In the Scam Home Warranty business, the people are represented by two separate but equally lazy groups: The Authorization agents, who deny claims and smoke like chimneys, and the technicians who lie through their teeth to snag a few extra bucks. These are their stories CLICK CLICK
(background) Do you have a friend that's really into survivalism, living off the grid or sovereign citizenship? If the last is correct, that's not a friend it's some kind of corporation and they're in the middle of contesting their social security in an admiralty court /s. There are a lot of signs of someone who refuses to abide by the rules of society and one is theft. For example: they refuse to get a phone so they can't track them but they're messaging you from their XBox, they think gas is a scam yet they have a propane grill. Here's a story about one these customers.
Those $1 banquet frozen dinners are getting smaller by the year or maybe I'm just imagining things. In any event, their boneless rib dinners are second only to the Swedish Meatballs in terms of being anything approaching a meal.
One morning I walk into work like normal, about a half hour early with a bag from Shoprite as the dollar store isn't open that early and I didn't feel like picking through whatever overpriced trash QuickChek has in their frozen food section. We have a couple in the breakroom so using 2 microwaves to cook my breakfast twice as fast is my plan. Unfortunately one is weaker than an excuse not to drink on New Year's Eve and it takes a couple minutes to get my frozen breakfast ribs into edible temperature.
During this time I run back to my department to relinquish the rest of my shopping trip into my desk and just login for a quick second to see how many chances I'll have to get fired this morning, 2 if you're curious - both marked 'high priority' by my bosses' boss.
By the time I return to the microwave it is making evil sounds as its uneven cooking has caused part of the plastic wrap to explode, despite having holes in it.
I'll spare you the details but by the time my phone started ringing, I was still using a clorox wet wipe to clean that damn thing for the first time in longer than anyone would care to admit. Somebody was nice enough to text me that reason number 3 this could be my last day was going off on my line and I needed to get back in my chair.
About an hour later I caught my breath and have eaten exactly 2 bites of now tepid boneless ribs and my boss has arrived with murder on his mind, but I think he wakes up every day like that.
A thorough dressing-down later that would make a college dropout in Marine bootcamp cry I was on my phone with a very upset technician in that part of Alabama that still thinks they won the Civil War.
Me: "Ok slow down, what claim are we looking at?"
Tech: "#."
Me: "So this is an electrical claim right? Are you at the house?"
Tech: "Yeah and it's a mess."
Me: "Tell me about it."
Tech: "Can you look at the customer's profile and just tell me what the hell is going on with this guy?"
I pull open the profile and see a lot of red flags, which are replicated on the SWO which only made me pity whoever had to push the claim through in CS.
A. The guy's name is "Citizen" "American." (not exactly that but I don't want to DOX anyone).
B. Phone number is clearly fake
C. Full year paid by check but a flag from accounting saying they have to 'verify' some info on it (that's not gonna happen)
D. Address is "by X on Y st" (which shouldn't even be possible but I guess the system allows it as there could be an apartment number in the prefix or whatever)
E. Optional coverage for 2 pools, a well pump, septic system and irrigation (look I know whatever sales guy was too busy salivating on all those add-ons to care but that isn't possible, you can't have all those utilities at once it makes no sense)
F. Email is @AOL (ok that one's kind of normal.....)
Me: "So looks like this is a fake account."
Tech: "Unassign me from the claim."
Me: "Done but can you give me anything approaching a diagnosis? Just something solid to run with when this hits CS or retention and I can, you know, play around with the claim so the reassign won't hurt you with dispatch."
Tech: "Guy is stealing electricity from the utility. You can see the feed on the telephone pole in the street, which is so small it's got like 4 lines running for the entire town which might be illegal these days but out here in the country inspectors stopped coming around in the 70s. So his breaker melted and he wanted me to lie about it, pretend it's not half slag and clearly homemade."
Me: "Ok I'll kill it from here."
Tech: "Am I gonna get paid for this? He tried paying the SCF in some bullshit currency that he clearly printed himself and went on and on about bitcoin or something."
Me: "I'll task vendor relations to override the claim with an exception payment, explaining the issue from auth's perspective."
Tech: "Good, I'm going to tell my boss what happened and hopefully it's all sorted out on both our ends by then."
Me: "Ok, have a good one."
tasked to customer service: call customer and inform not a covered claim, the fuse box has failed due to power surge per C8 that is excluded.
internal auth note to not read: customer is stealing electricity, illegal hookup melted the fuse box
Epilogue: I think he tried to sue us but you need a real name to go to court and pretending to be a lawyer (based on very confused notes from retention) didn't help. At least the AG Complaint was incoherent enough that it was dismissed.
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