Why I quit my call center job.

I got a call center job with an international package delivery company based in the US that I will call Brown Parcel Service (BPS) in May of this year. It was the height of Covid 19 restrictions and a lot of people were ordering packages because they couldn’t leave their homes. Highest package volumes were in California and New York, because those places were hit hard by the pandemic and were on strict lockdowns.

Naturally, I got a lot of calls from those areas because there were a lot of weird things happening, such as packages getting delayed, not getting picked up, showing as out for delivery for days at a time and packages not showing up when a customer paid for them to show up (overnight delivery, two day shipping, etc.)

The call that made me decide to quit was regarding the last issue.

The man was from an area with a high volume of packages. He had paid a high price for overnight shipping, and from what we could see, the package did get to his city the next day, but it had been five days since then, and every day the package read as “out for delivery” but hadn’t shown up. He wanted to know when his package would come and frankly, I didn’t know what to tell him. The most recent update on my side was “out for delivery” but I know he didn’t believe that, and frankly neither did I. He was also asking about a refund because it didn’t show up on time. So I put him on hold and called the help line to ask what I should say and to ask about the refund.

The woman who answered told me the same thing I had already told the guy, the delay was caused by a high package volume and a lack of staff due to the Covid 19 pandemic. I asked if I should transfer him to billing to see about a refund, to which she said the following:

“Because BPS can not currently guarantee delivery times, we are not doing refunds for late packages.”

So I went back to the guy and told him again why his package was delayed, and I told him that his package was getting priority because it was late, but there were just so many packages. He said he understood, but then he asked again about a refund. I begrudgingly told him what I was told about a refund, and he gave me a scoffing laugh before hanging up.

I couldn’t disagree with that judgement, if I’m being honest. The way I see it is that BPS is not only screwing over their customers by charging ludicrously high prices for services they can’t promise to deliver on, and won’t refund, they’re screwing over their highest paying customers by selling them a lie. The worst part is that most of the customers don’t get a say in being customers, they’re customers of online stores that choose to use BPS. Since quitting I’ve ordered a few packages that were delivered by BPS and I didn’t get to pick a different shipping method.

I quit the day after I had to tell that guy that he wasn’t getting a refund. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t lie to customers that their package was coming when it wasn’t, and I didn’t want to tell another customer that they got scammed.

Edit: just wanted to add, I went through a week of training, a week of nesting, and only lasted three days taking calls on my own before I quit.