Compensate Me!

[tenzilkem]

I hate hearing the word compensation each and every day. Sometimes compensation is justified unfortunately, not all the time.
I work in a call center for Cable\Phone\Internet company. Sometimes crap breaks, sometimes its a short issue, sometimes ongoing intermittant issue.
I love hearing from people who issues started 20 minutes ago and want compensation for the inconvience. We can give them a breakdown of what their comp would be...maybe a few pennies and they FLIP!! Others have had things going on for a while and we are sending out someone to fix it. They ask to be comped. OK, we can do so, but the issue has to be fixed first otherwise if issue is corrected and they don't call back in again and again. They don't understand we can't just magically pull a number out of our ass.

[Midorikawa]

Eheh. In my experience, calling their idiocy and telling them their credit would be less than a penny, or just a few pennies usually shuts them up. Of course, I go through the math with them too.

The only time it didn't was when Fox screwed up and cut off our feed of their channel during Lost a few years back, when Lost had a fanatical fanbase. Some older guy called and demanded credit. I told him "first, the feed cut isn't our fault. It's on Fox's end. Second, in the terms of service that YOU signed when you started service states no credits will be given unless ALL SERVICE, not just 1 channel, must be off for at least 24 hours. Third, even if I DID credit you, because you're paying $13 a month for that tier, divided by 30 days is 43 cents credit. That's assuming that you didn't have the channel all day. Divide that by 24, assuming that the channel has been down an hour, that's 1.8 cents credit. That's for the entire tier, not just Fox. We should divide the $13 a month by 19 if we were going per channel." (initial numbers and channel numbers made up. Math was not.)

He went off on me, said "1 cent is not good enough! I need a $40 credit for this!!!" I told him no outright...which of course brought up the insults and curses on me, my family, and anyone who's met me. I think he hoped I lose my job over this, and am never able to find another job during my life time or something of the sort.

I don't miss customer service. :-P

[TelephoneAngel]

yep, I've had a customer want to complain that the credit was not applied properly, and he should have 12 pence more than he got (his addition was wrong, but who complains about 12 PENCE?)

Thats about 20 cents in American money.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I put up with this all the time when I worked at the call center doing wireless customer service. The funny part was when a customer would demand a credit for two days they were unable to use their phone.

Ok let's see here, $49.99/month phone plan divided by 30 times 2 equals...$3.32.

I could literally hear a pin drop on the other end of the line as I'm sure the SC was wanting $10 to $15 or something like that. Not gonna happen.

Another call I took was a from a guy who was simply calling to say he wanted compensation for some other problem he'd had that was finally solved. My supervisor said the only thing he was going to get was an apology.

[Food Lady]

I put up with this all the time when I worked at the call center doing wireless customer service. The funny part was when a customer would demand a credit for two days they were unable to use their phone. Ok let's see here, $49.99/month phone plan divided by 30 times 2 equals...$3.32. I could literally hear a pin drop on the other end of the line as I'm sure the SC was wanting $10 to $15 or something like that. Not gonna happen. Another call I took was a from a guy who was simply calling to say he wanted compensation for some other problem he'd had that was finally solved. My supervisor said the only thing he was going to get was an apology.

I totally disagree. I don't make phonecalls every day of the month, nor do I use all of my allotted airtime every month. But part of what I'm paying for is the ability to use it on any given day if I need to. Maybe those 2 days were the ones where it was critical for him to be able to use his phone for whatever reason.

[Midorikawa]

I totally disagree.

His point was more "For one day, your credit is not really big enough to worry about, will cost more to mail to you, and you will not get more credit than you're entitled to based on the length of outage experienced" and not as much "Your measly 1 day outage is nothing. quit bugging me."

[Food Lady]

My point is that it doesn't matter that it's only one day. No service is unacceptable to me, and $2 doesn't cut it. That's all I'm gonna say.

[Mystic]

which of course brought up the insults and curses on me, my family, and anyone who's met me.

Well that explains a lot... I am cursed because of you!

[underemployeed]

His point was more "For one day, your credit is not really big enough to worry about, will cost more to mail to you, and you will not get more credit than you're entitled to based on the length of outage experienced" and not as much "Your measly 1 day outage is nothing. quit bugging me."

I loved my dads old broker. He didn't listen to what my dad said to do with my account. So my dad closed it. They sent me check for all my moeny. Few days later I got a second check for interest earned during that period 5 cents, $.05

It gave me a warm feeling to see that they spent $.43 to mail me that second check I didn't know existed plus cost of a check since it was fancy out of printer kind. Actually Now i regret cashing that check because it would have been funnier to keep it around and frame it than the look on the tellers face.

Back to the I want more than far share of what went out. It really depends, for cable if I missed the season finale of burn notice and only that I would be wanting more than that fair share, considering it about the only thing I actually sit down to watch. And if it happens a lot I might want better compensations however I will preface it with I plan on switching services to see what they will do and oh well if they don't make me happy I guess I will go elsewhere.

[WizardStan]

This is the vague memory of my childhood self, so I might be mistaken.
In the event that a show was missed due to error or technical problems, instead of giving money as compensation I believe they would send a tape with the missed episode. Is this still an option?

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

My point is that it doesn't matter that it's only one day. No service is unacceptable to me, and $2 doesn't cut it. That's all I'm gonna say.

Per our policies at that center, that's all we were allowed to give for an outage credit. Anything more would have to be approved by a supervisor.