Content edited for clarity. There's a saying that says the customer is alway right. Is this true? Maybe. At least in most of these stories, the customer was right and deserved to throw a fit(quite literally). From little kid tantrums to adult blow ups and more, these are the times they thought they earned the right to make a scene.
They Thought They Were Clever
“I bought a used car from a dealer. We agreed on a price over the phone. He offered to have someone come pick me up to test drive it (I was new in the city and had no car).
I said, ‘Sure, let’s do it. I’m prepared to buy the car with cash today, but not for one cent more than the price we agreed upon, so don’t waste our time bringing me out there unless we’re clear here, this is the final price all fees included.’ (The dealership was a 30-40 minute drive away, so I didn’t want to waste my time if it wasn’t real).
So he and another guy came and picked me up. And of course, he was trying to sell me a new car instead of the one I’m interested in, but I was not hearing it. I test drove the car, it was just what I was looking for, and the price we agreed on was under buying value, so I was good with everything.
Then he drew up the paperwork and the final cost was nearly two grand more than we agreed on. I was pretty upset. We had a clear agreement, and he tried to slip in $2,000 like I wouldn’t care. I said no deal, drop me back off at home. He kept knocking off a hundred here, a hundred there. Frick that, we had a deal, take me back home!
Finally, he said, ‘Well if you’re not gonna buy the car (for $1500 more than what I told you) then you can find your own way home.’
So now I start raising my voice so the other customers hear our conversation, ‘YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU DRAGGED ME 40 MINUTES AWAY FROM HOME, TRY TO CHARGE ME AN EXTRA TWO GRAND THEN TELL ME I’M STRANDED OUT HERE IF I DON’T PAY!?’
He was begging me to be quiet, tried cutting more off the price, but I was not letting this go. People were staring, the dealer was sweating bullets. His manager came in and started getting more of it from me, they started apologizing but I was not letting them off here. I didn’t respond well to high-pressure sales tactics and they were starting to realize it.
Anyway, after making a big scene and giving the auto-dealer that tried to pull this on me a legitimate panic attack, the manager finally agreed to sell me the car at the agreed-upon price. Which I then negotiated another $500 off of. He really wanted me out of that shop. The car is still running great.”
Foot In Mouth
“I was in Montreal for a hockey game and wanted to buy a Canadiens jersey. They were a little pricey at the arena, so I was walking around downtown Montreal looking at all of the Sports-Memorabilia shops. I found one, walked in, and bought a Canadiens jersey. It was one of the nice reebok lace-up ones, for almost half the retail price. I put it on to wear out of the shop, as I was walking around Montreal in just a t-shirt and it was quite cold. I ripped the tags off and as we were leaving, my dad noticed that the ‘NHL’ insignia was backward, and said ‘LNH’.
This place was packed because it was hockey day, and I got in the clerk’s face and said, rather loudly, ‘You sell fakes! This is a bootleg! This is supposed to say NHL!’
The clerk’s English wasn’t great (french speaking) but he ensured me, ‘These are the new ones. LNH is the new logo’.
I replied, ‘Yeah, ok, NHL changed their name. I believe that.’
He wouldn’t do a refund, and finally, I left the store feeling defeated. On the walk back to the hotel, I saw another Montreal jersey with the LNH insignia. And another. I pulled my phone out and googled it.
‘La Ligue Nationale de Hockey.’ The new Canadiens jerseys had LNH on them to celebrate their French Canadian heritage.”
The Good Guy Wins In The End
“I spent my last $40 on a car part I needed. It had obviously been returned before and was assembled incorrectly by the first purchaser. First, he said I couldn’t return it because it had brake fluid on it. Ok fair enough, he can’t resell it but whatever, I had my friend drive me home and I cleaned it up and had my friend drive me back again the next morning.
Now he was saying he couldn’t take it back without a receipt. Well, I paid with a credit card and there was a warranty so I should be in the system. He wouldn’t even check and refused to exchange it. I lost it, I was irate, screaming at him, customers were laughing at how upset I was, he threatened to call the police, I told him to go ahead.
