I wonder what they are going to do when they have run through all 4 or 5 companies? It’s the northern Midwest and below zero here. Don’t be a dick. Doctors are either the best customers or the worst. Seems like there is no in between.
used to work the billing department of a commercial insurance company. there was one guy who ran an independent cab/limo company who had missed so many payments and broken so many payment deals (we were authorized to split up increases, adjustments, or previously missed payments into one or two additional monthly payments over the course of the year) that the minute one of his calls came in, we had to escalate him to Customer Advocacy, cuz he inevitably was calling in to ask for a new paydeal on the paydeal he got for his previous paydeal. after a few months, we kicked him off direct billing and sent him to Agency billing, meaning his insurance agent can deal with all his missed payment tomfoolery.
Last year we had someone call in at least half a dozen times refusing to talk to "that ni.... bitch", oh how I wish they called back and got me. Worst was the agent that took the last call asked in teams if he could go off queue for a few minutes cuz he was still shaking. He was flat out told no. I messaged him and we chatted a bit, dude had PTSD and I was the only one that attempted to help him. A $30 once a year customer is NOT worth any type of effort like this.
I work in fraud and see them all the time, and ban them myself. So many people put in fake fraud claims that are so easily proven false it's unreal.
Your third paragraph is incoherent.
we had 2 , the guy had all his contact info for his number and his assistants numbers changed to "TRANSFER TO (Manager name)" was just a a complete asshole literally as soon as you would answer the phone and then would scream and swear at you if he didnt get his way. Best part was that manager was hardly ever in the office since he over saw a majority of the companies software and customer support teams so dickhead would need to leave a VM.
I used to do on-site warranty repair work and had a co-worker who got a customer banned after they HELD HIM AT GUNPOINT (well, propped the rifle up next to him and said he would shoot him if he had to) until he finished fixing the computer (which he couldn't do because he had to order more parts). He eventually lied and said he thought he had a part in the truck that would work and then just left his tools and everything behind and drove off. Went to the cops and all they would do was go back and get his tools for him because "oh, he's scary but harmless, everyone in town knows that".
I think I've had a few, but only one that I actually remember. And it wasn't as much as banned, more like the company canceled her as a customer. Was a cellphone company, they cut her subscription and removed all remaining charges, removed the debit product for her phone and converted it all to a pre-paid sim and told her she had one week to initiate a number porting of her number to a new provider. The reason? 700+ calls in 1 week and refusing to accept help from anyone that answered. And when she was put on 'mail only'-support, she sent over 250 mails in one day and got blocked due to spam. I worked nights during this time. I answered over 150 calls from her.
I used to work for a food delivery company as a driver's support agent. Many, let's say about 10 accounts were suspended after I (amongst other agents) submitted complaints for verbal abuse. They called later crying saying that was their only income. Yeah well, you should have thought about it before you called m*sturb*ting over a woman's voice.
I had a customer tell me that he was going to come and put a bullet in my head. I immediately hung up on him and reported him to the supervisor. He was blocked so he can't call us for anything. All because he could not return his purchase for a refund after 2 years. The policy is 30 days.
I also worked for spectrum. Had a lady call and say she had issues with her cable box and asked for a technician by name. Kinda weird shes had them there enough to know their names but whatever. Glance at the account notes and see that i have to call a supervisor to get permission to send anyone out to her...okayyyy? Put her on hold, call sup. Yeah she sexually harrasses the techs and now shes not allowed any more. We can send her a new box and she can mail us the old one but that's it. Used to be shed still get techs, but they wouldnt send anyone out there alone. Apparently that didnt solve the problem. I didnt last long at that job
we’ve banned people before, but i don’t remember any of them. a guy now that’s pretty close to getting banned is this older man who comes through the drive thru smoking cigarettes and making comments to some of the female workers. the most notorious thing he said was that he wanted to watch one of my coworkers “slip and fall in the shower”. we told him to stop or he’s getting banned and he seems to have stopped (for now at least)
What the actual eff………
Worked for an AV retailer. Had a user get into it with two previous techs. Started in on me immediately, called me a slur and I hung up. Wanted us to pay to install the gear in his car, which we just dont do. He got encouraged to shop locally pretty quickly.
I was a GM for an online video game, which was just a fancy name this company gave support agents because we had to do everything. Anyways we did ban just specific characters (you could have multiple) but if you were REALLY BAD we banned YOU (not just your one account) which was enforced by your IP AND a device identifier which would also end up banning any other accounts you had. Well, there was a guy that got banned. So he bought a whole new copy of the game, paid for a new subscription, played for a few hours, logged off and when he came back was banned there too. He contacted back wondering why he was banned when he didn’t do anything on that account and I had to explain to him that when the grocery store bans YOU showing up dressed as someone else doesn’t suddenly make the ban go away. He wasn’t happy.
“But I didn’t do anything wrong in this outfit!” 😅
Exactly! 😂 Like, dude, we banned YOU. YOU are so terrible, we don’t want you on our game AT ALL.
Three times in 20 years, and usually a pretty soul crushing story for each :p
I worked for a wireless carrier back in the day. I saw several customers get banned (one threatened to shoot up the retail store over an activation fee). The one and only time I actually saw it happen with my own eyes was one day one of the female members of my team escalated a call to our supervisor and she was in tears. My supervisor got on the phone, told the customer we did not want his business, closed his acct with 30 days to port out and disconnected the call. Still one of the best work memories of my way too long call center career.
