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I’ve fairly recently left a call centre role in the UK. I worked for an internet provider primarily on the phones helping people deal with account issues and technical faults. After a while of getting sick of customers shouting at me to make their internet work I requested I be trained on webchat – thinking at least it’ll be less stressful than taking calls (I didn’t know at the time they expect you to handle at least 2 webchats at the same time).
Anyway, a chat came through from a customer who was looking to cancel their contract before the term was up. By doing this they would have been liable for early termination charges which are 50% of the cost of the remainder of the contract. Their reasoning for this was that they had lost internet for 3 days (due to an area wide outage and through no fault of our own) and although it was now resolved they had lost faith in our service so expected to be able to leave the contract without paying anything.
They still had 14 months to go on an 18 month contract so to leave they’d have to pay us around £250 – which they didn’t want to do. The following is a summary of the later stages of the webchat after I’d told them they’d be charged if they left.
Me: I’m sorry but you cannot leave without paying the termination charges of your outstanding contract
Idiot Customer: I shouldn’t be charged at all, your service is terrible and I had no internet for 3 days. Even now it’s connecting and disconnecting constantly so you haven’t fixed it.
Me: The 3 days you had without service we can look to refund you for and I can raise a compensation request so we can pay you a bit more back too, but I can’t cancel your contract free of charge. If you’re still experiencing connection issues I can troubleshoot that with you now to try and resolve it.
Idiot Customer: That’s not good enough. My internet has disconnected 5 times in the last 10 minutes whilst I’ve been chatting to you.
This was a lie. Had the customer disconnected at any point our chat would automatically disconnect too showing the customer as having left.
Me: Are you sure? Because you’ve remained connected to this chat for the past 25 minutes. If you had disconnected you would have automatically exited this chat.
Idiot Customer: Are you calling me a liar? I’ve disconnected and it keeps happening. I think I’ve disconnected again!
Me: Can you read this message?
Idiot Customer: No
Me: How did you know to respond?
Idiot Customer: I can’t see any of your messages now if you’re still writing them. I’ve disconnected again. This is terrible service.
Me: Can you read this message now?
Idiot customer: No, I can’t see any messages.
Me: You have literally just responded to my question.
Idiot Customer: Can I leave without paying charges or not? I’ll take this to the Ombudsman with this chat as proof of your terrible service.
Me: Can you read this message?
Idiot Customer: Of course I can I’ve reconnected again. This is ridiculous.
This went on for another 5 minutes before they mercifully did disconnect. But my soul died a little knowing people as stupid as this exist, can use the internet and can raise the stupidest complaints and objections.
So happy I don’t work in customer service any more.
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