Someone hasn't been taking their meds (Long)

[Kara]

This is an actual call I had this afternoon that was just plain weird.

ME = Moi
PC = Psycho Chick

ME: Hi, this is Kara with (Big Wireless Company), how can I help you today?
PC: I need to speak to your fraud department!
(Fraud doesn't take inbound calls or accept transfers. This is an example of why.)
ME: Well, I'm definitely concerned you think there's fraudulent activity on your account. I know that can be a frightening issue to deal with . Let's just take a look at this.
PC: I. Want. To. Talk. To. Your. FRAUD. DEPARTMENT! Do you have a fraud department?
ME: We have a team that specializes in Risk Analysis and can research certain situations (for some reason, we are never to say the word "fraud," even if it's clearly going on). Now, I can file a request to alert them to suspected unauthorized activity, but I'll need to be the one to speak with you about it.
PC: Fine. Sometimes when I call customer care, the call goes somewhere else. It's being intercepted by these scumbags who are out to get me.
ME : Could you be more specific? The calls are not going to customer care, but to someone else?
PC: Oh, they say they're with your company, but they're lying. They make up things about my service and try to make me pay more money!
ME : How odd. Can you give me an example of this?
PC: I called last month and they said I was over my minutes. They made up some boloney figure of like 1500 minutes over and told me they could change me to a higher plan for that month, then change back to the old plan. But now that I've thought about it, why would any company do something like that? Tell me I'm over my minutes, that's insane! I've never been over my minutes. Someone out there probably copied my number and they're using it (note: this is impossible with a GSM network), and it's probably these same people!
(By this point, I had found that she had called in, was way over her minutes and we recommended a higher, non-contract plan and had backdated it to the start of her bill cycle to cover her minutes. This "fraud" saved her about $300 in overage. I also found that she had called in before claiming that her ex-boyfriend was running a bunch of scams trying to ruin her credit)
ME: Well, I see that it actually was a real rep in our Customer Service Department that you spoke to last month, and that you had been over your minutes at the time you called. All those short calls can really add up sometimes, but your usage last month was very consistent and appears to be valid. We did change to that higher plan for the one month, so your bill is $136.74 right now. However, you saved over $250 by doing so, and you have now been changed back to the previous plan, since it looks like it was a one-time occurrence. Of course, if your needs have changed, we can always look at a more permanent solution, but I wouldn't worry. Everyone has a higher month once in awhile.
PC: Well, I see I made a mistake by calling you. You're one of them!
ME: Ma'am, I can assure you no one can possible access our systems remotely and make these types of changes to your account. Everyone who gets into your account and everything they do is recorded by the system.
PC: Stop messing with me! I'm not paying this bill! F* you, you f*ing whore!

At that point she hung up. Needless to say, I'm monitoring her account for the next week to see how many more times she calls in and to see if she gets more abusive to reps. If she does, I can have her put on written submission only, meaning that she can never call Customer Care again and has to hand write and mail all requests for the life of her account

[Max]

Oh dear. I wonder if she is schizophrenic? Perhaps she ought not have a phone, since it is just another way "they" can get at her? I can't imagine living with that kind of paranoia. Hope she takes her meds.

And good for you for keeping your cool and monitoring her activity! Maybe she'd feel safer sending her stuff in rather than talking on the phone, anyway.

I used to have a customer that was clearly an off-med bipolar. She would go from syrupy sweet hugging you and saying "So good to see you again, Sweetie!", to paranoid and muttering angrily, to shouting and rage. None of the other girls would serve her anymore, they just left her to me. I would humour her when she was up and be firm and rational when annoyed and paranoid (just like you did, Kara). But when she got scary, and hinted at getting physical, I'd go right up in her face and call her on it. It seemed to snap her out of it, and she always backed down and became friendly again.

I swear, working on the front lines you meet ALL kinds.

[Imogene]

F* you, you F*ing whore!
*click!*
*mute, just to be safe* B*TCH!

What the hell? So, if I tell you the same thing, explaining it calmly and rationally, I'm in on it too? Excuse me? I'm pretty good at stopping what I was thinking, and looking at the situation from a different direction, and then attempting to explain the situation to you... (Very important for our game design group, making a golf game... and our script writer decided to be extremely explicit in his dialogue for the game. "Dude, we're marketing the game towards kids. You want Jack Thompson jumping down our throats before we're even out of school?" which, of course, lead to him commenting later, "If Juwl objects to it, you know it has to be good!" to the rest of the class when I got offended by some other discussion going on, or perhaps, the pornographic desktops half the class were using on their accounts... including the IT director in our class...)
Obviously, I'm an Illuminatist, so, you're being watched... Uh, huh...

[Becks]

PC: Well, I see I made a mistake by calling you.

"Not as big a mistake as I made in answering this call, ma'am."