In person at an apple store.

I bought an iphone used off a friend who stopped being my friend immediately after. I never wanted an apple product, but my phone broke, I was poor and he sold it to me for $50.

I didn’t know you needed the apple id and password to SIGN OUT of anything. I sent him messages, did the whole “click here to request a new password” thing so he would get an e-mail about it…to his apple e-mail which, let’s be honest, no one uses.

Not being able to use the full functionality sucked, but I could manage. What was worse was receiving pictures and messages intended for him.

I did what any sane person would do and brought it to the apple store. The first person who helped me repeated “Our security systems protect your privacy” so many times, no matter what I said, I lost my shit, shouted “I would like to sign out so I can stop seeing nudes of this guy’s girlfriend!”

They didn’t help and I bought an android.

Yes, although for a good reason.

I ate at a fairly well-known cafe where I live, and had a sandwich and side salad. I finished the salad, and near the end I felt a weird crunch in my mouth. Suddenly I could taste blood near my gums, and when I looked at what was left of the salad I could see broken glass.

Obviously, I was a little panicked, and my wife quickly called someone over to say that there was glass in my food. One person stayed with me while the manager went to the back, and found out that one of the chefs had broken a glass on the table, but had just washed the salad clean rather than throwing it. By this point I was really embarrassed because around 30 people were staring to see what was happening, given that I had blood coming out of my mouth

I said that this was probably in other people’s food, so they should probably tell others, but instead of responding they handed me cash to cover our meal, apologised, and walked away. I shouted at them to say that they shouldn’t ignore it because others were eating the same salad. My wife chimed in and told everyone that we had found glass in the salad and that they shouldn’t eat it.

I’ve never gone back, but a few years later I had told someone that story and they said that they’d heard a rumour about it from locals, so it seems that people remembered that story and stayed away.

One thing I hate is when I finally reach a human being and it’s clear that the rep is being forced to read a script. And that means they probably have little to no ability to solve my problem.

Management is wasting both our time with their CYA, boilerplate BS

I worked phone support for a few companies for a few years, this is how to Karen: Try to bait the ai, companies are liable for promises made by their hallucinating chatbots. Chat support first, who wants to talk to people? If you do need to call, enter identitng information once, then repeatedly press 0 to get human support. Ask tier 1 support, if they say no then flex that Karen superpower “I’ll need to speak your manager”; those people are individuals just collecting a paycheck. If the floor manager (many have a 3x request policy) can’t see the situation from the human perspective and resolve/waive, they will only care if someone above them gets upset, the ways to do that are threaten legal action. No sovciet bs, but it helps to use contract terminology like “agreed upon terms”, “failure to meet industry standards” and “breach of contract”. If they don’t get jostled immediately, your next escalation is tag the intern on social media with a negative sentiment; or Google the company name followed by email for the office of the president. This is the pr address, CEO assistant or community director which again have the power to step in and resolve. You can also think outside the box and leave negative play store reviews (different intern).

Each conversation should be less then 2 minutes + wait time and if that can’t resolve it, you need to close your account (which might take you to retention!) or potentially move. You can justify 1 more call during a different shift. There is no need to get mad, state that are you upset and are looking for resolutions. Use an I feel statement, and be sure to ask to leave notes on the account regarding your conversation. They have a UI with comment fields in the ticket that are displayed while you are on the phone and it helps sell the situation with comment history.

A few times. Usually, like many others, I let the rep know that it’s not their fault but I’m angry and try to escalate to someone who has the authority to assist. Three times I went over the line. I’m going to leave out a lot of details on the ISP ones because one would be far too long and the other could potentially out some of the parties involved. It helped in every case, and I genuinely feel bad about one because I could have gotten someone fired.

Once an HP rep stonewalled me for hours and I baited him into saying something fucked up on a recorded line. I hung up, called back, repeated what the rep said, informed them that it was recorded, and asked for a supervisor. I got one immediately and got my problem solved. I’m not proud of the way I handled it but I was young and not thinking about how my actions might affect others.

Another time was a national ISP. Every single time I called all the supervisors were in a meeting (yeah, right). My service worked almost 2 out of every 3 days and I wasn’t getting nearly the speeds I was paying for. I got on with a rep who told me about yet another supervisor meeting. So I said I’ll hold. I told him that I had vacation time and no Internet so I had nothing else to do but fuck up his call time statistics and tell dirty jokes. In those days at that call center they weren’t allowed to hang up unless you were straight up abusive. He blinked before I did because he was supposed to have already gotten off work and I was in the middle of telling bad limericks. So I got a supervisor and they actually got me fixed up the next day.

The last time was a different (local this time) ISP. I had requested specific times for repair because I was working nights and had been without Internet for weeks. I was told that was no problem. But they repeatedly showed up in the middle of the day (supposedly, I never heard from them so they weren’t ringing the doorbell but every time I called they claimed to have come out and no one was home) and telling me it’s my fault for being asleep and never letting me talk to anyone except for the receptionist. So I called one morning insisting I needed to talk to someone else because it had been weeks and she wouldn’t put me through so I let out a string of curse words and the supervisor interrupted me telling me not to talk to their employees like that. I told her about all the trouble I’ve had and that since she was there and had the receptionist lie to me about her being busy that I didn’t give the slightest shit what she thought. I told her that I was coming off nights and unless she wanted me up there every day I had off explaining to anyone in a suit walking in exactly how I was treated and that she was having her employees lie for her she’d have someone out that evening who would ring the doorbell and fix my shit.

