I didn't know we were responsible for your cow eating your plug

Life on a farm is never boring.

Thankfully, it wasn't one of OUR cows who ate a plug. Although the party appears to be officially over now that the cows came home this past Sunday.

Alright. That was bad. But, I had to get it in their somewhere!

On Monday hubby had the pleasure of dealing with a customer of one of the businesses we run. It went something like this:

Customer: "Hi, I'm calling because my cow chewed through the cord and ate the plug to my [heat detection] system. Apparently my pasture wasn't appealing enough to her so she decided to try something with a little more zing to it's flavor. Oh, and silly me, instead of calling you and asking you to send me a new $10 converter plug, I decided to just plug the system directly into the wall and ended up frying the whole thing. I mean it's really not that important to convert the voltage to match the voltage output of the outlet, right? Anywhoodle, I know that this is completely your fault that my cow ate my plug so please send me a brand new system at no cost right away. After all, I can't afford to lose one penny of the $40,000+ I'm going to make when I flush these embryos after using this system."

Alright, so the parts in italics I completely added myself; but, they're a much more lighthearted version of a conversation that went more like this:

Customer: "Hi, I'm calling because my cow chewed through the cord and ate the plug to my [heat detection] system. I tried to fix this problem myself by just plugging the remaining cord directly into the outlet and my system started to smoke and now won't work. I need this system working right away because I'm in the middle of flushing all my embryos and can't afford to lose any of the money I'll make when I do that."

Hubby: "Well sir, I'm sorry that your cow ate the plug, but I wish you had called us over the weekend so we could send you a new plug. By plugging your system directly into the wall without using the converter plug, the board inside your system is now fried and beyond repair."

Customer: "Then send me a new system right away, please. I won't incur any cost, right?"

Hubby: "I'm sorry, sir. I can't do that because our warranty doesn't cover improper usage of the system or a cow eating the plug. I can though offer to sell you a new system at our cost."

Customer: "That's great. How much is that a few hundred dollars?"

Hubby: "Well, if we just needed to send you a new plug, it would have been about $10. But, because the board is fried beyond repair, the cost of that part is $1500."

Customer: "That's crazy! I'm beginning to see what my problem is. My problem was getting involved with your company in the first place!"

CLICK.

Apparently some ranchers do believe we are responsible for their cow eating the plug on their system, and their stupidity of trying to make 110volt AC and 12volt DC compatible without using a plug with a built in converter.

The customer did eventually call back later in the day and my father-in-law answered. The report is there was a remarkable change in attitude on the customer's end, so hopefully something can be worked out.

Life on a farm...it's shocking! (Alright...sorry for another bad pun.)