Strangest complaint you've ever received

[bdbfan]

Following on from the thread about ridiculous tourist complaints, what's the strangest complaint you've ever received?

I'll start, I run a small cafe, a lady ordered a toasted sandwich then asked for a refund because it was toasted. She said she didn't realise it would be heated in a new fangled thing and wanted something from the 90's.

I still have absolutely no clue about what she was after.

I got a complaint from a photographer that the stage lights were reflecting glare off my boobs and could I please do something about them. (I'm the singer in a band btw, and I had a fairly low cut dress on).

Remembered a great one my mum told me years ago when she worked for Clarks.

An elderly gent had brought his leather slippers back because they made him trip up. He was asked if he thought they might be the wrong size. He replied no they were the right size but the glue holding them together must be letting off fumes when they were warming by the fire.

I am a complaint handler at work, I really wish I got funny complaints!

I used to work in a shop and a woman called screaming at me because our delivery lorry was outside and she couldn't park and she was a POTENTIAL CUSTOMER and everything. I pointed out that we needed to stock up or there would be nothing for her to buy, and that if she'd let me finish the call and get on with unloading the lorry she could then park outside and grace us with her custom. She screamed 'YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE A JOB' and hung up. We were pissing ourselves all day over that one

I once had a customer phone me and complain because I had the cheek to ask 'hope you are well' in an email, hr said he doesnt have time for all that rubbish.....but he has time to complain about it?? Idiot!

I used to work in a well known pub chain. A (male) customer wrote to the manager and complained that the girls' shirts weren't tight enough.

When we viewed the house we later moved into, the previous owners were telling us about the local area, very nice, quiet etc. Then in all seriousness started moaning about how the birds sang very loudly sometimes and how disruptive it was.

Got back from holiday a few weeks ago. Witnessed one lady shouting at the receptionist of the hotel about how disgusting the cleaning standards were. Sh had just checked in and found a single fingerprint on the window. Staff were very apologetic and sent someone to clean it immediately. That wasn't good enough, and she demanded to be given a different room!

I am an American living in England. I connected with a Guide unit within a month of moving here and almost immediately started on various qualification schemes. There was a complaint from the assessor doing one of my Nights Away qualifications that I was "too American" and that it would be "too confusing" for the Guides.

Um, I am American, I can't change that. And I had been with the girls for about 15 months at that point. They knew me, my ways, and I knew them and theirs. Besides, they watched more American television than I did!

I should have walked away from Guiding then since the comments were on my official assessment and they really pissed me off.

I used to work for a security company.A customer wrote in asking for details of intruder alarms,so I passed the enquiry to the lady who posted the leaflets out.She sent the info,with a typed letter asking them to contact Mrs Mirage if they had any questions or would like a quote.

A few days later,I had a furious letter from the chap,he was enraged that the intruder alarm info had a bit about security cameras on it.I phoned him to try and sort it out but he was incandescent with rage because I had dared to suggest he might need CCTV.I gently pointed out that the leaflet covered both options,but he wouldn't be placated,he was going to write to the directors and get me sacked,he was going to go to the papers.We never heard from him again after that though.

In the same job,I had a man threaten to turn up at our offices with a shot gun.His alarm was ringing and he wanted an engineer out.Unfortunately,he owed us money,so I refused to send anyone out until he settled up.He yelled at me,yelled at my manager and said he was on his way with his shot gun.However,it was such a long time since he'd paid us anything,that he thought we were at our old address,and we'd moved premises some years earlier.

I don't work there any more.It was very stressful.

Years ago I had a phone call that started, before I could say the normal burb, with "A bomb would blow you all up, I could do that you know" I without thinking I turned and said "Well, if your going to continue like that then I'm hanging up. If you want me to know what your on about and help you, then I suggest you adjust your tone"

After dealing with his problem (an unexpected Bill) I turned round to find a steaming manager who sent me straight to his office for speaking to a customer like that. Even after explaining I was still told off for it.

Apparently that wasn't the correct way to talk to a customer or deal with a bomb threat.

HR spent hours investigating what my manager was actually complaining about.

I was happily browsing in my local library, when a man asked me where the books about dinosaurs were, I replied with something like " not sure, maybe over there" he launched into a furious rant because he had mistaken me for a librarian and though ai was not helpful enough.

Not very funny really except that it has happened to me twice in a library and once in a bookshop, I have glasses and wear my hair up, people see me and think librarian, if the pay was better I would consider giving in and training as one!

We were supplying wooden flooring to a client for his house. Our lovely sub contractor was fitting it. Unfortunately he was also fitting the very expensive custom order v posh vinyl flooring in the conservatory (supplied by our competitor).

