Have YOU ever fired a customer?
 

Every once in a while I fire a customer.

Carrie (my Adult XXX Card sales rep) has been dealing with this UK couple for weeks over a wholesale card purchase. The husband is a saint but every time his wife deals with Carrie she is a total bitch to her.

Example: This woman asked our payment terms and then when Carrie replied accordingly she said "You have to stop pushing me, I will buy when I am good and ready!"

This was turning out to be a fairly large purchase when I told Carrie to pull the plug. We told her "We prefer to have friendly distributor relationships and you have not been very friendly with us.

My way of thinking is this. If someone is going to be a problem BEFORE they even buy, just imagine how hard they will be when you have their money in your hands.



Have you ever fired an existing or potential client?

i haven't personally but i remember when my friend owned a restaurant and when customers gave the waiters or waitresses a hard time over something stupid he would walk over and say 'enjoy your meal, and I don't ever want to see you in my establishment again'. you'd think it would be bad for business but he does amazing.

Wouldn't it have been better to try to work it out before cutting it off completely? (Then again maybe you did try...)

yes, i did. just once though. but they were such a pain in the ass i couldn't stand it - i started to get panic attacks when i switched on icq. 2 people harrassing me every day for a job of 5 exclusive sets - for 2 weeks every day. and when they got the content they started to complain about that - so i sent their money back and told them not to contact me again.

I was fired from a dentist's office 3 weeks ago.

I was trying to find their office in the sweltering heat and the secretary who was a total bitch from the start couldn't give me proper directions on the cell, kept interrupting me and then didn't know wtf she was talking about.

Went something like this:
-ring ring-

Her: "Yeah"
Me: "is the the dentist's office?"
Her: (impatiently) "yes"
Me: "Hello, I am having trouble finding your office, I have reached Sunrise, have I gone too far?"
Her: (impatiently) "where are you at?"
Me: "umm... I am on Sunrise and..."
Her: (interrupting) "right now where are you at? Just name the streets!"
Me: "ok, I am now on SW 2nd heading East"
Her: "Oh, *sigh*, I don't know where that's at, just stop at a gas station and ask"
Me: "Look, I don't need your fucking atitude, all I want to know is if I've gone too far if I reached Sunrise"
Her: (meekishly) "yes..."
Me: "ok, thank you, all I wanted to know"

-Click-

Drive for another 20 minutes looking and finally call back, this time she's all smiles and proper - transfers me to the dentist who says we got off on the wrong foot and it's best if I don't come in.

I said thanks for wasting my time and this wouldn't have happened if he gave his secretaries time off during PMS cuz it seems like they need it.

and I hung up.


I know I have a bit of a temper sometimes and shot myself in the foot but man she was pissing me off.

Yep man.. only once tho.

Had a company as a client who purchased software - fairly large value for software, but they were simply too stupid to a level it was pointless spending time to educate them.

Any "education" had nothing to do with the software - it was basic corp management stuff that any business person should now.

After I did fire them - then came across three other companies who had also fired them and found out I was apparently the most patient of them all and tolerated them the longest.


PS... The commercial basis on which they purchased their office space was that the main entrance pointed east - say no more :winkwink:

That really sucks, did they send the content back?

i sold windows via phone last year. I used to always put the phone down when i got shouted at

i had sent them wmv samples. i just put the content in the shop and it sells fine. good to have more than one possibility of selling stuff

Just a dental paitent recently. :winkwink:

When it gets to that stage MaDalton - it's like an injection of morphine to be rid of them.

NO SOUP FOR YOU!!!!

FYI We tried giving this woman the benefit of the doubt, we had sevral incidents where she lashed out at Carrie so I told her she had my blessing to fire the client. She lost out on a big comission and was happy doing it which speaks volumes.

I've personally fired a couple of customers for my Hand Submission Services.

Some people are just not worth the trouble.

Oh hell yeah.

Back in the day when I did customer service I would not allow assholes to order over the phone.

Asshole called me at home on a sunday at 9 am, after i had spent the entire night till 5 am at the swingers club with my wife. He knew I was there, he had seen me, he also knew i generally closed the place.

So he manages to con someone out of my home phone number and call me bitching about the fact that his wife got mad at him, because he never answered her email ( i owned an isp at the time).

I tired to explain to him that in the big scheme of things email was new (this was 5-6 years ago), and if it absolutley had to be said, you best pick up a phone. Turns out the whole bitch was over the fact she asked him what he wanted for dinner and he never answered.

The next morning, I cut him a check for his $19.95 and cancelled his account.

I have "fired" a customer in the aspect of terminating their membership because they were a pain in the ass. May be I was PMSing that day :)

LOL, firing a customer? Thats like unheard of, to me.

Every single job i had tought me that customer is always # 1, no matter how difficult they are. Those were local jobs though, so if you piss one customer off they will tell their friends and friends will tell friends ext ext.

Since you're job is online you dont have to worry about that i guess.

In the last mainstream job I did it quite often. In fact, I started to enjoy it and coworkers started calling me the account closer and when it was time for someone to go, I was in hot demand. hehe.

Yes, it was acutally pretty hard because we became close and he wouldn't take no for an answer. But finally he got the idea.

fire a customer? What part of the game is that??

Yep. Plenty of times. Both in RL at my last profession, and the online.

At some point I just do not want their business. If they contact me with a legitimate problem, I will try and help them fix it. If they constantly cut me off, do not follow things step by step, and just want to bitch (yes, some people just want to vent, and much like your wife there is nothing you are EVER going to do that will be good enough to solve it). I am not going to sit around and

a) listen to it, or take the abuse until they feel better. You have a health insurance card. Flip it over. The number for mental services is there.

b) take it in the ass for their $14.95/29.95 or whatever the dollar amount is. At some point they get their refund, banned from everything I own so they can never sign up again. In the RL I would put big PERM notes on their account they were a mental asshole, and transfer them to corporate security when they called in. Then I'd check back on their account in a few weeks and laugh my ass off on the additional notes.

:pimp

I've fired a few. One actually came back really nice and apologized (once he realized he wasn't getting a better deal anywhere else.) He still spends a good bit of cash with us to this day and we have no more problems with him.

If you're thinking you don't need their money that bad, it's time to cut them loose.

True.. customer is always right :winkwink: BUT when you know better than the customer will ever know - give them what they want, but keep to your standards.

Example.. in say software development, and the customer likes a nice button on a screen that he/she things is a wonderful idea - let em have it. The fact that underneath that is your own version of stuff - the version you know works and has been tested in the field over years and in a number of businesses.

Na.. being online is not, or should not, be any different. Sometimes, tho very rarely, - customers, like anyone, can just be totally stupid. You can try to "educate" em over time and they can appreciate that a lot, but you then end up as their crutch and get 50 calls a day over stuff that was never part of any deal. If these type of folks run a biz, chances are it lasts for a year and they are gone.

"Good customers" you can work with and depending on the scenario, offer them far more in overall terms than selling any product or service (tho sadly you may not see a dime for that) - but you have that client for many years.

Takes all kinds - and customers are no different :winkwink:

I have fired a customer and very few things feel better.