yup. I can totally dig it.
Last week I was working with a customer in south america who happened to be friends with one of the sales reps. Naturally, he's included on all the correspondence.
The customer likes to alter my words. When I tell him that IF it's only the part he thinks needs to change then the cost will be ABOUT a certain amount, but I can't give a final estimate until I get the instrument in. His response says that he'll accept that maximum price.
It's at this point that the sales rep starts working behind my back. I wrote back telling the customer that it was not a maximum price, and the sales rep finally admits to me that he had already written that response. Thanks for making me look like a schmuck. Maybe next time we're working on a SERVICE issue the SALES department can tell me that they're working with the customer on it? So y'know, I can actually do my job?
When the cost is much higher than the customer expected, he wrote back saying that his tests had indicated no such problem. Which is basically him being a retard. It's unlikely at all that he had the software necessary to run the tests we did. And his instrument failed the tests we ran. Significantly, in fact.
So I start drafting a response which I intend to send out on Thursday. But, realizing that I'm going out of town, I call my boss to let her know that I'm going to send her a copy and that I won't be able to respond to it.
And then I find out that the sales rep had already sent it to her, without telling me. So, y'know, now I'm going to be duplicating info with my boss, and if any of the info is different at all, I'm going to look like a fool. Assuming he wasn't being a jerk, which I don't, the sales guy was at bare minimum an idiot. You HAVE to keep the person who is working the issue informed of what's going on. It looks bad for the company, and makes me look incompetant.
Which, I think, was the sales guy's attempt. He was going behind my back because I wasn't doing what he wanted. THere's no way in hell I'm going to get that instrument fixed at the price he wanted. That would be giving him thousands of dollars of work and parts for free. That's not just bad for my department, but for the whole company. How would Sales like it if I promised a customer we'd give him a 66% discount on his next purchase? They'd be pissed!
I'm trying to do my job, I deserve at least to know when someone else is taking over correspondence so I don't look like aretard to the customer and to my boss.
No one got fired, but it's still making me angry.
I did have a manager get fired for what I thought was an uncool reason. When I was at convergys he said something bad about Microsoft. Apparently a microsoft rep heard him, and he got fired for it. That's total crap.
