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soggynachochip t1_ja17zvn wrote

I can just hear the dipshit employee reading off his script.

“Mhm. Yes that is a serious situation and I understand your frustrations.” Glances at pre written response “But unfortunately the 30 day trial period has ended and we do need to charge you for any further services”

Fucking idiot.

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cwthree t1_ja1ble5 wrote

Let's say the employee hadgone ahead without payment. Then, we'd be reading about the heroic employee who bucked policy to save a kid, only to be fired by the company for failing to follow policy.

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SugarinSaltShaker t1_ja1cm9j wrote

Seriously, if the police give a warrant then it doesn't matter their policy

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Phillyredsox t1_ja1cxg7 wrote

Company embarrassed and humiliated for employees following the rules that the company set.

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walkingtalkingdread t1_ja1dh69 wrote

A 30 minute delay? jesus christ, they could gotten all the way out of town, or exited the car on foot. what the fuck?

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Ok-disaster2022 t1_ja1g0c7 wrote

I could understand waiting to verify the caller was a police defective or even to wait on a possible warrant, I'm sure a judge could be interrupted to sign and fax a warrant in the afternoon. (After all, stalker can be police officers too) Asking for payment though is pretty bad.

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DamnBunny t1_ja1kojx wrote

Yeah we be happy to find your child...FOR MONEY!

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TheAppleFallsUp t1_ja1odse wrote

This is some ChatGPT shit! But it's a person. Even better lol.

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Nytelock1 t1_ja1vvm8 wrote

You talk like the employee has a choice. I'd be willing to bet the "button" that enables the service has a "must take payment" popup or or error preventing the employee from even having a choice in the matter

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sfvbritguy t1_ja259y2 wrote

Yet another good reason to never buy Volkswagen .....

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ManyFacedGodxxx t1_ja2c75e wrote

I’m sorry officer, is the child in the car already “born?” Well, you’re on your own then, no hand outs! /s

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monkChuck105 t1_ja2iw35 wrote

If it's like OnStar they do locate the vehicle if it's reported stolen to police. They just harass you in hopes you sign up for their crappy service first. All it takes is a quick phone call to confirm the VIN, but I'm sure there's a mountain of unnecessary paperwork to cover their ass. At least a car you expect to get insurance if it's not recovered. A kid is irreplaceable... These companies care more about ripping you off then saving a life.

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reverend-mayhem t1_ja2lx73 wrote

There was no warrant. Detectives needed to gain access to a vehicle’s GPS after said vehicle had been stolen with a 2 year-old still inside.

From the article:

>“Volkswagen has a procedure in place with a third-party provider for Car-Net Support Services involving emergency requests from law enforcement,” Gillies said.

>“They have executed this process successfully in previous incidents. Unfortunately, in this instance, there was a serious breach of the process. We are addressing the situation with the parties involved,” Gillies added.

I’m pretty sure the “breach of policy” VW is referring to is actually that the VW employee responding to the detective’s call didn’t adhere to company policy & immediately direct them to a specific emergency division or whatever of the third-party company that handles their GPS services & instead flatly said they couldn’t give access to vehicle GPS unless that service was paid for as the free trial period had run out.

Honestly, in any job if I was approached by somebody claiming to be police & urgently asking for private information, I wouldn’t try to take on the situation myself - that’s what a superior is paid to handle. Hand that shit off immediately. The weird part of all this to me is that the employee tried to manage a potentially extremely sensitive situation all on their own.

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spaceforcerecruit t1_ja2sjgm wrote

If it’s anything like my work experience, the guy tried to get direction or find a supervisor to transfer to but no one would respond to their messages. Left without direction and with no one backing them up, they panicked and defaulted to their scripts for what to do when a normal call about GPS comes in.

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GenericElucidation t1_ja2z55o wrote

Damn I used to live by there. That's some ballsy - and fucking stupid - carjacking.

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palabradot t1_ja2zg3i wrote

Wow. Every last CS place I've worked in, there are clear procedures about what to do if someone identifying themselves as legal counsel or law enforcement call the line.

In most cases, nope, I wouldn't have been taking that call other than to get the name and where they're calling from so I can transfer to a supervisor to handle it. OR law enforcement has their own line to call that gets them directly to a supervisor.

So either this guy didn't listen that day, got told 'this rarely happens' and forgot, or couldn't find any person to transfer that to.

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Clay_Ek t1_ja32g01 wrote

This is 100% who Volkswagen is.

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Hand-Picked-Anus t1_ja3fm6c wrote

They will ALWAYS blame the employee in these situations. I would be amazed to find out that the employee even knew an emergency option existed. We are talking about some poor kid in an Indian call center, 90% odds. It's very unlikely his software even let's him do anything other than ring people up or save whatever data they've handed over. Allowing low tier employees the ability to just hand over location data is asking for trouble. At the worst, the employee probably should have referred him to someone higher up and failed to do so.