But then something amazing happened. Behind this guy’s back, another employee overheard my details, looked up my information, and printed out a copy of my receipt. Just as this guy is about to tell me for the millionth time that I can’t return the part without a receipt, the employee behind him handed it to me, and I handed it back to the manager I was arguing with.
I got my new part and was able to make it to work that night. Hope that guy didn’t get fired for doing the right thing. I used to be a manager at Auto Zone. I knew I was in the right and I knew there was no way I was walking out of that door without a new part or a refund, but I really needed the part to get to work (I worked graveyards, no one would be available to drive me there, and the buses didn’t run at this time) and they were the only outfit in town with the part in stock. It was the last of my money, my livelihood literally depended on this part.”
This Wasn’t Her First Rodeo
“I had gone two days without my medication because my doctor did not renew my prescription due to him suddenly leaving the practice (I have epilepsy). I was feeling sick, hazy, and not aware of my surroundings but I managed to walk over to the pharmacy to get a refill once I finally got the new doctor to fill out a script. I told the lady that my script was sent to a different pharmacy but I had to come to this one because I couldn’t drive over to the one I was going to, and I wanted to go to this one anyways. She said okay. I confirmed with her literally four or five times that she would call and transfer over my script (it isn’t my first rodeo) and she said she would. An hour later, I come to pick up my medicine. She put it in the bag and stapled it. I paid and left. I get home AND IT IS THE WRONG MEDICATION.
I had gone there for a brief period of time and I guess for some reason they had it on file I was to take the same medication but in a much, much lower dose. The supposed one-month bottle she gave me would last about a week. I had to go walk twenty minutes back to the pharmacy again. She claimed I had never mentioned there was another pharmacy and it would be a few hours until she could fill it. I had already waited over an hour plus walked for a total of sixty minutes (there, back, there).
I told her and she didn’t believe me so I got angry and raised my voice and said that I would really need this medication a lot sooner than a few hours for now, that I asked for it over an hour ago and I was given the wrong medication and this was not acceptable. She threatened to not fill my medication and ban me from the pharmacy. Maybe I was making a bigger scene than I thought I was.
I said, ‘Alright, I am sorry. I have gone three days without my medication. I cannot drive to my other pharmacy. I really need to take this medication in the proper dose, not twelve of these little pills for ONE dosage. I am extremely hazy and I feel sick, please just fill my script.’
She had me just sit down and wait and called then and there. At least it got done in about 45 minutes instead of a few hours. I felt terrible, especially since I never yell at anyone.”
The Number You Have Reached Has Been Disconnected
“I had a cable/phone/internet deal with Comcast, and every week there was a different issue. Every time, literally every time the help desk told us our problem was solved we would discover it wasn’t. I finally just asked for a supervisor every time I called.
We were getting a few calls from people asking for the previous holder of our telephone number. My wife requested they change our telephone number, but when I called to confirm our new number, they read me a different number than they read her. I said, ‘Just give us our old number back.’
Several months later I got a strange phone call. A man on the other side of town was testing his new phone line, just installed that day. I told him he has the wrong number, and he read my number back to me.
Whatever Comcast did when they gave me my number back, they didn’t fill out the paperwork correctly, because somehow AT&T was able to sell my phone number to someone else. Now anyone in the country with a Comcast phone who called my number would reach me, and anyone with an AT&T phone would reach the other guy.
What followed was a month of the most awful customer service calls I have ever had to make. Because the mistake was AT&T’s, I had to call their helpline to fix it. I wasn’t an AT&T customer, did not have an account number or any other identifying information. Also, it’s AT&T’s policy that their operators cannot give out any name, position, or other identifying information.
Every single time I called, I would wait to talk to a person, then I would say, ‘You don’t know my problem. You can’t fix my problem. I am not an AT&T customer, but only AT&T can help me. Please transfer me to a supervisor.’