Customer stomps into our showroom 15 mins before closing (sat lunchtime) because they have run out of the posh vinyl with about 4 strips to go. Stood over me shouting the odds. I explained that we didn't supply it or sell it & he needed to contact our competitors. But he couldn't because they closed an hour ago. He and his wife were having a party that night & it had to be finished fgs! If I didn't get it for him he would follow me home and sit outside my house all weekend! He was 6'4" built like a brick shithouse. I am 5'4". I apologised that there was nothing I could do and pointed out that they shouldn't be walking on the floor for 24 hours after fitting and maybe his guests could stay out of the conservatory? At this he became more incensed, reached over the desk, and started shouting in my face.

At this point another lovely customer, took him by the arm and suggested that if he didn't sling his hook he'd phone the police, by this stage I was a gibbering wreck!

I install window displays, we once got a letter saying we were standing too high on the ladders and "how would her family feel if that young girl fell?" Quite sweet in a strange sort of way.

Guests who were staying in the hotel I worked in complained to my manager that id ask them to leave the pool for being 'rowdy'. The truth is they were drunk and skinny dipping at midnight (pool closed 7pm ish) on their wedding night joined by......the brides parents!

Had I not had so many complaints from other guests about the nose they were making I'd probably have left them to it!!

Someone was going to write to his MP as I wouldn't couldn't make ab appointment for him to see his GP. I don't work at his GPs practice or even for the same trust

I work in a building society and one of my mortgage adviser colleagues had a very happy very looked after fish in a fish bowl in her office.

A customer complained to our head office that the fish was too big for the bowl (it wasn't) and demanded it was removed. My colleague was forced to take it home and put it in a tank with her other fish where it was promptly cannibalised by the other fish. That customer killed the fish IMO.

I had a neighbour complain to me that my cat was coming and looking at her bird table, and this was putting the birds off (never mind that she herself had a cat that was Satan personified). I nodded very seriously and said I would have a word with him.

I once had someone complain to me that a roomful of computers had mice with dirty balls.

An extremely irate man once shouted down the phone at me for at least 20 mins at the company head office, because he'd travelled in a black cab with our company advert on it and the driver had been rude to him... Apparently this was our fault!
My manager ended up coming down just to listen to him on my spare headset, he was quite something.

A disheleved local (v smart area) came into reception and leant right across the desk to shout and point in my face because he was sleep deprived and convinced someone from our office was persecuting him by shining lights into his bedroom all night.
Our lovely driver had to 'escort' him out for me, I was shaking!
It turned out the security lights from the scaffold on his building were being reflected back by our glazed building...
Um, close your curtains/blinds perhaps??

Another set of neighbours complained that they didn't like the typeface we'd used to label the floors of our (largely glass) building, and we should change it.
After the third visit, I said I wasn't keen on their curtains either, so could they please change them to something more to our taste. (Again, had permission from my manager!)

I worked in Laura Ashley for a few years - there were no end of customers bringing back curtains etc that they'd bought in places like John Lewis and were disgusted that we weren't able to refund them...

The best one was a woman who had extended her dining room and wanted to wallpaper the new part to match the rest of it. She had brought a swatch of it in with her, it wasn't a current pattern so I offered to go through the old catalogues and see if I could find a SKU for it and do a stock look up to see if any other stores had any lying about in their stock rooms. The wallpaper was so old it had been discontinued over 15 years ago and of course no stores had any left. Well, considering how much effort I'd gone to trying to help her she hit the roof and was outraged when I politely suggested she might choose another wallpaper. Her words to me just before she stormed off - "you shops are all out to make money!" There wasn't really much I could say to that really...

A 45 minute phone call that I hadn't presented his daughter with her summer reading challenge certificate fast enough. My arguments against being able to present it any faster were (1) the challenge had only ended two days ago (2) the certificates hadn't arrived from the printers yet (3) if1 and 2 were not enough, it was up to the schools to allow us into assembly, not up to me to turn up without permission and (4) I had 12 different schools to fit in, so someone was always going to be last.

Apparently none of those answers were good enough, I had let myself down and the library down, and the children down. He wanted the phone number of the city librarian and was going to complain about me. I told him that he was welcome to try.

I worked at a big supermarket customer service desk and one day a man brought a whole 12 pack of toilet rolls back because the perforations didn't match up!

When I worked in a well known pub chain a lady complained and it wasn't that she didn't have the right it's more the facts he was so apologetic about and mortified when really she should've been raging. Her apple and blackberry pie and custard, was, in fact, steal pie and custard.

whilewildeisonmine none of that surprises me!! I get at least one customer like the woman you described in a week!!

NoSplash, you really made me laugh and read your username in a different light!

I had a parent complain I had charged out of a classroom and ran after her son screaming. I hadn't! I'd called after him "you've left your phone on the desk!" (it was a Friday afternoon!)