That "Arrogant Bastard" Mobile Phone Charge

from the yet-another-charge dept

Okay, so there are all sorts of random charges that don't make sense on most of our phone bills, but you might get a little upset if you found out you were being charged extra for being an "arrogant bastard". That's what happened to a New Zealand man, who found a charge on his mobile phone bill for NZ$337.50 which said it was for him being an "arrogant bastard". The man has filed defamation charges against the company who says they have no idea how such a charge could have gotten on the bill. The man says he doesn't know anyone at the company who might have been playing a joke on him. Here's a different version of the story saying that the company has settled with the man and is paying him $3000, and says the man admits that occasionally he might actually be something of an arrogant bastard ("demanding customer" is the way the article describes it) - but that it still wasn't right to charge him for such a thing.
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  • identicon
    exadios, 13 Feb 2002 @ 3:02am

    Its the Telephone companies that are arrogant

    With the way the telephone companies' call centers operate I'm not suprised that there are some angry customers out there. This is not usually the fault of the customer service person. They do their best in a structure that is completely inappropriate to the task at hand (i.e. customer satisfaction). However, it is the customer service agents that bear the brunt of the customers' anger.

    The real problem is that the whole structure of call centers has been created by management that could not manage sex in a brothel with a thousand dollar bill glued to their fore heads.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      the captain, 13 Feb 2002 @ 7:04am

      Re: Its the Telephone companies that are arrogant

      Actually the REAL problem is the companies (and the aforementioned management) who create and use call centers as a shield to hide FROM angry customers instead of what call centers are meant to be...

      I used to work a tech support center for a small company that made pretty specialized software..and we got sold to a bigger concern and the CEO and the board got replaced by salesguys from the States...at that point our software "upgrades" were sent every six months, with NO beta testing AT ALL.

      It was bluntly put in the memo: "Let tech support handle the bugs".

      I quit a month later...the company went IPO 6 months after that, the board and CEO made millions, left and now the company no longer exists.

      Ahhh modern business.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 13 Feb 2002 @ 6:36am

    No Subject Given

    My cable company is switching away from @home this weekend.

    Last night called me to remind me about it.

    I said "yea yea i know."

    The guy who called forgot to hang up his phone when he was done.

    i heard him say "i love these idiots who think they know what they are talking about"

    I love idiots who make $7 an hour working on the phone but don't know how to operate one.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Fred Tourette, 13 Feb 2002 @ 10:31am

    "Arrogant Bastard" Mobile Phone Charge

    Personally, I'd welcome being called an arrogant bastard (if I deserved it) by a real live human at my telco (and ISP). Beats the hell out of trying to communicate with their polite but god-awfully stupid Kana-bots.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    alternatives(), 13 Feb 2002 @ 12:52pm

    Calling customers names is common in the phone biz

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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