I would have to give this speech to five or six people. Each of them would argue with me, try to understand my problem, then transfer me. Eventually, I would talk to a woman, she would never give me her name or direct number, but she said she would fix my problem.
The first three or four times I called, nothing changed. Finally, AT&T disconnected their customer from my number, but now AT&T customers would reach a disconnection notice when they called my number. It took a few more weeks of calling, a half-hour to an hour per call, before I finally got my phone number back.”
“Utter Bollocks”
“We were waiting in Gatwick for our flight, which was at 6:50 am, gates closed 30 minutes before departure. We were watching the boards like a hawk but the ‘Go to gate’ only appeared at 6:10 am, cutting it a little fine for them, but whatever.
We started casually making our way towards the gate, it was a bit of a walk, but as we passed another board on the way (it was 6:15 am), ‘Gate closing’ appears. So we started running to the gate, got there a few minutes later, as a passenger walked through the gate. Handed over boarding passes and passports and the saggy-faced old witch, who was dead behind the eyes and had nothing between the ears, said, ‘Sorry, the gate is closed.’
It was 6:17, not a chance they should’ve closed the gate, but clearly, they’d thought the last passenger had boarded and decided to shut up early to make their stats look good.
I KICKED OFF. I had seen they just let a passenger through, I could see them still boarding the plane. But no, they’d ‘shut their systems down,’ and couldn’t do anything. This was utter bollocks, I called them out on it, but eventually got marched back through the airport to get another flight.
As we’re checking in for a flight that leaves at 9:00 we’re told we’d have to pay another $100 each, this was twice as much as we’d paid for the original flight. I explained the situation, but the woman at check-in wasn’t having it either and just assumed we’d turned up late and missed the flight. I was adamant on my timings, so repeated myself getting more and more irate until eventually the manager of not just the airline, but the whole of Gatwick, came out.
I repeated my timings and told them that I thought the airline was trying to bump up their stats by shutting the gate early. He went away and checked, came back and my timings were sport on, he agreed with me….alas, we were on the next flight, upgraded, for free.”
“It Was Grand”
“Once a few years ago, at an Applebees, my waitress was bussing a huge tower of dishes (not wanting to make two trips I guess?) which just visually was precarious at best. As she was walking towards me, I thought to myself, There is no way she is going to make it to the kitchen.
Sure enough, once I was in splashing range, the tower went down. Half-full glasses of soda hit the floor and sent splashes over my sandaled feet, and a full cup of marinara sauce hit the edge of our table and showered me with about a quarter of a cup of marinara sauce in a billion droplets from my hair to my chest. We hadn’t even been served drinks ourselves yet, this was just the start of our meal. So I was sitting there with sauce literally dripping from my nose, hair, etc.
The waitress made eye contact with me and saw what she had done, eye rolls, and groans. I am sitting there frozen like, uh someone help? My husband was saying loudly, ‘Can we get some help here?’
The waitress walked less than three feet away, snatched up a rag, and began wiping her OWN hands! Deliberately TURNED HER BACK TO ME, another waiter saw this and came over now and was now dabbing at my shoulder with a wad of paper napkins. I heard the waitress who dropped this mess say, ‘Why is this burch looking at me, now I bet this burch is going to give me a problem. I’m not dealing with this shtick’ (expect not exactly those words) and she turned and walked into the back.
At this point I said to the waiter who was trying to dab away this sauce, ‘She isn’t even going to say SORRY?’
He shrugged and was like, ‘Sorry ma’am.’
I said ‘Yeah, thanks, an apology should come from her though and I heard her refer to me as a burch? I’m sitting here minding my own business and get pelted with sauce and soda head to toe, and I’m a burch?’
At this point, the anger rightfully built in me, and I asked to see the manager.
The manager came over. By now, our spilling waitress has heard I am complaining. She came over and stood behind the manager as she and I talked. I explained what happened, and that accidents happens and I wasn’t even mad over the spill, but I was mad over being treated badly after it and being referred to as a burch. The manager ws gushing apologies, saying our dinner would be free. Okay, great. Still, I said, ‘This is an area for retraining or something. There needed to be something said to the server, that was not how you treat people.’
