The customer makes the rules.

So I work in customer service for an online retail division of a company. We generally sell home good products. Some days are better than others. Today was definitely not one of them. I didn’t feel like clocking in from the get go and I’m still pissed off at how customers take advantage of our company and get away with it.

The customer has the reps by the balls due to ratings is the gist. So if they don’t get their way due to what they’re asking for being out of policy-the customer gets to give you a 1 star. Too many of those will surely be reviewed by supervisors and it goes without saying I really need my job.

I will give you an example of how it plays out.

Customer calls:

Me: Thank you for calling, this is me how can I help you today?

C: Hi I ordered this laundry hamper and when it came in it had grease stains on the liner.

Me: I’m sorry to hear that what is your order number so I can look into that?

C: #order

Me: Ok I will go ahead and set up a replacement for the order and you can just return through Ups with a shipping label.

C: Ok that’s a major inconvenience for me because I have a new born baby and …(some other stuff I cant recall, I started speaking over the lady)

Me: Ok ma’am no problem I will go ahead and send out a replacement no return required and you can keep that hamper or throw it away.

C: Yeah good. I also have another order which I don’t remember what it is that I’m still waiting for a merchandise credit. The person that spoke to was suppose to send me one.

Me: Ok let me try looking that up, do you know what items you purchased at the time?

C: It was multiple sheet sets. What happened was I called and placed an order over the phone and the girl who did the order used the wrong shipping address but I didn’t realize until a day later so called back and the person I spoke to said they would have to cancel that order and place a new order. So I was annoyed and they compensated me a gift card for $70.00. I actually have a gift card but it’s not working and it was sent to the wrong address.

(I view the notes on order. The notes show she called in asking about the same thing a month ago, and the support team followed up with the rep stating that there was no mc card for the order. I also checked the balance of gift card customer had which was 0.00.)

(I spoke with a manager, the manager confirmed there is no history of a 70.00 gift card. If items were delivered which it looks like they were because there was a return processed on the order for 1 of the items There is not a valid reason to issue a credit. Also it’s close to impossible to call back a few days later and cancel an order-it would have already made it to fulfillment.)

Me: Ma’am I did speak with a supervisor and unfortunately we are not seeing the history of the merchandise credit on file and we won’t be able to send that out.

C: We’ll this is your job to find out what order the credit should be on ( I did skim through her recent orders) and I would like to find out when this card was used and where.

Me: Ok ma’am, I will transfer you to the gift card department.

So yeah that’s a 1 star call.

I also had a recent call a customer ordered and already paid for furniture on 2 separate orders a month apart. Requesting to ship all the furniture together and refund one of the shipping charges. (Unfortunately that’s not how it works, if we can catch in order in time to edit it ok we can get everything on one order. However, once it’s in fulfillment. You can’t change it. Anyway I told him before transferring him that the department would not be about to remove the 2 nd shipping charge. And guess what I got a 1 star rating.

So if I don’t give the customers free shit then I feel like my job is on the line.

I get daily calls from customers saying I bought this item a while ago and it’s on sale now, so how can I go about getting a price adjustment? We don’t do price adjustments. And the customer is like well what am I suppose to do? You can return the item and rebuy it at the cheaper price? The customers always like don’t you think that’s a little stupid why can’t we skip all that and you just adjust the price. I’m sorry the company doesn’t authorize that. Yet another 1 star rating.

I don’t think I have really ever demanded a company or an organization to bend the rules. I just assumed it is what it is-take it or leave it. So I guess I didn’t know customers could get away with so much. It upsets me that it’s a constant survival mode situation. Kiss ass and give out free things to raise your scores. Give someone unfortunate news and it’s time to kiss ass again. Because we all know one bad rating is the equivalent of 5 good ones.