An Irate Customer Kept Spamming Tech Support Over a Single TV Show Typo—Refusing to Accept That On-Screen Errors Can’t Be Patched
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Imagine watching a TV show that has a runtime listed as 60 minutes, but at 45 minutes, the credits are rolling and the show ends. Would you be upset that the show only lasted 45 minutes instead of 60, or would it not really bother you?
In this story, one cable TV customer is in this situation, and he’s so upset about this exact issue that he calls tech support at the cable company over and over and over again.
Nobody in tech support can fix the issue, but one employee eventually comes up with a way to get the guy off the phone quickly.
Let’s read all about it.
User harasses cable company to fix a harmless typo.
Scene: Tech support for cable TV
Year: 2010-ish
Paraphrased and shortened, of course.
Me:
Let’s see what the customer is complaining about.
Customer: Yeah I’m having an issue with my OnDemand, it says a show is 60 minutes in length, but it cuts out at 45 minutes and kicks me back to live tv.
This could potentially be a legit issue, as I’ve seen titles end in the middle of the show before, sometimes even mid-sentence.
So I fire up a slingbox, see the content is indeed labeled as 60 minutes, press play, fast forward to 44 minutes, and let it play.
Indeed, the end credits of the show are already rolling, and at 45 minutes, it boots me back to live TV.
The customer isn’t satisfied with OP’s answer.
Me: So it looks like the only issue is a typo in the metadata, but since the end credits are rolling at the end before it boots you back out to live TV, you’re not missing anything.
C: Can I speak to a supervisor to get this fixed?
Me: Sure, my supervisor is available right now, I’ll transfer you, but he has the same abilities I do.
I transfer the call and think nothing of it until a day or two later.
But it was far from over…
Word is starting to circulate around the office that someone is repeatedly calling and complaining about the timestamps being wrong and that no one can fix the issue.
I wonder if it’s the same guy.
Lo and behold, a few days later…
Me:
C: Hi, OnDemand is saying that is 60 minutes but it kicks me back out at 45 minutes.
Yikes! This customer has become quite obsessive about this minor issue.
Me: Sorry, but that’s not something we can fix.
C: (hangs up)
I look at the account history and see he’s called in LITERALLY over 100 times PER DAY to complain about this and facepalm that he cares so much about something so insignificant that doesn’t even impair his ability to use the service. At all.
The customer called again.
A few days later…
Me:
C: Hi, in OnDemand is saying it’s 60 minutes, but it ends at 45 minutes.
Me: Sir, we’ve been over this, we can’t fix that.
C: Can I speak to a supervisor?
The supervisor was actually right there.
My supervisor is standing at the desk right next to me, just cleaning the desk up of all the papers and junk strewn around it.
My supervisor looks at me, as if hearing the customer’s request, and I see him look at me out of the corner of my eye, and match his gaze.
Me (to customer, while looking at supervisor): Sorry, I’m not wasting our supervisor’s time.
My supervisor gives me a dirty look.
The supervisor understood.
Me (to customer, while looking at supervisor): You’ve already spoke to literally every rep we have 10 times over, and every supervisor we have 5 times over, to try to get the incorrect running time of your OneDemand show fixed and no one could fix it. Don’t you think if it could be fixed, someone would have by now?
My supervisor gives me the “oh, it’s that guy” look and proceeds with his business and never says anything about it.
Customer hangs up of course, but to talk to every rep we have 10 times over and every supervisor 5 times over, you’d have to be calling in thousands of times.
I don’t receive any more calls from him myself, but I keep tabs on the account.
The issue never got resolved.
He continues to call with the same frequency for weeks.
Occasionally a rep would schedule a tech to go to the customer’s home, thinking it would fix the problem, but big surprise, it doesn’t.
Whatever the content was, it naturally expired a week or two later, with the typo never being fixed.
But it still wasn’t over.
A few weeks later…
Me:
C: Hi, my OnDemand isn’t working, it says that is 60 minutes, but it cuts out at 45 minutes.
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Oh, ok, something different, oh, but wait, the name on the caller ID is this guy again.
Me: Sir we can’t fix that.
C: (hangs up)
The customer really won’t give up!
And the loop just keeps going.
He will complain about something insignificant, call 100+ times a day, occasionally talk to a supervisor, occasionally get a tech sent to his house, but nothing ever gets done to fix the issues, because big surprise, it can’t be fixed.
When the one content expires, he’d find another.
One time someone was able to ask why he cares so much about something so trivial.
His answer was pretty crazy.
Allegedly he was using OnDemand as a way to have a timer for 60 minutes and found the one program that just so happened to have wrong metadata. So instead of finding another program that lasts 60 minutes (or, you know, use a normal timer on your phone or a clock or an egg timer) he’d hound us to fix it.
Eventually someone else thinks to pitch DVR service to him, so he can see his shows and verify he’s not missing anything.
He doesn’t like it and hangs up on people that try to sell DVR to him.
Now as soon as we see his name on the caller ID, we just cut straight to the chase and try to sell DVR service, and he hangs up in under a minute. Great for AHT!
I get that it’s a minor issue, but surely there’s someone somewhere who can fix the typo. Obviously, nobody at the call center can fix the typo, but someone somewhere can. Couldn’t one of the supervisors send the feedback to the people who can fix it just to make this guy stop pestering them?
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This is probably why it said 60 minutes.
One person wondered why the issue never got fixed.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a widow who returned to a store to thank employees for their kindness to her late husband.
This person thinks the customer wasn’t worth keeping as a customer.
But another person thinks the customer might have a bigger problem.
The customer really was overly obsessed with this minor issue, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable for the issue to be fixed at some point. I’d assume there is someone somewhere writing this metadata who could modify it. All they had to do was write a ticket about the issue for the correct department. Still, even if it never got fixed, then they could at least tell the customer that they’ve forwarded the request to the appropriate team.
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