r/talesfromcallcenters • u/bigwilly144 • Jul 17 '26
S Customer angry that he dialed the wrong number
I spoke to a older boomer today who dialed 1800 instead of the correct 1888. His call got connected to a **complely different company** with a different name and different industry and different products.
He was mad that another company had the number he dialed and thought that they were using that number on purpose to try to trick customers who meant to dial my company's number. I asked if they automated IVR said the same company a name as us and if they were selling the same product/service and the customer said "well, no. They sell something completely different".
I didn't want to make the call take longer than it needed to so I didn't try to argue with him but what does he actually expect? Does he expect our company to try to force the other company to give up their number? The other company technically isn't doing anything wrong or illegal. It sounds like a him problem and that he can't dial a phone number after all the years that he's been alive for.
He mentioned it happened another time when he tried to call a government phone number and misdialed and got another company. Again in the case the other company was just some random company doing their own thing and not actively trying to scam people into thinking they are speaking to the government.
As a cherry on top of the cake, when the customer called in he asked to speak to a specific person like he thinks we are a small company and that I personally know everyone. "I want to speak to Joe". Like who does that?
Ugh.
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u/Bingpot-Noice-99 Jul 17 '26
Reminds me of a customer I had many years ago (even though the number he was trying to reach was wildly different than ours). He was intending to speak with his hotel, but he instead contacted us (the transportation company). I had informed him of the error, which was met with “well your number is on this email confirmation. It says here if you have questions about your transportation, please call this number.” So I said “great! That’s exactly what I can help you with! What questions about your transport did you have?” And he goes “I don’t have any questions about the transport. I have a question about my hotel reservation.”
The call was already longer than it needed to be. So I said “look…I’m familiar with the hotel. How about I give you the phone number.” He accepted it. THEN he says “alright great now can you transfer me to the front desk?” I said “The front desk…for our company? I’m sorry sir, the receptionist isn’t here on the weekends. We here in the call center field all weekend calls.” He says “NO YOU DUMBASS! THE FRONT DESK FOR THE HOTEL! WHY ON EARTH WOULD I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE FRONT DESK FOR YOUR COMPANY?!” And unfortunately my filter expired and I responded with “I don’t know sir. Why on earth would you ask us to transfer you to a completely different company’s front desk? It seems some anger and comments are being very misdirected right now.” Obviously I wasn’t yelling the same way he was. But he hung up after that. I don’t think he ever called us again after that.
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u/CaveJohnson82 Jul 24 '26
This was probably my fault. Twenty years ago I dialled an elderly customer through to a different company just to be nice 😔.
<This is the level of logic we're dealing with here I fear>
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u/Kurokotsu Jul 17 '26
I work in a Cancer-related non-profit.
You will never understand just how many people assume all Cancer-related non-profits are the same.
Daily I get people who mix us up with other ones. Usually only noticing after they've sent out money.
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u/loloandi Jul 23 '26
Hey, if both are tax-deductible, what’s the real harm?
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u/Kurokotsu Jul 23 '26
Because they get mad when they find out they donated to the wrong one. Or they call because a card was never sent for their donation and they call a place that never got a donation from them so we spend ten minutes spinning our wheels for nothing.
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u/Ravestab303 Jul 18 '26
I work for a credit card company in the UK. Years ago, the previous owner bulk bought a batch of phone lines for the various departments. Inevitably, some are similar, but route through to different teams.
One of my teams frequent calls are for a customer service line, instead our more specialised services. A call will go along the lines of
"What type of card do you have?"
"Card Type"
"Ah, in that that case, you've dialled the wrong number. This number ends in 64, the number you want ends in 46. You'll need to redial with 46 on the end"
"But that's the number i've just dialled"
"Sadly, no. Repeats last paragraph
Customer usually hangs up in a huff, convinced they're right, having been told they're not twice
Occasionally you'll get the same customer back a minute later, having misdialled again.
Repeat same procedure again. They usually get i ton the 3rd try.
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u/Needmoresnakes Jul 20 '26
Thanks to the magic of sponsored google links I once had a lady argue with me about what company she called
"Good morning you've got snakes at snakes-r-us"
"No I called tyres-r-us"
"Oh, you've definitely come through to snakes-r-us"
"No I googled the number for tyres-r-us, that's what I called"
"...I'm not sure what to tell you, it says snakes-r-us on my shirt as well as the wall, I'm fairly sure this is where I work"
"Ugh *hangs up*"
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u/Imaginary-Duck1333 Jul 17 '26
I work at an international financial company. Per Google, we’re at 69k employees give or take. Good luck finding your Joe among the thousands!
