January 21, 2026 at 6:55 pm

Customer Service Worker Was Trying To Get A Full Refund Approved For A Polite Caller, But After Hearing Them Admit To Fraud While On Hold, She Denied The Refund And Flagged The Account

by Heather Hall

Woman working at a call center, answering calls

Pexels/Reddit

Apparently, some people forget that being placed on hold doesn’t mean people can’t hear you.

So, what would you do if you were about to go out of your way to help a polite customer, and suddenly overhear them bragging about scamming refunds while they thought the line was muted?

Would you continue with their refund? Or would you shut it all down once you realized what was going on?

In the following story, one customer service worker finds herself in this exact predicament.

Here’s how she handled it.

We can hear you when you’re on hold. Say goodbye to your discount.

I work in customer service for a food delivery service.

A customer calls and says their food never arrived, and it was over an hour late.

I check their order number, and their food is marked as delivered.

I try to contact the driver, but there’s no luck.

Since the customer was polite, she tried to get them the full refund.

Sometimes a driver will give food to a greedy neighbor pretending to be the customer. Sometimes they leave it in the lobbies of apartment buildings, and it gets taken. Sometimes there’s just a system error. So I gave the driver and the customer the benefit of the doubt.

I asked whether they wanted to be reimbursed or have the order sent again. They said reimbursed.

I could’ve just reimbursed them 50% of their order and gone on with my night, but they’d been courteous, which goes a long way in a call center, so I decided to try to go in for the full reimbursement for them.

I had to check with my supervisor to get approval for the refund because their full order was just a little over what I could approve on my own.

Then, she heard this.

I said I’d place them on a brief hold, but support needed a minute, so I was waiting. That’s when I hear this on the other end

Person 1: “She buy it?”

Person 2: “Yep. Told you this always works.”

Person 1: “It’s not that same dummy from before, is it?”

Person 2: “I hung up and called back until I got someone else.”

Everything went downhill for the customer at this point.

I immediately took them off hold and informed them their refund request could not be approved, and since the delivery was marked as received, I could not credit their account.

Then I disconnected the call and flagged the account for fraud.

They’ll likely be banned from the app for a week if this is their first time, and I doubt it is, so it might even be permanent.

I can put up with a lot, but I have zero tolerance for fraud.

Wow! It’s amazing how people are so uncouth.

Let’s see what the readers at Reddit have to say about what happened.

This is a good policy.

Call Center 2 Customer Service Worker Was Trying To Get A Full Refund Approved For A Polite Caller, But After Hearing Them Admit To Fraud While On Hold, She Denied The Refund And Flagged The Account

Here’s someone who would purposely do this to see what people say.

Call Center 1 Customer Service Worker Was Trying To Get A Full Refund Approved For A Polite Caller, But After Hearing Them Admit To Fraud While On Hold, She Denied The Refund And Flagged The Account

According to this comment, not all delivery services are hard to scam.

Call Center Customer Service Worker Was Trying To Get A Full Refund Approved For A Polite Caller, But After Hearing Them Admit To Fraud While On Hold, She Denied The Refund And Flagged The Account

Those people are terrible!

It’s behavior like this that makes companies raise the prices for everyone else.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.

Heather Hall | Contributing Writer, Life & Drama

Heather Hall is a contributing writer for TwistedSifter specializing in internet culture, workplace conflict, and viral customer service stories. With over a decade of editorial experience in digital publishing, Heather excels at curating trending online discussions and providing insightful commentary on the daily dramas that capture the internet's attention.

Since beginning her career in 2011, she has developed deep expertise in SEO-driven digital content, having written for a wide array of publications covering lifestyle, business, and travel. At TwistedSifter, Heather focuses on synthesizing complex social media threads into engaging, highly readable narratives that highlight the human element of viral news.

When she isn’t analyzing the latest internet discourse, Heather is a dedicated mother of three sons who takes family gaming nights entirely too seriously—whether she is dominating in Mario Kart, exploring The Legend of Zelda, or jumping into Roblox.

Connect with Heather on Facebook and LinkedIn.