How not to violate terms of service

Had a call today that reminded me of another series of posts I’ve seen on here titled “How not to commit insurance fraud” so I fittingly named this post in reference to that.

Anyway, our terms of service forbid the use of purchased/3rd party lists. Anyone on your email list must be someone you have permission to send to already. A woman calls in a bit of a fit asking if I can help her delete a group of contacts she accidentally imported into the wrong list but she did NOT want to delete another group they already imported earlier, which is a problem because the only way I could filter out the contacts from the rest of their list is by date imported. Since there was a group added today that should not be deleted, I couldn’t just delete everyone that was added today which would have been the easiest solution.

After going over this with her, her boss pipes up in the background freaking out about how dire the situation is. I explain that I’m gonna escalate to our higher level support to see if they have access to more specific list management tools than me but while I’m writing down my notes, I hear them arguing in the background. It was sort of in the distance so ai don’t remember exactly what was said but it was along the lines of “F***! We spent so much money on that list.”

I continue writing my notes but my ears perk up at that because, as I mentioned, that would not be allowed under our TOS. I’m not even sure I heard him right, maybe he’s talking to someone else about a different problem so I continue writing my notes. After some more squabbling, I also hear the assistant lady say “why did you say that, he’s gonna know!” to which he replies “S*** man, f***! This is bad! Oh no!” or again something to that effect.

At this point, I’m almost positive they are just talking about the list we’re working on and I mute my mic and just crack up laughing. I’m sorry but the dramatic way he said it like it’s the end of the world was just hilarious to me. I can’t take people seriously when they get THIS worked up, especially when their mistake is this colossal.

I actually ended up not saying anything about it and pretending I didn’t hear them and continued the call as normal because they were actually needing to delete these contacts anyway. The mood lightened and they were very relieved at the outcome in the end, thanking me repeatedly for all my help. I did have to mention it to our compliance team though because it was just too blatant to ignore completely. I’m not getting in trouble over their mess up.

Say what you will about this call but that’s just how I am when it comes to dramatic people. I know some people here have to deal with far more serious circumstances so I get why you could be affected mentally by a call, but in my case when stuff like this happens I’m just cracking up because it’s really not that serious. Worst case you send an email to a list you’re not supposed to and your account gets flagged and we tell you that you can’t use that list. Not my fault you didn’t read our policies.