THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT?

May 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Steve Filippini

I was once dispatched to a customer's home with a service ticket that stated the lady of the house was tired of having her alarm bells ring whenever she flushed her toilet. I'd never heard of water-flow detection devices being installed in a home before, so, as I saw it, she was obviously a crackpot and an easy $65 service charge to boot. I arrived at the home and watched the customer flush her toilet several times without a sound coming from the alarm bells. I smiled, asked her to sign the service ticket and left to get a cup of coffee. I had just made my daily quota, and it was time to hide out at the doughnut shop until quitting time.

A few days later, I was sent back to the same house for the same problem. It seemed the woman's neighbors were becoming aware of her bathroom schedule, and she wasn't happy about it. I watched her flush her toilet at least ten times without a beep. With every flush, the customer got increasingly physical with the toilet handle. I even offered to flush as well, suggesting that maybe it was the technique and not the resulting action that was causing the bells to ring. I ignored her icy glare and flushed her toilet a few more times. Nothing happened. By now she knew the routine: “Please sign here.” This was followed by my next stop: “One large coffee, please.”

After about a week, I was again summoned to the residence. I was glad; it was going to be another easy afternoon. But when I arrived, the lady's plumber greeted me at the front door. I have learned over the years that this is not a good sign. We walked into the lady's bathroom where I found her standing there with an almost wild look of defiance in her eyes. She flushed the toilet and almost cried out from excitement when her alarm bells started ringing. After the ringing stopped, the plumber and the customer looked at me.

Okay, I admit it: I was stunned.

The plumber then pointed to a hole he cut in the drywall behind the toilet exposing a large, black, metal pipe. The pipe had a wire running right through it, which meant there was no point in trying to deny that it was our fault. It appeared our installer had drilled from the basement through the bathroom from inside the wall and nailed the pipe along the way. As it turned out, the wire was for the alarm bells, and now, when the toilet flushed, the water surged against the burr caused by the drill bit and wore away the insulation. When the exposed copper wire grounded against the pipe, it completed a +12V path that made the alarm bells ring.

Not only did I refund her the last three service charges, but my company paid for the repairs to the pipe and the saturated drywall behind the toilet. If there is a lesson to be learned from this experience, it's that the customer is not always crazy. They may not always be right, but they're usually more sane than we sometimes give them credit for.

Steve Filippini is regular columnist for S&VC and a senior security technician with over 20 years of experience in the security installation industry. He can be reached at ulano5@aol.com.

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