By Chris Cosci

When dealing with customers, companies often have to be careful about what they say. They want to avoid misleading customers or making them feel angry or frustrated. They want to make sure that all problems are easily resolved and that the customer is satisfied. And sometimes, they need to develop a massive wall of restraint to stop from asking a customer, "are you kidding me?"

Over the past few months, I have encountered this last scenario a number of times. I have been handling customer service for a company that helps people file tax returns over the Internet. Thankfully, the communication was all over e-mail, and not over the phone. Otherwise, I would have worn out the hold button from having to burst into hysterical laughter or bang my head repeatedly against the desk.

In truth, most of the questions I have handled are from reasonable people with genuine problems. I have received a few e-mails from people who have forgotten to add a decimal point when reporting their income. These people are understandably frazzled when they finish their return and our program says they owe the IRS millions of dollars.

Other people just seem unfamiliar with certain items. One woman wrote in about something called the Child Tax Credit. This is a credit the IRS offers to eligible parents that reduces your taxable income, thereby lowering your taxes. This woman was complaining that the credit kept showing up as $1,000 - not because she was expecting a bigger credit, but because she wanted to know how to change the value to $0. It's not every day you have to convince somebody to take money instead of refusing it.

Then there are some people who defy all sense of logic and reasoning. I do understand that the tax season is frustrating for many people, but these customers just confound me.

One woman wanted to know why her daughter did not qualify for the Child Tax Credit. She explained that her daughter was born in August 1986. I explained that in order to qualify, the daughter must have been under the age of 17 by the end of 2003. Because the daughter was born in 1986, she would have turned 17 in 2003. Therefore, she does not qualify for the credit. Pretty simple, right?

Imagine my surprise when the customer wrote back and insisted that her daughter was not 17. She tried to convince me that her daughter was still 16, and should qualify for the credit. She was arguing against basic mathematics.

Another man wrote in and told us he read our site, which in itself is more than can be said for most of our customers. He specifically mentioned the part where it says we do not support royalties. He then asked, in all seriousness, "is this true?" Apparently, he was under the impression that we just made some stuff up and mixed it in with the facts to throw off unsuspecting customers. But we couldn't fool him, could we?

In addition to these customers, we get our share of very angry customers who think we are responsible for everything. They are not getting as big a refund as they did last year? That's our fault. Their employer forgets to send them a W-2? That's also our fault. Their computer crashes? Yup - our fault. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody wrote in and said, "I got a flat tire on the expressway this morning; what are you going to do about it?"

And are they nice about it? Please. They rant and they rave and they write paragraphs of hate, filled with such words as "I don't like your program," "what kind of scam are you pulling?" and "I'm going to tell the IRS on you." Then they try to give us wedgies and throw us in the garbage pail. Okay, maybe not that last part.

But people do get very nasty in their complaints. The good news is that not everybody is like this. Thankfully, we get a lot of appreciative people and many compliments for helping out. It's how we retain our own sanity when it seems to have disappeared from the rest of the world.