christophe thinks out loud

I Love Our Customers

It is not often, thank goodness, but sometimes I have an interaction with one of our customers that leaves me scratching my head, wondering exactly what planet this person is from.

Recently, I had a call escalated to me by customer service because an angry customer was demanding to know where the order he had paid for by money order was. Our extremely polite customer service rep had searched and searched for this order, but we had no record of it. None. Of course, I took the call; one of the things that isn’t so hot about being the company owner is the buck does indeed stop with me.

Let’s say that it wasn’t a particular satisfactory conversation for either one of us.

“So, let me get all of the information so I can help you. When did you place this order?”

“Three months ago! It’s been three months, and I want my order!”

“And we want you to have it, but I’ll need some information to get it to you. How did you pay for it?”

“A post office money order! Is there something wrong with that?”

Oh, great, it’s going to be one of these. “No, that’s fine. We’re happy to take orders paid for by money order. Did you call and place the order with us, or send it in on paper?”

“I didn’t call . . . I paid for it by money order!“ Now, this is starting to be a bit odd. Since January of this year, we haven’t accepted orders that are just scribbled out on a piece of paper and sent in. We ask customers to call us, get the total and an order number, and then send us the payment. If we had gotten an order like that, we would have just sent it back. But we also keep a log of those orders, and his wasn’t on it.

“OK, did you check with the post office to see if the money order has been cashed?” We put the order number on every incoming check and money order. We’ve never in the history of the company cashed a check without processing the order it came with, but there can always be a first time.

“No, the receipt was just a little stub at the end of the money order, and I sent that in with the money order by mistake! Where’s my order?’ Now, this is getting a bit stranger: that’s not a postal money order he’s describing; PMOs have a separate carbon sheet, not a stub.

“It’s possible that we didn’t actually receive the order, then . . .”

His next statement comes out in a rapid fire burst: “I know you got my order because I got a call from a woman at your office on February 17th telling me she couldn’t read my handwriting and I gave her the right address! The bottom line is you have my money and I want my order!” I’m starting to wonder if this guy has the right company. We’d never handle something like that in the way he’s describing, but . . .

“Could you hold for a moment?” I wander over to our phone system, and scroll back to February 17th. Not a single call to the area code that this customer is in, not on the 17th or on any dates around it . . .

“Sir, I’m back. I’m sorry, but unless you can get us a copy of the cashed money order, we won’t be able to do anything for you.”

(Sputtering on the other end of the line.) “You know what I’m going to do! I’m going to write to the Federal Trade Commission!”

I’m terrified by this, of course. “I’m sure you will. Be sure to send us a copy of the letter. I have to take another call now, sir. (This is, of course, a lie.) Goodbye. *click*”

We’ve never heard from him again. But I still wonder: What in the world was going on?

• Was this an attempt at a scam? Does that actually work? Can you call a company and insist that you ordered something without any ability to prove it whatsoever, and have them ship you stuff? If so, could you tell me what companies those are, and if they have anything good I might want?
• Did he really try to place an order with us, have the order get lost in the mail (entirely possible), and then invent the story about the return phone call because he was too embarrassed to admit that he didn’t keep the PMO receipt?
• Did he actually place the order with an entirely different company? We get those, sometimes, people who scream at us about a missing order until we discover that the product they claim to have bought is one we don’t carry, and never have.
• Or was he just nuts?

We may never know. But I can hardly wait to see what the letter to the Federal Trade Commission is like.

posted 22:09