Brought to you by my discovery that some people think that “the customer is always right” isn’t the slogan of a long-dead department store, but rather it’s an actual call the cops law.
Brought to you by my discovery that some people think that “the customer is always right” isn’t the slogan of a long-dead department store, but rather it’s an actual call the cops law.
At one point I worked for an electronics repair shop fixing mostly phones, laptops, and game consoles. We actually had a great manager and we all just enjoyed fixing things, so we really weren’t out to rip people off like they usually came in thinking. Our store policy was even if we didn’t fix it, we didn’t charge you, and we stood by it.
One day a lady drops off her laptop with a cracked screen. Part of the screen was still working, but the majority was non functional and would surely worsen over time. We diagnose the laptop and give the customer a quote and she agrees to the repair. I let her know that once we start the repair, the previous screen will be destroyed during the removal process since it has no more integrity from being broken, she’s fine with that. We get the part in a few days later and I start the repair. At this point the woman’s husband calls - literally while I have the cracked screen half out of the laptop - and says stop the repair and return it how it was. We were like, we’re happy to give the laptop back, but unfortunately we’ve already started the repair and while removing the old screen it broke more so it would end up being returned in a worse condition.
This fucking guy screamed at me over the phone about how what we were doing was illegal, how we never got proper authorization blah blah. We offered to even do the repair at cost, but no that wasn’t good enough. When the husband and wife finally came into the store to pick up the laptop, he left screeching about how he was going to sue us. Unsurprisingly we never heard from him again.
Why do I feel like this is a domestic abuse situation. Husband broke her laptop in order to reduce her attempts to communicate with others? She goes to get it repaired, he finds out.
I think it’s the belief that the wife can’t authorise the repair…
My thinking was that there was something in that computer that he was trying to hide.
One thing I learned from working in customer service is the amount of people that have a lawyer on retainer. Better be careful!
We developed a very effective strategy for this at a furniture store I used to work at; the moment the customer makes any suggestion of legal action, all our employees were trained to immediately say “I understand. Have a good day” and end the conversation on the spot. The unhappy customer immediately tries to press the issue, because what they want is for us to magically teleport a couch here from China or whatever, and at that point the employee says “I’m sorry but as you’ve notified us that this issue is now the subject of a pending legal action any further communication will have to go though our legal team.”
Repeating this a couple more times would inevitably lead to the customer admitting that they were bluffing.