Batshit Customer Venting

BeerNuts

BeerNuts

New member
Sep 4, 2008
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www.beermonies.com
So I get back from lunch today to find I have 10 emails from one customer. Seems he bought my product while I was out, couldn't figure out how to install it and began an angry rampage on me.

1:16pm He emails me "Your installer sucks, guessing this is a dated tool"
1:36pm He emails me asking for a refund saying it does not work as advertised. (seems he got it working)
1:42pm He goes nuts and emails me these angry emails saying "Purchased your shitty product.. now coming for you"
1:42pm He opens a Paypal dispute.
1:46pm He escalates the Paypal dispute.
1:46pm I find 2 emails to my corporate contact page that is not related to the product he bought (same web host). Both saying. "Enjoy the ripoff reports you scamming fuck"

2:04pm I get back to see all this retarded crap and just refund him his $50 via paypal and close the dispute.

Awesome start to the day. I can only imagine that he has gone full retarded and posted his crap on every ripoff report related website on the internet. Welcome to the internet.

I emailed him back pointing out that I have 3 of his email addresses 2 of which are his personal ones, full name, and his company name/website if he felt the need to continue his angry rampage.
 


I always like it when they signup for an extra Gmail account, and pretend to be their own lawyer.
 
I emailed him back pointing out that I have 3 of his email addresses 2 of which are his personal ones, full name, and his company name/website if he felt the need to continue his angry rampage.
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That's professional.
Perhaps working the customer through their issues would be a better approach? Yeah, maybe it shouldn't be necessary, but it's still a customer who needs help. Escalating threats rarely bring about a satisfactory resolution.
 
Cath Erder said:
That's professional.
Perhaps working the customer through their issues would be a better approach? Yeah, maybe it shouldn't be necessary, but it's still a customer who needs help. Escalating threats rarely bring about a satisfactory resolution.
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He stopped being a customer after he opened the dispute Paypal and then escalated it minutes later. My only recourse was to refund his purchase. Also would you really want a guy like this to be your paying customer? To deal with his crazy shit all the time?

I told him I had his details to stop him from going on some crazy ripoff report spree that will hurt my business in the long run. He got his support in under an hour and the refund he requested.
 
I wouldn't want them as a recurring customer, that's why I think it's best to make them happy and everyone walks away.
More bothersome to me are those customers who are actually customers of a competitor. Difficult to resolve their issues, but you have to try to point them in the direction that will get their problem solved.
 
It's incidents like these that make me wish smellypoop.com still sent horseshit via the US mail. They had to stop because they discovered it was illegal, thanks Obama!
 
Cath Erder said:
That's professional.
Perhaps working the customer through their issues would be a better approach? Yeah, maybe it shouldn't be necessary, but it's still a customer who needs help. Escalating threats rarely bring about a satisfactory resolution.
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He's not a customer, definitely don't ruin your day and waste hours of your time on someone who is never going to be happy and treats the customer vendor relationship as a confrontation from the first second.

Refund him and send a short impersonal email saying sorry I cant help you thanks for trying it out here's your money then spend time acquiring or helping real customers.
 
I would avoid threatening (in writing)customers. You never know who you're fucking with. You send me that email, and you're getting ripoff reports from 20 different sources.


Edit: This guy is just fucking with you. Wanted you're product for free
 
_poto_ said:
Get any death threats yet? Those are always golden.
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While not specifically a death threat, this is pretty close...

"Purchased your shitty product.. now coming for you"

Cath Erder said:
That's professional.
Perhaps working the customer through their issues would be a better approach? Yeah, maybe it shouldn't be necessary, but it's still a customer who needs help. Escalating threats rarely bring about a satisfactory resolution.
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The guy made threats against his person and opened and immediately escalated a PayPal dispute. At that point working the customer through their issues would be the job of a mental health professional, or the police. I certainly wouldn't have anything to do with him, not worth the hassle. Refunding him and walking away is by far the best option IMO. The time and effort it would take to satisfy someone like this would be better spent acquiring new customers.

Cath Erder said:
I wouldn't want them as a recurring customer, that's why I think it's best to make them happy and everyone walks away.
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He did make him happy, he refunded his money which is what the customer wanted.
 
Cath Erder said:
That's professional.
Perhaps working the customer through their issues would be a better approach? Yeah, maybe it shouldn't be necessary, but it's still a customer who needs help. Escalating threats rarely bring about a satisfactory resolution.
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This, you should never have turned to threats. What the customer did was irrelevant. You should always be calm, friendly and try to help. You've refunded them, you can say "Sorry you had a bad experience, I trust this is satisfactory to resolve any of your issues. If there's anything more I can do to help you, please get in touch."

