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OK, once again I end up reporting on total dumbassery experienced by several of my agents who handled the marvelous calls placed by an amazing specimen of humanity that we'll call Mr. F.
Background: we provide technical support for a videogames company. To play the game (an MMORPG) a monthly subscription is required.
Please do not discuss MMORPGs and pay-to-play.
The first call from this guy was fairly normal: he claimed he had been overcharged, our agent explained that there had been a glitch in our system due to which certain customers (those who had subscribed at a certain time last year) were sent a receipt for £0.00. He seemed to understand, closed the call; so far, so good. I mean, he COULD have read what the receipt said, but nobody expects that, right?
Then he called again. Claiming that he had been overcharged. Hmmm... yes, we have the ticket number, and no you have not. "My bank statement says differently", he said. WWGkD (What Would Gravekeeper Do)? I don't know what would Gk do, but I know that my agent correctly asked him to provide proof of the extra charge so we could refund it to him. Not "so we can investigate your (outlandish) claims", but "so we can refund the sum". Mind that he never specified the amount of money he insists he has been overcharged for. Cue a tirade about lack of trust, because "we know" he has been overcharged (no we don't) and "we are trying to scam him" (whatever). He threatens to call our legal department, which we invite him to do. Possibly after having provided proof of such overcharge.
Does he do it? Guess.
Actually, look up at the name of this forum and guess again.
No, he would not call our legal department (not that we had given him the number - as he had not asked). He will call us AGAIN!
Right. So he does.
This time his tone of voice gets really rude. No abuse, no personal attack, only "your company is scamming me". For an undisclosed sum that we MUST refund him. Without knowing what such sum would be.
This time he also lets us know that "we" have also scammed of his April refund.
See, what happened is that our game servers are located in Japan, to be more precise in the Tokyo area.
When last March that area was hit by the earthquake and tsunami we all have been reading about, most (all?) companies whose servers are in those areas volunteered to close their services in order to utilise the electricity needed to make such servers run on more necessary activities (like, hospitals and such). Our company's servers were down for three weeks; people could not play and had already been charged for March, but received an e-mail saying that they would get April free of charge due to the servers being unavailable and all.
To allow people to play, the system needed to enter a confirmation of payment. So they were all charged for 1p (0.01£ or 0.016US$) - penny that was refunded immediately.
Mr. F insisted that he had instead been charged the total sum for April. We had confirmation through our system that he had been charged 1p and refunded 1p. So... no, he had not. And this was news for us, by the way.
We asked to provide us with a proof of such overcharge. No original document needed, a scan of a document/bank statement, even one hiding most of his personal info, would have been enough.
No luck.
He calls again. Gets abusive. Our agent threatens to hang up unless he stops being abusive. His reply? "I am not being abusive, you stupid cow."
Hilarious, had it not been offensive.
Moves on to e-mail. Explains the whole issue again. Mind, no sum of money has been mentioned yet by him. Ever.
We ask him to provide a copy of a bank statement "and we will be happy to refund you the extra charges you have incurred".
He replies asing for a refund.
We reply asking for a bank statement.
He copies and pastes his previous e-mail.
We copy and paste our previous reply.
He calls again. Tells us that "his neighbour didn't get his free April either". We ask him to tell his neighbour to call us to investigate his issue separately. Abuse. Hang up after telling him that if he does it again he'll be blacklisted from our phone system (unfortunately this is not possible, but we can refuse to talk to him).
E-mail, still the same points.
Reply, still asking for a bank statement.
Mr. F replies saying that he is unable to send it to us because it is now with the (Town) Sheriff Court and that we will be all "forced to appear" before the Sheriff "wherever in the world we are". (39.3 miles/63.2 km from this office to his hometown's Sheriff Court, thank you very much).
We reply that in this case we are not authorised to talk to him any longer as everything is now in the hands of his and our lawyers.
Mr. F replies with an e-mail that I still can't really understand, but it involves us "caving in", the team's manager (yours truly) being "on the verge of being convicted for fraud" and him being happy that "our deceptions have been exposed". Hmm, yes. Tin foil hats anyone?
Probably he occasionally calls Gravekeeper and orders pants. At least he is articulate. What he says doesn't make an inkling of sense, but he knows his own name AND address.
