Sometimes, when a customer thinks they’re playing the system, they end up playing themselves instead.

So, what would you do if a client not only demanded a refund they didn’t deserve but also refused to hang up until you escalated their claim?

Would you give in for the sake of ending the call?

Or would you show them the consequences of their arrogance?

In the following story, a Retention Department associate found themselves in this exact situation.

Here’s how it played out.

You want me to escalate a claim? Sure.

I used to work in the retentions department of an ISP back in the day.

While many people called genuinely wanting to cancel their phone service, just as many knew that retentions was more than that.

The ISP, let’s call them RedPhone, had two different departments.

The Retention Department was split into two sides.

I worked on Retentions 1, where we did a lot of fixing bills and offering small discounts and slightly cheaper phones to customers who said they wanted to leave.

Retentions 2 was for customers who were in the process of porting their numbers, and the worst thing they offered was a 50% discount for a couple of years with a decent phone for free.

This happened roughly ten, maybe 12 years ago when roaming was straight-up highway robbery.

Here’s where the problem customer comes into the picture.

Let me introduce you to “The Executive.”

I got the call, I did my little introductory spiel, and I immediately discovered this guy was the most entitled person I’d ever had the displeasure to speak to.

He said he was a very important executive who traveled a lot for work, but the bill he got was ridiculous, and I had to solve it, or he was going to cancel his service.

I muted him – so he heard nothing, but I could still hear what he said, and while I checked his account, I could hear him gloat to his girlfriend that he’s getting the bill credited because he knows how to play the system.

And he was a jerk, but he wasn’t wrong.

He knew exactly how to play the system.

This guy was a pro at playing RedPhone.

He had the highest phone plan the company offered, which was around 90 euros at the time for one line, but he paid 30 euros per month because he had discounts from both departments stacked on top of each other.

His plan allowed him to get what, at the time, was a super expensive phone for basically nothing at Retentions 2.

He’d gotten the super shiny customer status and the super shiny customer service line (which usually meant a customer was averaging a 300 euro monthly bill) despite his 30 euro ARPU because he complained about how the delocalized customer service stunk.

He was also not wrong about his bill being ridiculous.

He’d visited several EU countries, got a 600 euros bill, called customer service, and said he had not known that roaming was so expensive, no one had warned him when he told us he was travelling overseas.

The first time he complained, the company policy worked in his favor, but not this time.

The company had a policy that the first time a customer complained about something, we could refund them, particularly if the complaint was that the customer had not been informed about extra charges.

So the rep informed him about roaming costs and refunded him all of the roaming charges, leaving the bill at 30 euros.

The second month comes around.

He kept using the phone overseas and got a 1500 euro bill.

He calls customer service, and they tell him they can’t refund him again.

He says he wants to cancel his account then, and it gets transferred to me.

He was demanding that we credited his roaming charges again, because if we can do it once we can do it again, and also because roaming prices were abusive (he did have a point there).

Angry his plan wasn’t working, he wanted to escalate his claim.

I told him I couldn’t do that, so he wanted me to open a claim and escalate it.

I refused again because there was no one to escalate to; he wasn’t going to get that credited.

He insisted he wasn’t hanging up until I escalated the issue because he wasn’t informed, and if I kept the call going for much longer, he was going to charge the company for his time because he was a busy man.

At this point, I’d been working there long enough that if you were nice or even normal, I would try my hardest to help you, but if you were a jerk?

Sorry, can’t do, get lost.

The customer refuses to hang up, so I can hang up.

This guy, though?

He’d gone past being a jerk, and I was mad.

I couldn’t be a jerk back, but he’d been messing around, and I could make sure he found out.

The previous representative had already made it clear to the customer that it wouldn’t happen again.

So I told him that, okay, since he was so insistent, I would open a claim to refund him the 1500 euro bill, and I muted him while I opened the claim.

The jerk was again gloating at his girlfriend about how clever he was because he was going to get this bill refunded, too.

Meanwhile, I was copypasting the notes from the previous month’s claim, where the rep had written: “I’ve informed the customer of roaming charges in all the countries he told me he could be visiting (list of European countries).”

Also, stacking discounts?

Very much not a thing.

He had to spam the Retentions 1 call centers with calls until he got a newbie lost enough to apply another discount over his Retentions 2 discount.

This is where everything caught up to him.

And he had not read the terms and conditions of the accounts, but I had.

Trying to defraud the company was grounds for service termination.

I got the claim number, flagged down my supervisor and told her to please send it to headquarters in the daily report so fraud could examine the account.

I told the guy that the claim had been opened but also that since it was obvious he was trying to abuse the company’s policies, the claim had been flagged to be reviewed by fraud, and it was likely his account would be terminated.

He went from entitled to worried in two seconds and asked me to close the claim.

Sorry, dude, can’t do, you wanted a claim open, now it’s open.

Yes, the customer was fired.

Wow! He put a lot of effort into that plan.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit had to say about this guy.

Even phone companies make mistakes.

According to this comment, it’s not fraud.

This person’s mom uses kindness to always get her way.

Here’s someone who enjoys customer’s hanging up on them.

Glad he got what was coming to him.

If you’ve already been warned about a company policy, better believe they have it in writing.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.