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.

Not me, but I once had lunch with my MIL and she spent quite a lot of time being uppity with the waiter. She'd ordered a prawn salad and was upset that it had salad in it. I sat in silence thinking 'it's true that you can get the measure of people by how they treat waiters' and seeing the rest of her life stretch before me (so far, not wrong).

Frequent complaints that the nocturnal house was too dark, the lions were sleeping and the aquarium 'just had fish in it'

I had a customer call and shout at me for 20 mins about a broken appliance. I finally worked out she had bought it from currys and not us. She still thought i should have resolved it.

i worked in IT.

A customer called wanted us to rewrite software to allow her to do a specific function.

The cost of writing a specification for such a massive change would have been 3 weeks consultancy, and the cost of the change itself would have run into the hundreds of thousands.

We suggested a quick fix that would take less than 1 minute once a month and cost them nothing. We even suggested that a simple programme could be written to actually automate this process at nominal cost.

She ranted for a good half hour that she was the customer and we had to do what she wanted. She was so unpleasant that I escalated it to her boss. Needless to say, the change was never made.

My two favourites were,
a) a customer complaining that I wouldn't use the self service machine for her
b) a customer complaining because I printed a photo of hers in real life colours, rather than making the grass a particularly garish shade of lime green.

Our neighbour complained that his fence had started to rot at the bottom. It's 18 years old and was in direct contact with the earth. But no matter, it was my fault, somehow. He launched into a tirade about how I was letting the neighbourhood down, my parents down (he's never met them!) and "worst of all you're letting yourself down." Apparently I should offer to pay for his fence repairs.

DH appeared and gently kept saying "Tony I'm confused. Your fence has rotted, but we should pay to maintain your home? Is that what you're saying?"

There was a lot of stammering from Tony, and then "well I didn't know YOU would be in, I thought it'd be just her!"

DH took him by the elbows and showed him to the door with a jaunty "Tony's leaving now!" and pushed him away down the drive.
What a bully!

Years ago I was working with a colleague at Elephant and Castle Tube station who would cheerfully say good morning to our "customers" as he manually operated the lifts. One day a woman challenged him saying how dare he be pleasant and cheerful in the mornings, she wasn't feeling cheerful and neither should he.

She even wrote in about him. Luckily my manager at the time took my colleague's side, saying he had been given recognition for his approachable manner and excellent customer service.

Finance manager complained to the head of IT because I emptied her email's deleted items. She'd rang the helpdesk because her mailbox was full. And now I'd lost important documents that she was keeping in there.

I also agree with the cinema being far too loud. I found it uncomfortable and almost painful.

As pay of my job sometimes I give immigration advice. People often do not like when I inform them of the laws.

I don't make the laws.

I don't even always agree with them.

It is very "kill the messenger". Many people complain about me because they don't like what they hear.

I also think that cinemas are much too noisy!

I work in a utility company. I once had a complainant who was furious with us that he hadn't read or even opened his bill. He had thrown them away as junk mail. I apologised for the confusion and advised they are quite regular and these are the rough dates to expect them in future, or perhaps he could have them online and save the pdfs, no confusion. No, he wanted us to sent a notice, by letter, that his bill would be coming shortly to ensure he didn't just bin it- I agreed.but I've always thought, what's to stop him chucking the notices out as well? They're in the same envelopes!

oh so many, i worked in accessorize and wouldn't give a refund for a hat she had bought in debenhams - i tried to explain we didn't sell it, it was from another company her response....no wonder you work in a shop you are a stupid bitch that couldn't get a job anywhere else.

Working in a shoe shop - a man returned a "pair" of shoes that he had allegedly bought the year before and had been wearing for a year without realising they were odd. When he showed me the shoes one was a size 12 the other was a size 8 (the man was a size 12) i told him i would give him the money back if her put the shoes on - knowing full well he would never be able to get the smaller shoe on his foot - he went totally crazy and ran out in to the street. half an hour later he returned with 2 policemen screaming that i had robbed him and he wanted me arrested for stealing his money. The police were very apologetic and led him away, followed by his much smaller footed friend who had been waiting for him outside

Like Scout19075, I'm American, living here. Once got a complaint at work (I'm a solicitor) that my clothes were "too American, and could I please change that." I said I'd speak to M&S about the overly-American style of their clothing.

"She hung up when I said this wasn't possible as one of them was dead."

Sometimes films in cinemas ARE too loud. It can verge on the ridiculous at our local one. I've never complained yet but I might one day. What's odd about that?

The one by someone saying they received a complaint from a passenger in a taxi because their business was advertised on the side of it reminded me of a complaint I received when I worked at a packaging company.

We make large woven bags for use in the building and farming industries. We didn't fill them or anything, just made bags and sold them on. They usually had the customers logo on them with ours much smaller underneath.

Some companies would buy the empty bags, fill them with fertiliser, and sell them on full to farmers.

