Investing in the stock market means that you could end up making a lot of money, but there’s also risk involved.

You could also lose a lot of money.

In today’s story, one man is very upset that a customer service representative didn’t do as he had instructed with his retirement accounts.

When the call is escalated to a manager, the manager complies with the customer’s request, but it doesn’t work out well for the customer.

Let’s see what happens.

Demand that your money be moved? Don’t let me tell you that this is a bad idea? Sure.

Some of you might recall that financial crisis that happened a bit back, circa 2008-ish.

At the time, I was working in a call center for retirement accounts such as 401k’s or 403b’s.

For any non-Americans, these are plans from your employer where you can contribute a portion of your salary, and usually they will also contribute something as well, to save for retirement.

This is probably the biggest way that Americans save for the end.

As the account-holder, you have control over how the money is invested.

Usually from a small selection of different mutual funds.

Sometimes when you ask to talk to a manager you don’t actually get a manager.

Also, about the call center…

I had some experience, I knew what I was talking about and was able to speak with confidence in my voice. Therefor, I was on the “escalated” line.

This is reserved for the people who “want to talk to a manager.”

I was not a manager, but I and others like me got these calls.

This is how the job usually worked.

In some rare cases, we actually fixed a problem, but more often than not, just told the customer the same thing they had just heard from the first rep, only with that level of confidence.

Then they hung up as a happy customer.

We also had the ability to review previous calls to the center.

One customer was really upset.

So, one day in April of 2009, an irate client was transferred to me.

He had just gotten his quarterly financial statement, showing that he was invested in several different funds that were affected by the stock market.

His complaint was that he had called a month earlier to request that his stock-market based investments be moved to something more stable and less risky (at that time, the news was all doom-and-gloom, leading people to make majorly ill-informed financial decisions).

This didn’t happen.

The man kept interrupting him.

As I reviewed the transaction history on his account, I confirmed that whoever he had spoken to previously had only redirected new contributions into stable funds, but had made no change to any existing balance.

I told the gentleman that I could review the call, and if our rep had made a mistake, adhere to his wishes.

I then tried to say something else… but was quickly cut-off.

“Yes, review that call. I want my money out of the market!!!”

I try to say something like “okay, but sir….” only to be cut-off again.

The rep actually had made a mistake.

This was not a man with a small account balance, at the time it was 500k+, meaning that at the beginning of the crisis, he probably had around 1 mil in his account.

I reviewed the call. And yes, our rep had made a mistake.

I went through the process to retroactively conduct his requested transactions.

The rep got a negative mark on his record for making a mistake, but the customer really got the short end.

He wanted to explain the situation to the man on the phone.

For those that don’t know, the low-point in the market was in early March of that year.

Many stocks and markets rebounded enormously and very quickly.

What I wanted to tell the guy was something like “fund A is up 28% since the day you made that call. Fund B is up 32%…. ” and so on.

But, as he didn’t give me the chance to tell him to think about his request… well, that is why I am posting here.

The man would’ve been better off if he hadn’t called.

As my company had to backdate his transactions, he instantly lost about 150K in his account, and missed out on the boom.

Of course, he called later to complain.

But, even after our mistake, we had done exactly as he had asked.

I hope he is enjoying his retirement.

I bet that customer was really upset when he found out how much money he lost.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Sometimes it’s better not to touch your accounts.

This person’s friends made some very bad decisions.

People with experience are worth listening to.

This guy did everything wrong.

This person had a lucky break!

If he had been nice, the customer service rep could’ve helped him.

That’s what you’re paying him for, after all.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.