Thursday, April 5, 2012

The Consummate Bad Customer

I run a small independent business to consume a small portion of my time. In the time that this independent business takes, i do online technical support for customers as well as contract out Periodicals to local businesses. It's not the most illustrious job, but it puts money in my pocket when i need it most and that's enough for me.

In my travels during these jobs i have come across all kinds of customers and plenty of headaches involving them to go around, but being a professional business man, the customer is always right. you suck it up, keep your mouth shut and move on with your life hoping to figure out a way to broach the subject with tact for next time.

One of the worst kinds of customers you can ever experience first hand is the kind of customer who likes to constantly have you working. This kind of customer will stretch out his complaints and issues for one ticket as far out as they can so they can milk every ounce of service they can out of the pre-agreed price.

I was doing a periodical for a certain local company a few weeks ago  that entailed a few brief articles, some ad-space and some graphics. pretty run of the mill when it comes to these kinds of things however upon submitting my rough draft to be approved by the company, they turned it down and submitted a decent sized list of errors. I have had dealings with this company in the past where they would submit their long list of errors, one at a time. This process would take weeks and cause many nights of frustration and aggravation, but what can you do?

This time their list was so long i was convinced that these changes were ALL of the changes that wanted issued on the periodical. Being satisfied with that knowledge i proceeded onwards with the changes, authored a reviews version and sent it to them for approval. One of the changes was revising a piece of writing that i had wrote with one of the articles i had used to write my piece of work. As such, i issued a standardized e-mail forewarning him that by telling us to add the article he is taking FULL responsibility for any copyright issues that arise in the future. Seeing my work as done i sent it off to him.

The customer responds almost a week later, now beyond the deadline for final revisions (putting me in a bind) with another, equally long list of revisions that were nonexistent on the first list. So the process begins again i tell myself. I read through the changes to see that the customer has made a bunch of revisions to the previously copyrighted material which not only amplifies the instance of plagiarism but is absolutely ridiculous considering the revisions were on quotes from an interview as well as a few other things. Hastily running through the changes to the newsletter and sending out yet another standardize e-mail letting him know that he is now committing plagiarism and that he will take full responsibility for any issues that arise with that in the future, The newsletter is back in his side of the court.

Today, (2 days before the scheduled publication date) he has issued a third, even longer, list of corrections which i now have to fix, author and send back to him within 8 hours so he has plenty of time to get his act in gear, review it and send it back before it's too late. I'm tempted to send him a message informing him that the corrections are denied due to the lateness of their submission. That's the way it goes. That's the way it's written in the 6 month contract that he signed. What do you think i should do? Fuck em all? or Give in and be the good neighbor salesman?

4 comments:

  1. Hate it when customers have such bad attitudes..

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  2. grrr damn you customers!! people do treat shopworkers like a piece of dirt though

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  3. You know the saying "The customer is always right." ?
    Load'a BS.

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  4. haha nice post!

    http://memedoctor.blogspot.com/
    https://twitter.com/#!/MemeDoctor

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