I took a phone call from a man about 300 miles away complaining that one of our tractors had just nearly killed his wife and children.

We didn't have any tractors. We had a small van that was at the other end of the country from this man at the time, but we used a haulage company for our deliveries. Definitely no tractors though.

I tried to explain this. "Well it had your produce on the back, my wife saw your logo."

I explained about the bags. "Well give me the farmers name then!"

I explained that we didn't deal directly with the farmers and didn't know his name. "Well then you phone your customer and find out his name!"

I explained I couldn't do so as we had hundreds of customers who had hundreds more of their own.

In the end I took a number for my boss to call him back, as he now wanted to complain about the farmer and about me, as I was obviously "in collusion with the money man" and that I "did not care about the lives of young children."

Boss rang back and got an automated menu for a sexual health and AIDS research centre.

Boss put the phone down and accused me of making it all up to trick him into ringing a sexual health and AIDS research centre as a joke.

I had to deal with a guy who was unhappy with the news that he would have to surrender his hire car before liability had been settled in respect of a road traffic accident. He was so angry that he determined to hide the hire car in his garage and claim it had been stolen - and wanted me to go along with this fraud on the insurer (my client). When I refused he went ballistic and actually wrote to my manager complaining that I had flatly refused to assist him with the crime!

We once had a customer bring back a drink because there were pieces of bread floating in it.

This was a pint of lager pulled from a normal bar pump.

We all looked at his pint. It had blossom petals in it. We asked the customer where he was sitting. He was sitting outside near the blossom trees (which were not on our property).

We explained that we couldn't really be blamed for something falling in his drink after he had taken it away from the bar.

He called us a bunch of fucking morons and liars because he knew it was bread and we had a kitchen in the bar (which was closed that day).

Another customer bought a pint of bitter for himself and then came back to the bar a minute or two later to buy a pint of lager for his friend. He then started chatting to someone else for a minute or two and during his chat he drank a bit of the lager.

He must have gone back to his friend, who said his drink was short, and so he brought it back complaining that we had pulled a short drink and wanted it topping up.

We told him he had drunk it. He denied it, as it was lager and he drinks bitter. We said we had seen him drink it. He called us liars and idiots and threatened to call weights and measures on us.

He demanded to see the manager, who got so annoyed by him shouting abuse that he showed him the CCTV, where he could clearly see himself drinking the lager. He tried to deny that it was him on the screen but finally settled on blaming us for not telling him he was drinking it when we saw him as we should have known it wasn't for him.

my xhusband works in a very well known watch and handbag shop.

He had a man come in the other day and say that hi watch had stopped working and that he had the receipt and wanted a refund- not a replacement as it was 'a bunch of tat'

xh told him he could have a look at it as it might just be the battery.
When he looked at it he told the man it was the battery and he would replace it free of charge as a good measure, but no refund.

the man hit the roof and demanded why he couldnt get a refund and was not pleased when he was told that they didnt give out refunds for this bought 7 years previously...

I volunteer in a charity shop and a couple once came in and brought a Bob The Builder hard hat to the till, and the lady told me to take it off sale because it was unsafe for children to wear as a hard hat. Apparently it would offer no defence against falling items and that I would be liable if a child received a head injury as a result of wearing this hat (presumably on a construction site?!). The gentleman with her tried to persuade her that it was a toy and not meant as safety wear. She then asked me if I could have the manager reduce the price for her! I told her that I was the acting manager at the time, and I thought 50p was a perfectly reasonable price already. So then she said she'd have to make an official complaint to Trading Standards as I was selling a dangerous item! I was trying not to laugh and offered to take it off sale to placate her!
Definitely the weirdest complaint I've ever received.

Their are some proper Idiots about

A customer called me over to complain that he had overheard two members of my team talking about another customer and that it was unprofessional. I had heard part of the conversation taking place so replied honestly that it wasn't about a customer, they were describing a Manager that they both knew (in terms of clothing he wore-big quiff/funky dress sense) He then complained about me that I was obviously lying as I had responded with a denial too quickly. Bit my lip so hard that day, I'm surprised it didn't draw blood!!

How do people who work in customer service roles manage to keep a straight face when receiving such ridiculous complains? The one about the woman complaining about Thomas the tank engine video being too violent would have had me in hysterics I'm afraid.

The woman who's house backed onto my parents, who they'd never even met before, complained about the large tree in my parents garden. Not because it was blocking light from their house but because the tweeting from the birds sitting in it in the mornings used to wake her up early.

My mum just pacified her by saying she'd see what she could do about it .I mean how the hell can you stop birds from singing?! Silly bitch! I've since found out that said neighbour has managed to fall out with most people on her street because she complains about everything, obviously has nothing else going on in her life.

If you work in a shop/pub/call centre i think you just get used to idiots.
I had a woman want a refund on a cardigan because of the "shockingly poor quality" the problem? a button had come off, oh and the cardigan was 9 years old!