It could have been a great moment in customer service, but... A plumber in Takasaki, Japan was arrested for calling a food company's toll-free number 500 times over a sixteen-month time-span. The man did this because the woman's voice on the automated system apparently tripped his trigger, if you follow.
Wow. I'll never hear the phrase "Your call is very important to us, please continue to hold. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received" in the same way again. If this poor guy hit his peak, so to speak, in the middle of the sentence, would that mean the date ended badly?
The company turned the police loose on the guy because the fascination with the automated voice racked up an extra 4 million yen (19,500 pounds- like 10 or 11 grand American) on their phone costs.
I'm sorry, but I call bull on this one. This guy makes the equivalent of one call a day, everyday, for sixteen months, to a toll-free number. While that's probably stalking by any definition or stretch of the imagination, how would it apply in this situation? A company opens a toll-free line, as they want their customers to be able to call, but what if every single customer called once a day, every singles day? Would the company expect the police to arrest all of their customers?
Not to mention the $10k or so over the sixteen months? That's like $625/per month. If the company is running that close to the line, maybe they should just torpedo the toll-free line and use the world-renowned, time-honored "one bad apple" excuse. As for our friend, the plumber? I think he deserves a spot in the Cheap Phone Sex Hall of Fame - Innovator Wing. I wouldn't doubt a bit if there actually was one tucked away in some corner of Tokyo somewhere.
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