They suffer because of their own rudeness and inability to extend basic courtesy; the fact that they can't hold future payments over my head as an excuse for their bad manners is just a bonus.

I'm with you. It doesn't matter it's a business, if you can't have even the most basic level of courtesy they don't deserve much.

I guess most people here in HN never worked in customer support, or as cashier and such.

Treat people with respect. Customer support already mentally tax people, much more that you would expect if you never worked in it.

That's my point of view exactly, and I'm really surprised it's this controversial. I would have expected it to be the norm.

Reading the replies you're getting here makes me understand why there's so many rude people contacting customer service...

I have a customer facing job and I work closely with the customer service department so I'm exposed to a lot of this (I meet customers face to face as well), and it's shocking how rude and abusive some people can get to another human being.

I tell people all the time to stuff their attitude up their holes and start over if they want any help from me. I'm a human being; I will not accept people talking like that to me.

Those customers sure wouldn't accept it if I acted like that to them, why should the reverse be okay?

I think it's a combination of never having contact with customer support or public-facing jobs and this american thing of expecting employees to be on top of customers. It's also a culture thing. Since you are Greek I guess you have a similar understanding to mine on how customer support should work.

I think you were quite reserved. If you were responsible for fixing something in a company and a colleague spoke to you like that, you'd have them in arbitration faster than they could apologise.