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I used to work for a company which sold used cars, which were purchased from private people in our branches (think ‘We Buy Any Car’, just mainland Europe), to used car dealers only. I worked in the customer support team and we used to get calls from peopel about massively different things, from Sales advice, to transport queries to even debt collection. It wasn’t the greatest jobs but I love cars and our TL was so chill, as long as the work gets done, we could watch youtube/netflix or do whatever.
I worked there for more than two years, before quitting as I was moving country. This was in March 2020. Covid was slowly rising in Europe and France was one of the first countries to shut their borders, or rather was the country that shut it’s border at that point. We would get paniced customers calling us asking what would happen to their cars and if the delivery drivers from France would even be allowed to leave/enter the country. The simple answer we were meant to give was no. The actual answer was that only cars worth more than 50.000€ were allowed to leave the country, due to the higher value of the car.
The week this call happened, our call centre was on fire due to two people being off sick, so we were only 3 people and more and more people wanting to pick their cars up themselves before the other borders shut. Suddenly, Dave calls. Dave was a 50+ year old man from Bavaria who decided to go to France himself and pick the car up with his tow truck. Dave is currently at the French/German border, shouting at the border patrol because they don’t let him in. He is also shouting at us, that the border partol is not letting him into the country. I had Dave on the phone at that point. I explained, politely, that unfortunately, no one is allowed to enter France, unless you are a french national or you have to urgently be there. He snaps back that his reason is urgent, as he wants to pick up his car. I ask for the chassis number to find the car.
It’s a 2k Nissan Micra.
Again I tell him that it’s not possible and that he unfortunately has to turn around and go home. He starts screeching that he is going to do no such thing as he drove more than 6 hours so far and he will get his car today. The border patrol people are laughing in the background. I explained that it’s not our decision and that the french government has shut down the borders and we are not able to change the rules. His screaming turned inaudible and we had a rule, if the customer is being that unruly we can warn them and hang up if they don’t stop yelling. I do so, he doesn’t listen, I hang up the phone. I explain the situation to my team mates, they start laughing, the phone rings, it’s Dave.
My coworker picks up the phone, everyone turns silent and everyone stares at him. You can clearly hear Dave screaming that I hung up the phone and that he is going to sue us and that he demands for us to call the border patrol and let him in. After a 20 minute back and forth between Dave and my coworked, he demands our Team Lead. We get our Team Lead, he takes the call, another 30 minutes go by in which Dave is screaming his head off and my Team Lead just explains that it’s not our choice and he can’t even finish his sentence and Dave is screaming again. Same procedure, my Team Lead explains that screaming won’t help as it’s the governments choice and if he doesn’t stop screaming, he will have to hang up. Dave doesn’t listen, he gets hung up on.
Our Team Lead is giving us permission to just hang up on him and we do so whenever he calls. As this was around 1pm, and we were working until 5pm, he was calling THE. ENTIRE. DAY. and we just kept telling him that it’s not our choice, he was yelling at us, we hung up.
The next day, he didn’t call back and I left the Job two days later as I took my flight to the UK.
I wonder what happened to Dave and his 2k Micra.
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Edit: Spelling
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