Customer entered obscene email addy

How to react

[HRoth]

A would-be customer entered an obscene and insulting email address in the form when ordering. Sometimes customers enter funny non-working email addys, but never one so insulting and nasty. I got so mad that I called him up and told him I would not fill his order and that I felt exactly the same way about him, only I used the words he used, and hung up on him. I have never sworn at a customer before. I voided the transaction and banned his ip address with Authorize.net. Yep, I was real mad.

He called and left a message claiming his "friend" had come up with this email addy and that he wanted to place the order. He called back again later, and then called the next day wanting to get a catalog (must have been prevented from ordering by the ip address ban). I always recognized his caller id so didn't talk to him. Don't want his business.

I am just wondering if others have had customers do things like this and if so how did you react? Just cancel the order? Ignore it? I know I over-reacted, but what should I have done?

[Sunshyn]

It was a free, web based email address. We wondered if they weren't very likely to run into problems using such an address over what looks to be a company connection.

[Rugles]

There you go, a personal email address. So its no business of the employer if they are on break or lunch in my opinion.