This cannot be real…

I work in car insurance and this is one of those calls where I’m kinda mixed on how I feel.

Should I be annoyed or feel sorry for them?

This was also the first call of that work day (boy was it call)

Customer came through, I was as pleasant as can be. Talked about how he had an outstanding amount on his motorbike policy. (He sounded really pissed about this though, not my fault you can’t pay on time)

I took the amount due and the customer asked if there are other ways he can pay his policy, I answered not really. You pay it monthly or off in one go. And your policy is already monthly, can’t change mid term.

This is where shit started kicking off. Now I understand mental health issues, I’ve had bouts of depression and my family say since I was young I’ve shown signs of autism and that shows in lack of empathy so sometimes, I just don’t understand things.

So customer starts talking about how he has bad anxiety and depression and he needs his insurance so he can go see his son every month at ex wife’s place.

He told me he wants to set the policy up so he can pay into his policy every week since he has a weekly budget sheet and he finds it difficult to work a MONTHLY payment in, instead of a weekly one.

I suggested he could leave £5 (his policy was £20 a month) aside each week in his account to pay his policy and work it into his budget that way since we don’t have a license to take consistent card payments on these types of policies.

He then immediately blew up and said he was able to come to this agreement with his phone bill and sky etc.

I said we’re a legal requirement and a lot can ride on our policy’s since if anythings wrong it can go really bad.

He blew up at me more and asked to speak a manager and I got a supervisor to do a call take over.

Throughout the hour he threatened to get his lawyers and his social type worker involved as well since we can’t do what he wanted of us.

Eventually we came to the conclusion that I would log this as a complaint and it’ll go to their department and they can try to get a resolution I can’t achieve.

I was on the phone with him for about 2 hours, then half an hour writing out the complaint.

I never found out what happens until like 3-4 months later when we were in a refresher course and it was a mixture of departments.

Had to give an example of a difficult situation, after I explained someone said they were the complaints agent that dealt with it and they said after going back and forth with the customer and him threatening to sue us.

We gave in, had to create some legal workaround and he calls in to pay weekly.

So the part where I’m torn is that I feel he used his genuine issues as a shield to get what he wants. If he tried to come at it a different way, I might be more sympathetic but he immediately was rude and shouting at me and threatening legal action.

Idk maybe I’m in the wrong, I have had customers like near tears on the phone and while I’m not like ‘ohh honey, I’m so sorry’ I will try my best to give them as much help as possible but he just seemed too entitled to getting what he wants.