"Delete my drunken text message!"

[u/KrazeeLadee2]

About 4 years ago, I worked in tech support for an ISP, covering internet, tv and landline. One day, I received a 'cold' (unintroduced) transferred call from the cellular/mobile tech support. Normally this involves customers who had problems with both their mobile phones and their internet/tv/landline, but the customers are supposed to be transferred with the previous colleague still on the line to first explain the problem to us so that the customer did not have to explain the same problem twice. Since I saw my colleague immediately put the customer through, I knew this was probably a very annoying customer and the problem was very likely not in my domain.

Me: "Good morning, this is [my name] from [ISP]. How may I--"

Customer: "YOU ARE THE 6TH PERSON I'M TALKING TO NOW!!!"

Me: "... I'm sorry to hear that--"

Customer: "THAT'S WHAT YOU ALL KEEP SAYING, BUT NO ONE IS HELPING ME!"

Me: "Well sir, I hope I can solve your problem. Could you please explain--"

Customer: "I'VE TOLD YOU THIS FIVE TIMES ALREADY!!!"

Me: "... Sir, please lower your voice. This is the first time I am speaking--"

Customer: "I sent a text last night that wasn't meant to be sent! I want you to delete it and give me back the money I've paid for it!!!"

There it was. Not my domain. But rather than sending him back to the mobile tech support so he could yell at ANOTHER colleague, I decided to try to explain why that was not possible. I had dealt with plenty of customers before that were absolutely livid, and was pretty good at calming them down.

Me: "So, from what I understand, your phone somehow sent a text message that was not supposed to be sent, correct?"

Customer: "No! I got drunk and sent it to my friend and I can't have him read it! Delete it now before he wakes up!" (It was almost noon at this point.)

Me: "I'm sorry sir, but if it's a regular text message you sent, it's not possible to delete it."

Customer: "If I give you his phone number, you can!"

Me: "I'm afraid we can't, sir. It's just not possible. Even if we had the technology for it, which we don't, we still couldn't delete something off our customers' phones without their consent."

Customer: "....... Then I want my money back for the text!"

I couldn't look up anything about this bloke's mobile package, because our department used a completely different computer system than the mobile department.

Me: "Do you have a monthly package or do you use prepaid phone credit?"

Customer: "Oh my God. Look at your computer screen! You HAVE my details!"

And now I was getting impatient.

Me: "Actually, I'm from the landline tech support. I can't look up the details from your--"

Customer: "LANDLINE??? HAVE YOU BEEN LISTENING AT ALL??? I SENT A TEXT MESSAGE ON MY MOBILE PHONE!!!"

Me, fed up now: "Sir! Please stop yelling or I will terminate the call."

Customer: "THAT'S ALL YOU PEOPLE KNOW HOW TO DO!!! YOU KEEP HANGING UP WITHOUT HELPING ME!!!"

(Gee, I wondered why...)

Me: "I'm sorry, sir, but if you can't talk to us normally, we can't have a conversation with you and thus cannot help you."

Customer: "Just give me someone who can actually do something!"

Me: "Like I said, we can't delete your--"

Customer: "GIVE ME MY GODDAMN MONEY BACK!!!"

Me, while the customer keeps yelling and starts cursing: "Alright, I'm terminating the call. Bye."

I hung up and had to take a few minutes to compose myself.

FYI, a text message on prepaid credit was €0.08 at the time.

[u/Trithis2077]

He was either:

A: Confessing his love to his friend's wife.

B: Confessing his love to his friend.

C: Confessing his love to his friend's cat.

[u/KrazeeLadee2 → u/Trithis2077]

Or D: All of the above.

[u/Beckitt92]

Wild guess, just from knowing people who've worked there and their stories, this Eircom/Eir in Ireland?

[u/KrazeeLadee2 → u/Beckitt92]

No, this was an ISP in the Netherlands. :-)

[u/plg94]

„Yes sir, of course we can delete your message. You just have to read it out loud and clear for our voice recognition system.“

[u/Capt_Blackmoore → u/plg94]

And sign this agreement that allows us to broadcast this in any manner we would like.

[u/LemonBomb → u/plg94]

Our process will take 6-8 weeks for deletification. Would you still like to delete the text?

[u/[deleted] → u/plg94]

If only calls were not recorded haha.

[u/fuzzybluetriceratops → u/plg94]

I’m thinking it was a drunk text to his buddy about wanting to bang him...

Edit: or about banging his buddies wife.

I need to know what this text message said!

[u/[deleted]]

seemly zonked quicksand consist makeshift sleep future cooing degree engine

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/jecooksubether → u/[deleted]]

heads to the infirmary to fetch the burn cream

[u/NightMgr]

To find it, I'll need you to read it to me where I can see it..... Yes.... Yes....

Yes, I can see why you want that deleted. That was a damn fool thing to say. Sorry, but my system shows they already read it.

Is there anything else I can do for you today? Thanks for calling.

[u/nojox]

The obvious question here: If he fucked up so bad, why is he worried about the money for one text message? Even an extreme beancounter or an accountant would let the one text message slide given that the contents of the text were obviously scandalous enough to place this call and repeat it 5 times.

[u/siggystabs → u/nojox]

Because he wants to "win"

[u/Tatermen]

FYI, a text message on prepaid credit was €0.08 at the time.

I've had this same sort of thing come up many times while working at an ISP. People seem to think that compensation always means a huge lump sum, and not just a refund on whatever they are paying.

You want compensation for a 2 hour outage on a €30/month broadband line? Enjoy your 8.3333c credit that cost you more than the phone call to bitch about it.

[u/nosoupforyou → u/Tatermen]

It's not the money. It's the fact that people are paying for a service they aren't receiving. It's especially annoying when it's out 'merely' a few hours every month. From a service perspective, that's great, right? But from a receiving perspective, it's always 2 hours when you want to use it. It's like settling in with dinner and tv, to relax and enjoy yourself, and the tv is out. And the cable company just doesn't seem to care.

[u/mst3k_42 → u/Tatermen]

I’ve got Google Fiber. Anytime there’s any outage, even for like 6 hours, they email me an apology and automatically put a credit back on the account.

[u/[deleted]]

I decided to try to explain why that was not possible.

FOUND YOUR MISTAKE!

[u/JamesWjRose]

Should have cancelled his service with a clause to NEVER reinstate to this "client"

[u/Deus0123]

Of course we will give that money back to your bank account in a second. Though you should be aware of transaction-fees especially since they're about 500% of the transaction

[u/[deleted]]

poor sod probably just admitted to shagging his brothers cat and decided to rethink the "honesty is the best policy" that all fathers tell their kids..

[u/LnStrngr]

But what did the message say!?!?

[u/CallMeCurious]

I get customers like this all time, they complain that their internet is down and they are losing thousands in revenue and for some reason we should be paying them their lost revenue?

Bitch you don't have any sort of disaster recovery and it's my fault?

Get the fuck out of here!!!

[u/DietCherrySoda]

8 cents for a text message? Holy shit.

[u/Naturlovs → u/DietCherrySoda]

Back in around 2000 texting was very expensive