Threatening people only escalates situations, and will result in them targeting you more. You've just opened yourself up to him screenshotting the email and posting the threat to the Ripoff Reports or whatever he publishes giving substance to his claim, where before substance didn't exist.
 
Bad approach ending it like that. Don't you know the power of word of mouth? Especially in the digital age. I shouldn't have to post any statistics but word travels fast, and angry ex-customers carry a lot of influence to someone who might be in the "review" stage of the buying process.

Familiarize yourself with this: Apostles and Terrorists

You've just created a terrorist.

Apostles2.jpg
 
Cath Erder said:
That's professional.
Perhaps working the customer through their issues would be a better approach? Yeah, maybe it shouldn't be necessary, but it's still a customer who needs help. Escalating threats rarely bring about a satisfactory resolution.
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Sorry but you have absolutely zero clue what you are talking about. Some customers are irrational animals, and even when they're in the wrong, they'll still blame you for it and maybe even fuck your entire SERPs up with their bullshit ripoffreport complaint.

If you run any sort of an offer which requires you to deal with the public, a percentage of your customers will absolutely be knuckle dragging retards. Some niches have more idiots than others too.

I really do appreciate the quiet and well behaved customers.
 
Whenever I'm providing something and either the person's a psycho/I've fucked up in some way, I generally just throw money at it, do something like give them double their money back.

That will stop 99% of the psycho customers in their tracks and flip them to being very friendly, apologetic, etc, while not affecting your bottom line in the slightest if your product & customer service are good.
 
bluechinagroup said:
Sorry but you have absolutely zero clue what you are talking about. Some customers are irrational animals, and even when they're in the wrong, they'll still blame you for it and maybe even fuck your entire SERPs up with their bullshit ripoffreport complaint.

If you run any sort of an offer which requires you to deal with the public, a percentage of your customers will absolutely be knuckle dragging retards. Some niches have more idiots than others too.

I really do appreciate the quiet and well behaved customers.
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I don't think any business owner should threaten customers though, even something passive aggressive like what OP did. Like others have said, that's going to attract a lot of trouble. Always deescalate the situation and make them look like the pieces of shit they are.
 
A lot of good advice here already, let me still throw in my 5c.

First, you should include possible refunds into your margins and your business plan so that you don't suffer each time you send money back. If you see a psycho, don't even think about it twice: send the money back.

Second, there are really legitimately insane people out there, they visit websites and they buy stuff. Internet is just like a big city street where lunatics visit your store sometimes. If you get 1 in 1000 sales, - relax and enjoy it, just like rape.

Third, don't ever fight back or threaten people, it's never worth it and is always unpredictable. Appeal to their decency and remorse, not to their war face.

If the situation escalates fast like in your case, - return the money, apologize, say their feedback is valuable and you'll use it to improve your operations in the future, say you're sorry for the ripoff reports and you will do your best to fix the situation so that no future customers suffer from it (he's important and helps people).

If it's going slow and someone's sending you "customer support" emails all day every day, put them on a once-a-day reply schedule with formal, polite & official responses. Use figures of speech like "today we looked into", "we will be investigating tomorrow" etc., to make the psycho understand you got boring unshakable procedures at your end.

Fourth, hire someone obliging and thick-skinned to do customer support, that's all it takes really. A non-obvious benefit to that is the possibility to escalate the dispute. That is, after dealing with the customer support person, an obvious psycho gets the chance to "speak to the manager" (you). and you come into it like a polite all-understanding deity that was unaware of the errors: you are thankful he brought that to your attention and you will take urgent measures. Then comes the formal "one reply a day" phase until it all dies out.

Fifth, take it easy and move on. In the worst case I'm sure someone on WF will be happy to do rep management for you :)

source: Before coming out as a gay webmaster I was heading a customer support unit for about 4 yeas.
 
Interesting how we see 2 different schools of thought in this thread.

I think it's a case by case basis. You first need to see whether or not he dropped some negative reviews all over the web. If he did, then I would play the eye for an eye game and tell him that you have is name, company and address and can do the same thing unless he removes his reviews that were truly uncalled for. However, if he didn't leave any negative review and you threaten him, that might give him that extra motivation to go on a neg rep spree...

Basically I think you reacted too quickly... you should have just apologized, explained that you just saw his messages cuz you were way, and fully refunded him... then waited a while to see if he'd calm down before threatening him.
 
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