She turned around and saw THE spilling waitress, and said, ‘I’m sure she was coming to apologize right now.’
Waitress EYE ROLLED and said nastily, ‘It was just an accident.’
No apology. The manager was now like oh no. I said to the waitress, ‘And referring to me as THAT BURCH is an accident too?’
She said nothing, gave a smirk, and crossed her arms. I looked between her and the manager, who was now silent and didn’t know what to do with this. It ended in a stand-off, of our waitress refusing to simply apologize and me seething.
So I thought a moment, and said to the manager, ‘So you said our ENTIRE meal tonight will be free? We want to change our order. And we want to keep our same server.’
No hard feelings, after all, right? So we changed our two for twenty to the most expensive entrées we could find, with three appetizers and salads and soup first. Dessert after. Tab was well over a hundred bucks. We lingered for as long as we could stand. Needless to say, we stiffed that burch, and I wrote no hard feelings on a napkin covered in marinara sauce at the table. The only time I ever stiffed a server, and it was grand.”
Liars Liars Pants On Fire
“My wife and I are in our early 20s, and so going out and buying our first car from a dealership was a rather big deal. We saved a ton of money, and went in knowing our budget. The third dealership we went to, we immediately saw a car that we both loved. Upon stepping out of our car and being surrounded by the salesmen, we asked to check that car out. The inside and outside of the car looked great, and they assured us it ran smoothly. I asked for a test drive. They were really hesitant on letting us test it out, assuring that it ran fine. That made me REALLY want to test drive it.
It broke down before we left the lot. Twice. The first time he told us it was some baloney issue that they’d fix before we took it. But it sputtered and kept dying. We didn’t even take it on the road. You had to SLAM on the brakes to start slowing down. I freaking lost it. This was going to be my wife’s primary car that she has to take on 95 every day, and they want to sell me a car that can barely brake, without letting me test drive it.
They ended up offering us a fairly new car (2015 I think) for dirt cheap, and I actually really wanted to get it. But there was no way I was going to buy anything from them. The next dealer we went to treated us amazingly, and we got a really nice car, even though it was a bit over budget.
I try to be understanding. I work retail, and can usually understand if there’s a legit issue, or even if an employee is being a bit lazy and doesn’t want to do something. I’ve been there, and I get it. But they flat out lied, and tried to sell us a car that could put her life at risk. There’s not many companies I’ll straight out avoid. They’re at the top of that list, though.”
“This Dude Is Lying”
“I bought a phone at the Mediamarkt (don’t know if this is well known outside the Netherlands) where they have a policy claims that when your screen is broken, you can wait for the repair. So you never have to send your phone to some repair place and you never have to wait ‘long.’
So the screen of my phone had broken and I called the Mediamarkt to ask if it was okay if I could come in.
A lady picked up the phone and replied with, ‘Of course! You can just walk in and your screen will be fixed within the hour!’
I especially said, ‘Well the screen is pretty broken. Will it still take only one hour?’
And the lady on the phone said, ‘Yeah don’t worry about it. It takes one hour on arrival so with waiting line and all.’
So I was like, holy carp they actually do what they advertise! So I went to my boss to ask for an hour off because the Mediamarkt is not in my hometown (and there was one in the place where I worked) So the big boss agreed and off I went to the Mediamarkt.
When I walked into the customer service, I immediately spotted a very big line of waiting people. So I thought to myself, Welp this will probably will take longer than the one hour we agreed on. No big deal I will just call my boss to ask if it’s okay if I come in a bit later.
Boss said, ‘Take your time, it’s a slow day anyway.’
Nice! So I just stood there relaxing because I knew I had all the time. One hour passed and I was still in the waiting line. I was kind of getting upset at this moment, but I kept my cool. One and a half hours passed, and I was the next guy to be helped.
I got to the counter and the tech guy asked me ‘How can I help you?’
