The what the hell ccustomer or The customer is always wrong!

[J57ltr]

So I have this guy that calls for service and asks about a problem with a system we sold him in 08'. It's a totally custom system that I am not that familiar with so I pass him on to the engineer that wrote the program so he would have the correct information. So I spoke to the guy for a total of about 3 minutes. Engineer talks to him and I don't even ask what the problem was since I am busy with some other customers. Then all of a sudden I start getting emails asking our availability on weekends, when they can get cards and how quickly they can get cards if they were to go down as this is a vital part of their operation. I tell them we don't have anyone here on weekends, but someone might be there but that would be out of the norm. If they order early enough in the morning we can make any part they need and have it tested and sent out that day if it's not already in stock and shipping is picked up at 3pm. Just normal questions and I advise him that if it's critical it would pay to have cards on hand so if anything happens they will be ready. So after talking to one of our engineers he suggests they buy 3 cards because he is unsure of what the problem is and better than drag on for a few days sending one card at a time better to get them all at once. So then this happens:



I guess (Some Guy) was working with (Engineer) on our problem with the trim scale. Neither (The Company they bought it from) nor (Us) could come up with a solution so with Engineer recommendation we ordered the 470, 472 and the 474 cards. We eventually found out even before the cards got here that it was a photo eye that had been moved for some reason. We would like to send back the 472 and 474 cards as we already have spares for these two. (Engineer) didn’t seem to think we could return them. He is going to ask and find out, but I wanted you to know why we’re requesting to send back these two boards. Please advise.


Got voice mail from Engineer saying we could send the boards back but needed to pay restocking fee. Is there any way to waive this fee per email below? Please advise. If you cannot waive fee please send this to management to look at. I don’t think we should have to pay restocking fee. Either way can someone please advise to the next step in getting these returned?? Thanks


So I talk to the President and ask what she wants to do and am told, just go ahead and send them an RMA

(Dude),



Here is an RMA for returning the cards. Cards must be in new unused condition in order for us to credit you. (Engineer) suggested the cards since nothing that was tried made any sense. Obviously we would not expect a photoeye to be out of place so it is difficult to troubleshoot over the phone since we cannot see what is going on. We will not be able to refund shipping charges but we will issue credit on the cards once received and inspected. Please have them packaged properly so they are not damaged in shipment, if they are we will have to charge a repair fee or if the card is not repairable due to cut traces on the boards we will not be able to issue credit on them.



Thank you,



Jeff


So then like several weeks go by and I get this:


Need to know the status on this RMA for the new boards we returned to you. Still haven’t seen a credit memo on them??




(Dude),



Apparently they have been trying to get a hold of you up front and have not received a response. These cards are your original cards, so it looks like you shipped the wrong ones.



474D Digitizer Serial number 41949 was shipped 1/31/2008 on job number 9571



472F Power supply Serial Number 40711 was shipped 7/17/2008 on job number 9197



So what would you like for us to do?



Thank you,



Jeff




Then in quick succession I get these:

Negative, these are the cards you sent us!

We’re not playing this game. You didn’t want to take them back and now you sent me the wrong cards. There were no serial numbers on them when I took them out of the box and I put the same ones back into the box that I sent you.


An No ONE has called me!

(Yeah, but you were emailed)


So I respond:


Yeah I don’t think so. Here are the cards we sent you:



470 serial number 60991

474 serial number 61011

472 serial number 60880



They were all brand new cards. The cards you sent us are from the jobs I listed and I found the serial numbers in our log that’s how I got the information on when they shipped and what they were originally in. I will have (VP) call you or email you right now.



Regards,



Jeff

My boss calls and gets no response, and no response to email. I come in this morning and I see this:


I’ll get with my boss and see the next action. Someone may have taken them off my desk and not told anyone. Where is the S/N located on the card so I can check??




So my boss tells me not to respond to him and just forward it to him.

Good grief some people are a pain in the ass.

[CrazyGuy03]

Woah .. that made my head hurt

[J57ltr]

Cliffs notes:

We sent him cards and he returned old cards maybe by mistake, then wants to be a dick about it when I called him on it.

[CrazyGuy03]

Yeah. The ol' switcharoo trick eh.

Lets keep the new ones and stick the old ones in the box.

[J57ltr]

He's been a pain in the ass since day one. I had to remove names and such so those are all in quotes. It's a little hard to read I guess since it's not familiar stuff but read better in my head. Lol

[Bronco Boy]

Gets old when it happens daily, doesn't it.

[WarStryker13]

When I've dealt with stuff like warranty parts and repair/replace orders, that's the only time sending old parts back would be ok.

This is just dumb. Lol

[J57ltr]

Believe it or not most of our customers are pretty smart and actually it's not that bad. But there's the occasional one that really gets me. This guy went to our engineer (I'm the service manager) and he was the one to make the decision to charge them a restocking fee since they had basically moved a photoeye and that was what screwed up everything in the first place. He spent about 4 hours on the phone and decided to shotgun the rack. Wasn't my call I didn't even know about it. Next thing I know the dude is contacting me about it because he didn't get the answer he wanted. Keep in mind there's like 7 people total in the office and 4 of us are the ones that deal with tech support and stuff so it's not like we don't talk about what's going on just in case someone calls and has an issue and the person they were talking to isn't available we are all up to speed. I am just grateful that I don't have to deal with the general public like in retail. Most of it is pretty professional and problems are solved quickly here.

[J57ltr]

When I've dealt with stuff like warranty parts and repair/replace orders, that's the only time sending old parts back would be ok.

This is just dumb. Lol

Exactly this stuff was 8 years old. We have an 18 month warranty on everything but this was just funny. I mean I went ahead and tested the cards he sent and they are fine. The power supply is our card that fails most often and it's always capacitors and they last at least 5-7 years. We really don't have failures very often at all. We're like the Maytag of scales.

Jeff