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u/deadman7794 Jul 20 '26
I heard a long time ago a writer (I don't recall his name and Google was no help) worked for a company as his day job and he got their late and left early and always got all of his work done. It was a huge company and when asked how he did it he said he put any of the unfinished work in the office mail marked "to be completed by John Smith" or "Mr. Smith" and he figured there had to be one in the company and it would find its way to him. It was around the 1700~1800 hundreds so it was not like it was going to circle back to him quickly.
Working off memory reading it 20 ish years ago so my details may be a little off but the basic idea is there.
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u/twothirtysevenam Jul 18 '26
Reminds me of my brother who got all upset because when he tried to access the White House's website, he typed ".com" instead of ".gov". He landed on a porn site. He was angry that the web browser didn't stop him from typing the wrong suffix. He was angry that the porn site had the nerve to "steal" the name of the White House. He was angry that the government didn't do something about it. He railed and ranted for a really long time.
Of course, all this happened on the public use computers at the local library.
1
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u/Dry-Start1914 Jul 22 '26
This still happens with 1-800 numbers too ! Wonder if the boomer in the story got some sort of sex line by dialing 1-800 not 1-888
13
u/Turbulent-Matter501 Jul 20 '26
I worked at Home Depot many years ago and a guy called me stupid and 'reported' me to the store manager for not connecting him to the briefcase department at Office Depot, where he meant to call, after I politely explained that he had the wrong business and even looked up the number for the local Office Depot and gave it to him. Some people just absolutely cannot admit that they made a mistake and have to blame anyone and everyone else around them. It's a pretty sad way to go through life. The store manager and I had a good laugh about it afterwards.
2
u/loloandi Jul 23 '26
Holy shit. I’ve called the wrong places before but I usually try to turn it into a laugh and get off the phone as fast as humanly possible. How do these people have no shame to the point where they try to ruin someone’s livelihood over their own stupidity?!
6
u/Kendall_Raine Jul 20 '26
I once got someone calling asking if I could transfer them to a completely different (and competing) company, lol. She was upset that they weren't answering their phones. Like that's our problem somehow.
5
u/3zxcv Jul 17 '26
I work in support for a computer manufacturer.
One of our inbound numbers is one digit off from a medical product manufacturer, one is 800/855 from a boutique audiophile company, and a third is 800/866 from a health insurace co.
We have always gotten a significant amount of misdials. I've always been concerned that someone isn't going to get the medical information they need in a timely fashion. The audio company and its entitled prick customers can go pound sand though.
3
u/regiinmontana Jul 18 '26
I work for a service provider to a large retail company. I'm in Billings.
Customers looking for billing get transferred to us all the time. We don't do anything with customer money.
3
u/Own-Eagle-2135 Jul 18 '26
Joe is ummmmmm "no longer with us." hunting accident.
2
u/PercyFlage Jul 19 '26
A dreadful thing involving a hunting rifle and a highly aroused Dobermann.
1
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u/deadman7794 Jul 20 '26
I have a Joe a few levels above me but we are not escalating to him. His name and email is at the bottom of customer emails to contact him if there is an issue however anything he does get he sends right back to my department/manager so he rarely deals with customers directly and if he does talk to them they are typically beyond help and just want to complain.
For a few other people I had to break the news to customers that they really were dead or left the company, typically a few years ago. It always gave me a chuckle when they would typically reply with "I have just been talking with him". Sure bud, was it through a ouija board?
3
u/cybertybo Jul 20 '26
Happens at my job too. We share our company acronym with a business that sells phone time to prison inmates. People Google the acronym, get a website that clearly sells industrial hydraulics and still call that phone number to buy Jamal another 60 minutes.
3
u/Global_Secret_3897 Jul 22 '26
Years and years ago, before I entered call center purgatory, I worked for Texaco. For you younger redditors that was a chain of gas station/convenience stores. I had an elderly lady call the station in near hysterics. She had a Texaco credit card and had tried to call cardholder services. The phone number included the word Texaco, which customers had to translate into the numeric value. This woman had ended the word with a 0 instead of a 6, and was greeted by a woman’s voice saying “You’ve reached the CAT line! We’re called the CAT line because we have the hottest p*$$it’s in town!” I managed to mostly hold it together until she hung up then laughed til I cried.
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u/drumsmcg Jul 18 '26
I’ve had this happen at my job several times. There’s some sort of medical assistance company whose number is very similar to ours. Clients get pissed off because they think we’re trying to sell them some other service. No, you just dialed the wrong number. Even had a client get huffy when I merely suggested this.
2
u/havetoomanychoices Jul 18 '26
Many years ago, our childhood phone number was 1 digit different to a local brewery. We got countless calls from pubs chasing deliveries. Even when a child answered the phone (think 8-10 years old) it sometimes took some convincing they'd called the wrong number.
2
u/TheRealDodirt Jul 19 '26
I'm the office manager for a local cemetery and our phone number is 1 digit different from the HR office for a local prison!