So I showed him my phone and he went, ‘Wow that phone is really messed up.’
And I was like, ‘Yeah, I already told this to the lady on the phone.’
This guy looked at me and said, ‘There are no females working here.’
So I showed this guy the number that I called and he was like, ‘I don’t know the phone number.’
No problem. Let’s call the number to double-check mate! So I called this number and the phone literally next to this dude is ringing…
I could see this dude getting upset. I told him, ‘Mate don’t worry about it, just fix my phone and I’m happy.’
Then this dude said, ‘Yeah it will take about two to four hours.’
So I said, ‘No, the lady told me it would take one hour total! I’ve already waited for one and a half hours now and now you’re going to tell me it takes two-four hours to fix a phone screen?’
This dude just looked blank in my eyes and told me something equivalent to, ‘Deal with it, it’s not my problem.’
That’s the moment I lost it. The manager came in and asked me, ‘What’s happening here?’
So after telling my whole story the dude who ‘helped’ me just blankly looked into the manager’s eyes and said, ‘This dude is lying.’
LUCKY for me, the lady behind me backed me up in my story, so the manager went on some kind of rage toward this employee, said sorry 10 times to me and my repair was free of charge (still had to wait 2 hours tho). I also believe the guy who helped me got fired over this (well it turned out he already received 2 warnings).”
Cry On Cue
“I was about eight years old, and we were just about to go on holiday. We go to the same place every year (still do actually, 15 years on) and it’s about a six-hour drive away. As usual, we took our car into the garage for a pre-journey check-up to make sure all is fine and dandy, and it is, so we loaded up the car.
The morning of the holiday came, and my family packed up final things, ran final checks, and started to drive. Not five minutes later, the car was having a tantrum, gears were grinding, breaks were barely working, and there was acrid smoke coming out of the bonnet. What in the world? We only had this car in the garage like two days before.
So we got a family friend from down the road (we were close enough to our house that we can just walk back and get him), and he gave the engine a look and found out immediately what was wrong. Some dumb mother trucker drained the oil out of the car and didn’t put it back, and now the engine was, wrecked.
We stranded the car, leaving my dad and brother, whilst my mum (a teacher one wouldn’t want to cross) and me (adorable blonde haired blue eyed child, tiny for my age so I look around five, who can cry on cue) got driven to the garage. My role was simple – if they couldn’t fix the car right then or give us a courtesy, I was to throw the biggest tantrum this world has ever seen, and I was not to stop until my mum gave me the sign.
So we got into the garage, the waiting room was jam-packed, and my mum demanded to speak to the manager. The manager ‘wasn’t in’. So I started whimpering and tears started coming, ‘But mummy, will this mean we won’t be able to go on holiday? It’s our only holiday this year, I’ve been looking forwards to it’ I said and on and on, looking super-duper adorable.
Of course, this was my mother’s cue to say, ‘We only get one holiday a year, we can’t afford another one, and you’ve ruined it by BREAKING OUR CAR. If you don’t get someone in charge RIGHT NOW, neither I or my daughter will be leaving until you FIX THIS!’
This went on for about half an hour. I had now fake cried myself into real tears because I was genuinely worried that I wouldn’t get this holiday (which was actually our only holiday of the year and un-reschedulable), and customers were beginning to grumble, not because there was a screaming child, but because this mechanic had come out of the back and said, ‘Well it was fine when it left the shop, you did it, we’re not going to do anything, remove your screaming child before we call the police,’ etc.
Another 15 minutes later, my mother convinced the mechanic to at least come and see the car (in that she basically kidnapped the guy). He got to the car, gave it a gander, went ashen, then walked off making a phone call.
About 20 minutes later, all of our stuff was packed into a courtesy car and we were on our way (me sleeping the whole six hours because my tantrum had exhausted me).
Anyway, it turned out they’d put a trainee on our car without checking his work after, and he’d messed it so much a few parts had to be replaced completely and we didn’t get it back for another two months. The garage footed the bill.”