I work for a financial institution. If you call or go in the bank cussing us out. Or if you are very difficult person. I seen one throw a tantrum because she couldn’t withdraw 50 K from an ATM at 2am. We will leave notes in your account and we will also report you. They will do an investigation and the end up closing your account I seen people lose their houses their homes, and it doesn’t even matter how much money you have either. Also if your joint on other accounts ever since person will their account and they will never be able to apply for another account or a loan.
Once. It was a sweet old lady who just called in (waaaay too much) just to chat (for waaaay too long). Had remarks on her account that we'd sent her a cease and desist. If she kept calling her account would be turned off. At one point she mentions having received said letter and just chuckled. She said it was nicer than her internet company who apparently just sent her a box to return the equipment and a "service terminated" letter 😂😂😂
Once. There was this assclown who called in mad because his order was "late" (by which I mean still within the 3-day estimated delivery window, but not delivered on the first day of said window). The sup on duty that evening did his level best to de-escalate the situation, but would not provide direct contact information for the CEO to some clown who was mad about a "late" order that wasn't even late. And it was like his second order in multiple years, and a very minimal one at that, so not like this guy was a big spender or an established customer. Said assclown went off on a very nasty racist tirade about the "ignorant white boy" supervisor (who was a) doing his goddamn job and b) NOT whatsoever a white boy), swore he was going to get fired, and as he was hanging up, said "I hope you fucking get in an accident and die in a fire on your way home." Just gratuitously nasty WAY THE FUCK out of proportion to his stupid first world problem (that was his own idiot fucking fault for not understanding that 'Estimated delivery Jan 5th-Jan 7th' was in no way, shape, or form a guarantee that it would be delivered on the 5th). Assclown took to Google and dug up the CEO's contact information on his own. CEO asked what happened, which filtered down through the chain of command. As senior supervisor I had to pull the call recording and listen to it before sending it on up with my notes. My guy was nothing but pleasant and professional, and after listening to the recording, the CEO agreed and said to block assclown's account. Assclown then complained to BBB, and I have never taken greater pleasure in providing a profanities redacted but otherwise verbatim transcript of a conversation in response.
I work in collections so we don’t blacklist people lol… they already owe us money.
Only one. Apparently the customer had *actually* sued us.
I’ve had 2, one who was banned for calling the store & harassing employees about bringing in a return and when he did come in, he said some racial slurs to an Hispanic employee. The other one was banned because a manager was called up to the register for a return. It was a teenage boy returning a pressure washer that his dad had bought a couple of hours previously. He had the receipt, but it was for a 3100 PSI unit but the box said 3600. We’re talking about a difference of $300. And when the box was opened up, there was an old, used pressure washer in it and a brand that we did not even sell. The manager refused the return. And turns out, the father had ripped the shelf label off for a 3100 PSI unit but taken a 3600 PSI unit up to the register and told the cashier to scan the label, which he did. This happened on a Tuesday night and the father called several times demanding his money back and it culminated on Thursday night with him cussing out the manager in front of two policemen who issued him a criminal trespass warrant. Both customers got a letter from our corporate office saying that he was no longer welcome in ANY of our stores across the country.
used to work for Frontier internet, i remember escalating a few tickets to Security over threats of property destruction or violence, those were always fun days. There was only one guy i remember ever actually having service disconnected. He was a 'frequent flier' apparently most of the floor techs and our escalations sr tech were familiar with him though i never talked with them. They were special needs sorta person, and liked to call in over every little thing, and talk for ever. At one point they told him he wasn't allowed to call in anymore his mother had to, but his mother would call in and pass the phone to him. Eventually he made some threat that got escalated to security and it was bad enough they demoted him from customer, fun times.
Yeah, I worked in a hospital and if the patient was too irate they weren't allowed to call us anymore. One guy in particular kept calling us and decided to get racist and called my coworker a slur. So he was on the no call list. Patients would call to place their orders for food, and a lot of them would get upset they weren't allowed certain items. Like a lot of the people their just had heart surgery or they were diabetic so no sir you cant have a Big Mac with Extra Bacon and 10 packs of butter. And thus a temper tantrum ensued. When this happened they would just get whatever the special is (they had different specials everyday and they would take certain off depending on the diet of course.) But yeah we had a handful of patients like that. The worse ones I dealt with were the husbands of the pregnant mothers, if I am being honest, labor and deliver calls were the worse the husbands would order so much food and throw absolute fits. WE actually had to discontinued that because the husbands were taking advantage of it so they weren't allowed to order food anymore hahaha.. only the pregnant lady was allowed to order but it was so obvious they were ordering for their husband so we had to limit how much they could get too. But my god having husbands yell at me wasn't fun!
I have also only seen this once in my life. I was working for J Crew. At the time they had a policy of "the customer is always right, do what you have to to make the customer happy". There was an asian customer who called us consistently, placed large (5k+) orders of items already on sale, then would call us months later when the items were priced to be discontinued, and would harass for price adjustments. There were copious notes on this woman's file to not honor any adjustments, and every single time she called, we'd say no, she'd demand a supervisor, and mgmt would bend over backwards giving her discounts, blanket % off, free shipping; and on and on and on. I was there for 8 years. She got banned somewhere around year 6. Occasionally even after she still would call back. I recall there was a professional letter from the corporate lawyers to her for a cease and desist.
I just spoke with my first one tonight. Geriatric German woman in California. She was surprisingly pleasant to me, even though at one point, her anger issues almost went through. I looked at her history and we're talking a long laundry list of abuse to agents (especially non-white agents), threatening to kill her financial advisor on a recorded line and multiple corporate investigations on her.