You know those people you interact with who just don’t listen?

Yeah, we all have to deal with them at some point or another.

The person who wrote this story interacted with a customer who either wasn’t paying attention to what they had to say…or they just didn’t think the rules applied to them.

Read on and find out what happened.

I Gave the Customer Exactly What They Asked For.

“I used to work for a major telecom company in Western Canada taking customer service phone calls.

I had someone call in to set up service with our internet and television services. Internet was always pretty straight forward it was just a matter of selecting their speed.

TV was a bit more complicated.

On the one hand the service was not physically turned off at their house and they already owned their own digital equipment so we were able to do what we called a self install.

I just had to set-up the account add all their equipment and channels and then post the order without creating a work ticket. But we hit a snag on the most complicated part of the process: channel selection.

I was explaining that the 3 month introductory offer they had seen advertised only covered our base level package and what channels that included, and the customer said she wanted all the channels.

Well…

I explained that with the wide variety of channels we carried that was not efficient or cheap and offered to go over her family’s needs but she said she had to go out and when she got back in an hour she expected their service to be working.

Well the customer gets what the customer asks for; ALL THE CHANNELS. HBO, SuperChannel and the international Rugby/soccer/cricket network?

Sure.

All 4 adult movie channels at $25/month each, why wouldn’t they want those?

Every foreign language specialty channel, if that is what she asked for that was what I would give her.

Whoa!

When I was done the total cost of the package was over $600/month. I made sure to detail in the notes that the caller requested ALL CHANNELS and when I advised against that the customer declined to discuss their specific needs and disconnected the call stating they expected their service on the same day, I even e-mailed her a list of the channels they were subscribed to.

When the caller received the first bill (for nearly two months worth of service since we billed in advance) her husband called in irate.

After reading my notes and coming to talk to me my team leader struck a compromise that they would waive the minimum one month period for adding and removing a channel but the customer still ended up being billed over $100 for the one week that they had all the channels.

I got a verbal warning from my manager (My TL’s supervisor) to be more thorough in the future when discussing the caller’s needs, but nothing else.

How I was supposed to do that after they hung up the phone over the very idea of clarifying, I still to this day don’t know.”

Check out what folks had to say about this on Reddit.

This person shared their thoughts.

Another reader weighed in.

Another person didn’t hold back.

And this reader had a lot to say.

Some people really aren’t good at listening, are they?

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.