Azaroth

According to some.

Now, the skinny of this situation is that Sprint kicks out thousands of their own customers for requiring too much CS time. Interestingly enough, CS jockeys and, well, everyone working at a company that involves a computer or two in some way seem to be dancing and squealing with glee. Tales abound of how “crazy person” x, y, or z have taken thousands of precious CS hours that should have gone to “more worthy” customers.

And by my tone, you’d guess I disagree with the general stance that this is okay. And I do. But it’s not because I haven’t dealt with crazy retards sucking up all of my time when it should have rightfully been spent on someone who was worth it. I was the sole source of CS for quite some time after IPY launched, and even after that, generally any and all craziness was directly aimed at myself. But those are two other posts about volunteers and why they sometimes require more time than they save, and also about letting your lead people be visible and reachable by anyone who is drooling close enough to a computer.

The point here is that, regardless of how much trouble I was caused by these people, whether the situation was preventable and I’ve learned something or the person in question was just… nuts - the customer IS always right.

I learned so many lessons about handling people that I’d probably break the server this blog is running on if I typed them all out. But the point is that I learned and will be much more prepared next time. I’ll then proceed to make new mistakes, even maybe a few old ones once in a while, and I’ll learn something new (and re-learn when necessary).

For instance, one of the major things that was unearthed about this Sprint case is that some of the users who were banned from the service were exploiting systems to gain free time. Here’s a protip guys - people WILL invariably exploit anything that’s exploitable. Especially if there’s some kind of gain involved for them. But even if there isn’t. I believe that at this point, when the exploitation is discovered, it becomes Sprint’s obligation to fix the exploitable system. I realize frustration can run high and banning people is simpler — most especially when others are benefiting from the same exploitable system, but the logical step to me would be to simply revoke any and all gains acquired through exploitation of the system, and a tweak in the system’s design to disallow further exploitation.

And maybe a lesson learned.

For instance, I think I read that someone had “earned” himself $5000 of free time, somehow, through a design flaw in this particular system. He wanted it sent in check form.

Now, of course this makes you want to immediately tard smack the fellow in question. But what’s so hard about a form letter sent out to all of the people like this informing then that they exploited the system and their “credit” would be revoked, and then, you know, fixing the problem that allowed the situation in the first place. Probably not much. Any lawsuit that may follow certainly wouldn’t be avoided by an out and out banning from the service.

Of course, the next time I’m running a service, I may turn into a huge hypocrite on this issue. But one of the things that I’ve learned is that you can’t have Stallone running around Judge Dredding people’s asses in any kind of service, and especially in a video game. The Policeman can absolutely not be the Judge. That shit doesn’t work. Sorry. Decisions on bannings/jailtime/executions/whathaveyou MUST to come down from an (at least generally) impartial source. This is why these Sprint bans remind me of something some lone shard admin would pull while doling out his own brand of frontier justice while wearing white jockeys and a six shooter in his computer chair. It just can’t be like that.

However, some others regaled the internets with stories of generally innocent, yet lonely, woman who called constantly because a certain CS representative’s voice was “sexy”. Obviously she’s putting a large strain on the amount of available customer service left over for others who actually have problems. But she’s not doing anything illegal, or even shady… she’s just annoying and lonely. What’s the answer here? Is the customer wrong once again?

Of course not, and banning this person is silly. However, implementing legal speak into the ToS about using large amounts of CS time revoking your right to phone time with people (relegating you to email only, which is easier to deal with and less time intensive), or whatever, may have been a better idea. Of course this is pushing something into the contract with everyone else that they might take note of and raise a stink over. Which is in turn affecting everyone to settle one problem. However, you’re also solving this problem in the future. And I doubt the first idea off the top of my head would be the best one that could be concocted anyway.

The fact is… learn from your CS situations, adapt, and move forward better suited for, well, Customer Service.

And put some pants on guys.