'She's the biggest cliché': Woman wants phone refunded, but refuses to cooperate with staff

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    Font - r/Tales From Retail Posted by u/seg09 10 Woman wants a refund because she's filled up the memory on her three month old phone, fun ensues. Medium I work in a UK phone shop. One day a couple of months ago, I'm stood outside the shop at 08:50 waiting for my manager to come down and let me in. There is a middle-aged woman standing outside as well, glaring at me, tapping her foot and huffing impatiently. Uh- oh. Bad sign.
  • 02
    Font - At 9am we open the doors and she comes stomping in, straight up to me. I open my mouth but she doesn't give me a chance to speak. She bought her phone three months ago, and it doesn't work anymore, apparently. She wants a refund.
  • 03
    Font - Now before this conversation goes any further I feel I have to point out to her straight away that a refund is not going to be possible after this length of time. After 30 days we can send it off for repair, but that's it. "Don't argue with me!" she screeches. Okay.
  • 04
    Font - I ask her if I can have a look at her phone. She rolls her eyes and hands it over. After a few seconds it becomes clear that her internal memory has been filled up with photos of her grandson etc, and so there isn't any space to install a software update. So there isn't actually anything wrong with her phone at all. With my best retail smile, I begin to explain this to her, and mention that she can always buy an SD card and move her photos onto that and hey presto, problem solved.
  • 05
    Font - Nope, she wants a refund. We're back onto that. I tell her I'm going to go and speak to my manager, I go upstairs and we laugh at her, the usual. But he still comes back down with me to back me up because she's getting pretty horrible and we then spend another ten minutes or so trying to convince her that literally all we can do is send her perfectly working phone off for repair. She's now telling us she's going to go to Trading Standards, quoting the Consumer Rights Act at us, basically
  • 06
    Font - Eventually she admits defeat. But she still wants it "repaired". So I sit her down and start to take some details. "Why do you want my details?" I am literally on the edge here.
  • 07
    Font - Eventually she tells me her first name. I start to type it in (she can see the screen) as Gill, and then she says "no you stupid girl, it's spelled J... I... L... L" (speaking slowly). I raise my eyes to her and give her a big sickly sweet smile and apologise profusely. I then ask her for her surname. "Let's see if you can spell THIS right, shall we?"
  • 08
    Font - "Let's see if you can spell THIS right, shall we?" At which point I sit back and I say "I'm sorry but I'm not going to serve you". She goes bright red and starts sputtering. Kicking off, calling me thick, rude, etc etc. My manager comes over and tells her calmly to leave. "I'm taking this all the way to the top!" "Feel free, but please leave."
  • 09
    Font - s1rp0p0 Thank god you defended yourself. One of the worst things in these stories is when a customer blatantly insults someone and they just give them the retail smile. To an extent, you have to defend yourself. I was lucky at my last job to have a manager who did lots of floor work so she knew how hard (most of us) worked, and how polite (most of us) were. If we had to tell a customer we weren't going to help them anymore it was for good reason. If a customer ever overstepped their bound
  • 10
    Font - The Mysterious Mid In one of my first jobs I had a manager who told us "If you have an aggressive or other wise 'bad' customer you come and get us. You don't get paid enough to be screamed at. That's our job as managers to deal with these customers." She had her flaws as a manager, but she stood up for her people. Then she got replaced with a lousy nice guy who had no backbone.
  • 11
    Font - minakafujoshi I feel like if the customer is just being simply irritating or maybe seems like someone not worth fighting with, then it's better not to provoke them, but when they start blatantly insulting you multiple times consistently, then that's when you should probably say something.
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    Font - cybercifrado Pink Mist Feels No Pain "It seems you've filled the phone to capacity. This is easily fixed by resetting the phone to factory settings."
  • 13
    Human body - kinyutaka It is so rewarding with the boss has your back.
  • 14
    Font - [deleted] She sounds insufferable. One time I sold a teenage girl a selfie stick, and she wanted to return it because she couldn't take anymore pictures. Turns out her phone was 100% full and she didn't have any memory left to take the pictures. She blamed the stick that held the phone on it. People are dumb.
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    Font - kbean826 I thoroughly enjoy allowing these situations to get wildly unreasonable and then just saying "I'm sorry, but you need to leave."
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    Font - carl0071 "Ok, here's your refund. Goodbye." "But what about my pictures?" "They're on the phones internal memory which will be wiped" "No, that phone doesn't belong to you. GIVE ME MY PICTURES!" "I just gave you a refund. The phone now belongs to us"
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    Font - blacksoxing Big money bets she informed her grandson about this, and he informed her about what the rep told her, and she was like "...well she was rude to me" I've known those who are close to me who have almost embarrassed me in stores or out and about, and never apologize to the person that they huffed at after learning they were in the wrong.
  • 18
    Font - LuMu14 I also work in a UK phone shop. Have to deal with this sort of thing daily. I know that exact feeling of dread when someone's waiting outside for us to open, you can always tell the people who are gonna kick off. Good on you for refusing to serve, needs to happen more often.

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