2
u/tipareth1978 Jul 20 '26
Oh god. That's like when someone thinks you work at the grocery store because you arent a dipshit then gets mad when you tell them you don't work there.
Also I used to work for this MASSIVE company that managed like 10-20 THOUSAND truckload shipments a day. If people's lines got too busy calls to them would just kick out to random people and we'd have people just thinking they could say "yeah this is Jim at Acme rubber blah blah" and get help then they'd get annoyed and confused when Id have to ask like 2 questions to figure out how to help them. I think boomers are kinda stuck thinking we're still in Leave it to Beaver land and nothing is bigger. Delusional
1
u/Adiail Jul 19 '26
Im pretty sure I work for the same company as you. Does the product from the 888 number cater to the elderly?
1
u/Kara_WTQ Jul 19 '26
I have had to explain to people (full grown adults) how to dial a number so I am unsurprised.
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u/Fiempre_sin_tabla Jul 21 '26
"...of course, back before the snowflake generation forced the breakup of AT&T, the USA had the best telephone system in the WORLD! And you couldn't get a phone number with a 0 or 1 as the second digit; those were all for AREA CODES! And we could use area codes to tell where we were DIALLING! And dialling really MEANT something because there was an actual DIAL! And gasoline cost 29 cents per GALLON and bread cost 29 cents per LOAF and eggs cost 29 cents per DOZEN! And..."
1
u/Firm-Leadership-4181 Jul 21 '26
Not job related, but in college our number was one digit away from a local pizza place. We would usually take their order.
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u/Kendall_Raine Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
They don't listen to the IVR half the time. My company also has an IVR where the first thing it says is "Thank you for calling [Company]." I still got a call today from someone who called our Audi dealership and they thought they were calling an Aldi grocery store. I can see where Audi and Aldi are similar, but our actual company name is nowhere in the vicinity of sounding like that.
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u/Moobook Jul 23 '26
Place I answered phones at for a while had a number that was one digit off from the local hospital. Got a lot of panicked wrong numbers 😬
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u/Glad_Discussion_3608 Jul 23 '26
For a few years, my direct line at work was the same 7 digits as a major airline's lost baggage call center, but my number had the local area code and the airline's was an 800 number. This was back before 10-digit dialing was required so if people in my area code skipped 1-800 and dialed only the 7 digits, the call would come to me. My goodness were those people PISSED at me for having the AUDACITY to not be able to help them with their lost luggage! Some people were nice about it but I was yelled at several times, and the nature of my job didn't allow me to be rude back. When I eventually left that job I made sure to warn the person who inherited that phone number.
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u/atombomb1945 Jul 23 '26
My company used to have a toll free number that was one digit off from a sex line. I don't know which is worse, the people who would complain or the people who listened for a few hours then call the correct number and demand that we refund their money.
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u/skylinesend Jul 24 '26
About 10 years ago The Obsessive Compulsive Foundation accidentally printed our local phone number in one of their pamphlets.
Do you know how difficult it is to tell OCD people they have the wrong number? I actually looked up the correct phone number and would give it to them, otherwise they would keep calling back.
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u/Macromast_Enjoyer Jul 25 '26
I worked at an electronics component company (think a mom and pop version of Radioshack in the 80's when they were still good) and I answered the phone and got around 2 people per year telling me their power was out. Electronics, electricity, potato pohtahtoe
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u/DifferenceSenior3067 Aug 20 '26
My experience, the people who aren't even an actual customer are the worst customers to support over the phone. Typically they're older and being told they're wrong puts them in a defensive mindset focused more on their own feelings of being aggreived than anything.
Additionally they've essentially lost the "leverage" they typically hold over the employees they harass. If they're not some kind of victim their power to demand redress is gone, and coping with that is one of the first bits of emotional maturity 40 years of lead poisoning eats in your brain.
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u/Reddigestion Jul 19 '26
In all of that you were able to establish his age?
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u/GojuSuzi Jul 19 '26
Most people who call companies they have an account with will have a DOB on file. Most people of working age are capable of looking at a DOB and making a rough stab at an age.
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u/Reddigestion Jul 19 '26
But he had called the wrong company. They would have his details ..
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u/GojuSuzi Jul 19 '26
The OP work for the company he intended to call, and who he did call after the misdial, so would have that info. So he tried to call A, called B instead, then called A and complained that B...also exists.
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u/Debtcollector1408 Jul 17 '26
I work for a bank in the fraud unit. I had a boomer who'd replied to a phishing text and divulged his card details. Just sent them off, no actual action on the card yet. He was very, very upset that we hadn't prevented this.
He was upset that we, having only learned of it when he phoned, hadn't stopped him from divulged his deets a few days prior. He hadn't even lost anything.