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Imagine working at a store where you help customers with replacement parts for home appliances and fixtures. If a customer claimed that he needed a replacement part but you tested the item and saw that it worked perfectly, would you be willing to sell him the replacement part anyway even though you knew he didn’t need it?

In this story, one retail worker is in this exact situation. He tried to explain to the customer why replacing the parts won’t work and what is actually causing the problem, but the customer refuses to listen insisting that he needs to replace the parts.

So he sells him the replacement parts.

That’s far from the end of it. Keep reading to find out what happens next.

I’m not the one to tell people how to spend their money

Some background, I work in a home parts store (for washing machines, ovens, showers, all that kind of thing).

So we know quite well the operation of all these divices and we usually stop to explain and solve all The doubts that a client who cannot or does not want to hire a gas operator has and in general they are usually grateful.

Many times they come looking for a piece that despite being worth some money are not inaccessible, but we go from crisis to crisis so most are very grateful when we test the device and it works.

But it is not always like that.

A customer thought he knew better.

In this case it is a person who came to change the thermostat and the resistance of a hot water tank.

As usual we test everything and despite not being in the best conditions due to scale (a problem we have with the water where I live ) Everything works fine.

But this person insists that this is the problem with his water heater when we are showing him that clearly both parts work perfectly.

He does not care, he insists that we sell him the new parts and I will not be the one to stop tell people how to spend their money.

He got what he wanted, but he’d later regret it.

I tell them the price that would be around 18,000 pesos (about 200 USD), and even tho this is the MOST EXPENSIVE type they swipe their card and pay it.

Not even 2 hours pass before he come back demanding that we return their money because what we sold him clearly does not work.

We are surprised so we teasted it and it works perfectly so we flatly refuse to return the money, (in all cases where the error is ours, we return the money).

He retires furiously and never returns, it is an anticlimactic ending but that is what happend. In the end he Lost a ton of money for not giving a care about a good advice.

That sounds so frustrating for the customer and the employee, but the customer is the one who really lost out. If only he had listened and realized he’s not the expert.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person shared a phrase in this story they really liked.

That was the only comment in English. I’m surprised more people didn’t weigh in with their similar experiences.

Here’s my take. If the customer insists on buying something, it’s not the employee’s job to talk them out of it. I’m not sure what the return policy is, but I would assume in the case of a replacement part that works perfectly fine you couldn’t return it after using it.

The customer wasted his money, but he can only blame himself.