There was an elderly lady who would call me almost every day at the bank’s call center where I worked in customer service. She was living on a very tight budget, but she had a special love for the KFC next door. With very little money to spare, she’d call the bank to carefully plan what she could afford to buy from KFC each day. “I guess I’ll only be getting a two-piece meal on Tuesday since I had to buy Ibuprofen last night,” she’d say.
In addition to calls like hers, I’d often get 4-5 customers daily asking about unexpected charges, usually around $79.99, from freecreditreport.com. Many would act like they didn’t know what the charge was, hoping to dispute it. I could usually tell who those people were, but I filed the claim anyway. Others genuinely didn’t know why it happened, so I’d explain the situation and warn them to be cautious with TV ads and websites in the future. Regardless, I filed claims for all of them, and most got their money back.
I eventually got a talking-to from my managers for this. Apparently, I was supposed to make customers contact freecreditreport.com directly before filing any claims. But I didn’t care—I just wanted to help people, and that didn’t sit well with the bank. I suspect that’s part of the reason I was let go a year or so later. I worked too hard to help people, and the bank didn’t like that very much.