Maybe he is friends with Vicki.
Background: we provide technical support for a videogames company. To play the game (an MMORPG) a monthly subscription is required.
Please do not discuss MMORPGs and pay-to-play.
The first call from this guy was fairly normal: he claimed he had been overcharged, our agent explained that there had been a glitch in our system due to which certain customers (those who had subscribed at a certain time last year) were sent a receipt for £0.00. He seemed to understand, closed the call; so far, so good. I mean, he COULD have read what the receipt said, but nobody expects that, right?
Then he called again. Claiming that he had been overcharged. Hmmm... yes, we have the ticket number, and no you have not. "My bank statement says differently", he said. WWGkD (What Would Gravekeeper Do)? I don't know what would Gk do, but I know that my agent correctly asked him to provide proof of the extra charge so we could refund it to him. Not "so we can investigate your (outlandish) claims", but "so we can refund the sum". Mind that he never specified the amount of money he insists he has been overcharged for. Cue a tirade about lack of trust, because "we know" he has been overcharged (no we don't) and "we are trying to scam him" (whatever). He threatens to call our legal department, which we invite him to do. Possibly after having provided proof of such overcharge.
Does he do it? Guess.
Actually, look up at the name of this forum and guess again.
No, he would not call our legal department (not that we had given him the number - as he had not asked). He will call us AGAIN!
Right. So he does.
This time his tone of voice gets really rude. No abuse, no personal attack, only "your company is scamming me". For an undisclosed sum that we MUST refund him. Without knowing what such sum would be.
This time he also lets us know that "we" have also scammed of his April refund.
See, what happened is that our game servers are located in Japan, to be more precise in the Tokyo area.
When last March that area was hit by the earthquake and tsunami we all have been reading about, most (all?) companies whose servers are in those areas volunteered to close their services in order to utilise the electricity needed to make such servers run on more necessary activities (like, hospitals and such). Our company's servers were down for three weeks; people could not play and had already been charged for March, but received an e-mail saying that they would get April free of charge due to the servers being unavailable and all.
To allow people to play, the system needed to enter a confirmation of payment. So they were all charged for 1p (0.01£ or 0.016US$) - penny that was refunded immediately.
Mr. F insisted that he had instead been charged the total sum for April. We had confirmation through our system that he had been charged 1p and refunded 1p. So... no, he had not. And this was news for us, by the way.
We asked to provide us with a proof of such overcharge. No original document needed, a scan of a document/bank statement, even one hiding most of his personal info, would have been enough.
No luck.
He calls again. Gets abusive. Our agent threatens to hang up unless he stops being abusive. His reply? "I am not being abusive, you stupid cow."
Hilarious, had it not been offensive.
Moves on to e-mail. Explains the whole issue again. Mind, no sum of money has been mentioned yet by him. Ever.
We ask him to provide a copy of a bank statement "and we will be happy to refund you the extra charges you have incurred".
He replies asing for a refund.
We reply asking for a bank statement.
He copies and pastes his previous e-mail.
We copy and paste our previous reply.
He calls again. Tells us that "his neighbour didn't get his free April either". We ask him to tell his neighbour to call us to investigate his issue separately. Abuse. Hang up after telling him that if he does it again he'll be blacklisted from our phone system (unfortunately this is not possible, but we can refuse to talk to him).
E-mail, still the same points.
Reply, still asking for a bank statement.
Mr. F replies saying that he is unable to send it to us because it is now with the (Town) Sheriff Court and that we will be all "forced to appear" before the Sheriff "wherever in the world we are". (39.3 miles/63.2 km from this office to his hometown's Sheriff Court, thank you very much).
We reply that in this case we are not authorised to talk to him any longer as everything is now in the hands of his and our lawyers.
Mr. F replies with an e-mail that I still can't really understand, but it involves us "caving in", the team's manager (yours truly) being "on the verge of being convicted for fraud" and him being happy that "our deceptions have been exposed". Hmm, yes. Tin foil hats anyone?
Probably he occasionally calls Gravekeeper and orders pants. At least he is articulate. What he says doesn't make an inkling of sense, but he knows his own name AND address.
Maybe he is friends with Vicki.
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