There’s the lady who complained that she could see raster lines on her 21" B&W TV after I replaced the CRT.
The old one was dim and fuzzy.
There was no focus control to intentionally blur the image.
That was in 1974.
It was the most logical reason I could think of.
I worked retail many years ago. I can remember one lesson they taught all the new salespeople with this true story.
One day a customer tried to return some undershirts they bought the day before. The salesperson looked at them and they had a label from a different store. The customer insisted. The sales person just could not believe them. Well the customer took it up to the next level. The supervisor went with the customer and the customer pointed out the counter where she had picked up the merchandise. The whole table was labeled with the other store name. Same quality same design, just a different label .
Why the story. If you want to serve the customer, you remember that the customer may well be right even if you KNOW they can't be.
The store was told to me by the store manager (who went on to found Toys Are Us.) was the best manager I ever worked for. In retrospect, I should have moved and taken a position at the beginning of Toys Are UsYou NEVER know who you’re dealing with.
Friend who owns a dealership in NY told me this one years ago…
Guy comes in for a quick repair on his car…said he was in a big hurry…Well it wasn’t a quick repair…and took them 3-4 hours…Plus he had to wait 2 hours just to get the car in…
The guy was furious…My friend was sitting in his office and was hearing all this…looked out of his office to see what was happening…It started to escalate so he called the cops…Cops showed up…and the guy was arrested…he was just released on parole 2 months earlier after serving 15 years for manslaughter…he had a hand gun in his possession (parole violation).
That is a good lesson for us all to remember Joseph.
My own version of a similar tale goes back to my first job–in a filthy little A & P market–back in the early '60s:
A customer brought a few items to the cash register next to mine, and announced to the very burly cashier, “I have 8 items, but I’m only going to pay you for 7 of them”. The cashier replied in a threatening manner, “No, if you have 8 items, you’re going to pay me for all 8 of them, or I’ll call the cops”.
The upshot of the story is that one of the customer’s items was a normal-looking Campbell’s soup can that was apparently empty. How it left the factory that way is anyone’s guess, but the reality is that we had an empty (unopened) can of soup on the shelves. Once the customer demonstrated that the can was indeed empty, he was allowed to take it, gratis.
As you said, the customer may well be right, even if all of your instincts initially tell you that he is wrong.
That empty soup can might be worth more than a full one (collectible).