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Eyfordsucks t1_ja3fwof wrote

I read that the employee was “forced to follow procedure” and then Volkswagen blaming the employee for the failure of their process.

Sounds like they need to train people properly or revamp their prompt system.

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Hand-Picked-Anus t1_ja3g1l1 wrote

Right? Sat on hold with Verizon for an hour and a half before they even answered the other day. Ended up having to call them back four times over the last week, and every time it was an hour wait at least, BEFORE they even picked up.

They're lucky that there aren't many Volkswagen owners out there.

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dpdxguy t1_ja3gig0 wrote

I agree that this was probably a training issue. The article implies as much. I'll also note that the article says that in prior similar situations, the employee involved has done the right thing, making it sound like this was a one off situation.

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eNonsense t1_ja3m81m wrote

VW said in the article that they have a policy for assisting law enforcement with these requests and it's worked successfully in the past. However this employee was not following policy and VW owned up to the mistake. That sounds to me like VW is on the side of giving help to find the child without insisting on reinstating subscription payments first.

I think many of the people in this thread are taking this the wrong way, and likely didn't actually read the article. Seems common in this sub.

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eNonsense t1_ja3mjzd wrote

You didn't bother to read the article, did you...

VW has a policy to assist law enforcement and this employee didn't follow it, and they owned up to that. That's probably the opposit of your assumption, isn't it?

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eNonsense t1_ja3my4m wrote

What, because this employee didn't follow Volkswagens policy to assist law enforcement, and VW is owning up to the mistake made by the employee? Did you actually read the article? Or just assumed what was going on after reading the headline, which you also failed to understand?

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DamnBunny t1_ja3vg8q wrote

They were doing their job. Remember corporations will do anything to ensure they are never liable. Even badly train their employees to just follow the script. Someone had to write that script for them to even say something as, "Sorry You Didn't Pay, Bye."

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eNonsense t1_ja3xtdy wrote

If you're failing to follow your company's policies, you're not doing your job. Is that something you disagree with?

I fail to see how this is the responsibility of the person who wrote the script for a policy that this situation does not apply to.

The mental gymnastics that some people will resort to to maintain that they weren't simply incorrect. Talking about conspiracies that companies would intentionally poorly train their employees to not follow their own policies which were likely created and instituted to shield them from legal liability in the first place.

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DamnBunny t1_ja3yo3z wrote

When it comes to saving a few dollars, and overworking them. Yes that is what I call an intention.

"Oops, our bad. Won't happen again. We're sorry."
Aren't you just tired of hearing that? I understand that hindsight isn't always 20/20 but they could at least paid attention. (no pun intended)

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eNonsense t1_ja41jvj wrote

I'm not defending the use of foreign help desks, but anyone who's ever worked in a domestic help desk is aware that people here are also low paid and are fully capable of also making mistakes, because we're human beings living in reality.

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sjwt t1_ja5f2qh wrote

Some underpaid call centre worker who gets chewed out by their boss for taking 30 seconds too long to solve a problem, or gets written up because they don't make enough profit in a week is why this happened.

We don't empower staff let alone mangers to do their jobs any more, we tell them follow the rules and don't fuck up.

The rule is probably there but it happens so little that no one remembers it.

This is why nothing much is really progressing these days.. comapines are nothing but rules and protocols these days.

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Debaser626 t1_ja5jyvj wrote

Eh, you can always pass on shit like this to a supervisor or manager.

Even if you can’t directly contact/locate one at that exact minute, you put the person on hold until you can.

I’ve worked in several call centers and you’re not gonna get written up/fired if the call record shows someone on the line clearly stating they are LEO and they require immediate info.

It’s something called being “above my pay grade.”

Not all folks working at entry level jobs are there because of a shitty economy or bad luck. There’s a fair percentage of people who just aren’t smart enough to get any further… and then some who can’t even perform at that level.

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Swiftstrike4 t1_ja6n4du wrote

This company is a pile of garbage. The emission scandal was enough for me to group them with big oil.

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12altoids34 t1_ja78au2 wrote

It was a screw up. They have a process in place to handle emergency calls like this which they don't charge for but somehow the person that they were talking to didn't get that information or screwed up. They probably got fired for it

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12altoids34 t1_ja78e4f wrote

No, because they screwed up. There is a procedure in place to assist emergency workers and for whatever reason either the agent that they were talking with didn't know about it or was misinformed.

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WaytoomanyUIDs t1_ja7byk2 wrote

I dunno, when I was in a call centre there was a dedicated line for police enquiries. Policy was we were only allowed to give them the number, not even transfer them. I imagine most companies have similar policies. Of course finding the correct info in the knowledge base when you are new and half trained in another story.

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WaytoomanyUIDs t1_ja7d6xm wrote

And their knowledge base was even more convoluted then the ones I encountered when doing call center work so they couldn't find the number for the dedicated line. Or they didn't even have the level of access to find it.

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