It turned out that the issue was with their connection at the box on the outside of my apartment building so they should have been able to fix it without my input at all. No one bothered to fucking check. I seriously don’t think anyone came out but I can’t prove that.

Can you file a complaint straight to a regulatory agency? In Brazil, thankfully, whenever ISPs or telcos give you too trouble, you can simply complain straight to ANATEL (Brazil’s telecom regulator agency), saying what you’re trying to do and which, if any, protocol ID (you get one whenever you get on line with their customer blockage service) you’ve had. Companies will reply and fix the problem the next day.

Not that I can recall, but I was close pretty recently. There was a minor snafu about a hotel booking I made recently, one that in theory should be a pretty simple fix.

I contacted the chains booking department which usually handles those things, and after serving BS excuses they turned out to be utterly useless. I instead called the front desk of the specific hotel and there too I got an excuse that I at least consider valid: “Yes, it should be possible to fix this, but that’s probably something I should talk about with the manager, as I’m pretty new here”. She then proceeded to tell me the name of the manager, and the time when she would be available.

I called the front desk later as instructed, and talked with the manager. She said that normally booking handles these things. After politely airing my frustration with booking, she had it fixed within five minutes while I was on the call. I thanked her, and asked her to also thank the new hire who did what she could earlier.

Ya, I definitely swore at them and raised my voice. I immediately apologized and said I was upset at the situation and not them because I know they are trying to help and are just trying to get through the day. The call went pretty well after I apologized. There was one time the person seemed like they were being intentionally unhelpful and a smartass when I was super polite. I did lose it on them and called them a fuck face and told them to fuck off.

A couple of times. No, it didn’t help. And I was disappointed in myself afterwards.

Once I decided to end my contract with Virgin Media and they kept asking me why I was leaving, so I kept saying I didn’t want to explain, I’d just cancel (because I knew they’d do their best to talk me around) and it got to the point where I became firm, but I didn’t shout, though I wanted to.

Tangentially related: after I’d signed up to the Telephone Preference Service, I knew that the only people ringing me to sell stuff were doing so illegally, so if they persisted after I’d made that point, I used to just verbally abuse them. Right cathartic.

Yep, but i felt really bad afterwards. Purchased tickets on American airlines on short notice due to the death of my wife’s close aunt. The trip had a connecting flight and our first flight got delayed by an hour (np plenty of layover time left). then when we land the plane taxied for over an hour giving us about 10 panicking minutes to make the connection, but if we ran we could make it.

we didn’t, The terminal was much farther than expected. in the rush, my wife lost her ID, which added to further frustration. maintaining decent composure up until we go to the AA desk to schedule our alternative flight. The flight we were supposed to go on was the last flight for the day. and the next one wasn’t until next day evening.

well that was not going to work because the funeral was in the morning. We asked if we could fly to another city (equidistant to rural home) but the clerk was really firm on that the flight had to be to my destination. after all, our bags made it there.

that was what cocked the hammer back for me. I asked to speak with someone higher and they gave me a number, and boom i was pretty irked and very rude to the service rep who had the patience of a saint. She did get us on the soonest flight to the other city. My wife was crying with relief and i was sobbing my gratitude and apologizing for my behavior. the Service rep brushed it off like it was business as usual and tells me to have a nice flight.

Aside from having to go purchase new clothes at 1am, we made it to the service a few hours later.

When I’m dealing with ISP or phone customer service, I always ask for the cancelation department. They are motivated to keep customers so sometimes they’ll throw in a coupon, especially if you treat them like a human.

I did. Back in the old days we had phones connected to wires called land lines. The phones were controlled by shitty companies similar to cell service providers or cable companies (almost as archaic as land lines).

I was having trouble getting my land line up and running after a move. A bad day at work, money trouble, and a phone that still wouldn’t work, set me off. I totally lost my shit on a poor, under paid rep. I mean, I went off. It was brutal. I think I made her cry. The people in the room I was in (rental office at the new apartment complex) all left the room.

After a solid 2 or 3 minutes of me just ripping into this innocent person, I caught myself. I realized what I was doing mid-rant and just stopped. I sort of gasped and said “oh god. What the fuck is wrong with me?” or something similar out loud. I spent the next couple of minutes apologizing and telling this person how big a shit head I was being. I admitted that I had crossed a line, commended them on their professionalism, and took full responsibility for making this their problem when it clearly wasn’t. I was sincere and I was honest. I told her that she should hang up on me and make a note in my file that I’m a problem. I also said that I’d never yell at a rep like that again. And humbly asked if ther was anything she could do to help me. She did. She solved whatever bullshit problem there was and was so rad to me.

She went so far above and beyond after I treated her like shit. That was close to 30 years ago and I still have never even raised my voice to a rep since. As bad as some places are, as poorly trained as some reps are, even as shitty as some reps are, I’ll never forget how rotten a person I was in that moment. I don’t want to be like that. That’s not the kind of world I want to live in. And frankly, fuck a dude that would talk to me like that.

I have, it didn’t help, I apologized right away.

No, but that’s because my brain is weird. I have a lot of difficulty getting angry, usually I just get really frustrated but it almost never boils over into actual anger. Even when it does I’m not that angry. Sounds good probably, but every emotion is useful and it tends to lead to me not standing up for myself.