Dealing with difficult customers is part of the job for call center employees, but occasionally, the tables turn in interesting ways.

When a Netflix customer threatened to cancel over a price increase, one agent saw an opportunity to teach a lesson in compliance the customer wouldn’t soon forget.

Read on for the full story.

Threaten to cancel your account? No problem buddy its already done.

A couple years ago I used to work at a call center for a popular company by the name of Netflix.

You would not believe the amount of abuse and stupidity I would have to deal with (unless you’ve worked at a call center, that is) on a day-to-day basis.

This agent fielded all sorts of customers from their clients.

Questions could range from “So when do you guys install the Netflix?” to “Can’t you just make an account for me?” with my personal favorite being “What’s this email you’re talking about? I only have Gmail!”

And the worst being “How could you take money out of my account? Now I can’t feed my children!”

After a while, a job like this really wears you down.

Anyways, dealing with abusive customers and having the entire site close down eventually takes its toll, and near the end, I had little empathy for customers who were rude to me.

But luckily, this agent felt empowered to tell people “no” when needed.

There was one thing I LOVED about working there, however: we never had to try to keep customers or upsell them anything.

And, as long as we did the job correctly, our Team Leads would almost always back us up if a call was escalated.

So whenever there was a price increase, naturally, customers were quite upset.

Then Netflix had its price hike and wasn’t able to stream on older devices anymore due to technical issues.

You could not imagine the number of people calling to threaten to cancel because they believed we had the power to individually accommodate their wants and needs.

One customer in particular caused the agent a world of grief.

Cue malicious compliance: I had this particularly nasty lady whose account was on hold due to lack of payment.

She initially called because she was outraged she would have to pay 2 extra dollars in three months when the price hike took effect.

Once I informed her she couldn’t stream anyways due to lack of payment, she yells, “What if I just go ahead and cancel my account then, huh?”

But she severely overestimated how much this agent wanted to help rude people like her. So the agent did exactly what she asked.

And, like everybody else who threatens this, they severely overestimate my ability to give a care.

She had already stated that she wanted to cancel the account, and that was all the permission I needed to close it.

When they share the news, it’s clear this isn’t actually what the customer wanted.

So, after her threat, I tell her, “There’s no need, ma’am. I’ve already taken care of it for you!” in my cheery call center voice that I only reserve for children and irate customers.

She EXPLODES at me and demands my supervisor.

But the supervisors close rank and side with their employees.

Now, like most call centers, all our calls are recorded, and our supervisors can go back and listen to any call.

Since she had stated she had wanted to cancel (albeit maybe a little sarcastically), I was in the clear.

It turns out her rude attitude would cost her even more than she thought.

Turns out she really didn’t want to cancel, but since her account was officially closed, she would not only need to pay the original amount to restart it, but the new price hike as well, since the system recognized it as a “new account” — whereas old accounts were slowly being price changed.

This malicious compliance gave this customer a much-needed reality check.

What did Reddit have to say?

Ticking off customers is a delicate art.

In defense of the customer, sometimes threatening to cancel does work.

Employees who hear excuses all day don’t have much sympathy for some particularly overused ones.

Some customers are nearly impossible to reason with.

In the end, the customer got exactly what she asked for, but more than she bargained for.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson here is that you can’t threaten someone who doesn’t really care!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.