Last year for some special clients and friends I gave out some Netflix Gift Subscriptions. While many of them were readily snatched up and quickly used, several weren’t.

A few weeks ago Netflix emailed me and said if they were’t used by a certain date, they would be automatically applied to my account. Great. Simple. Easy.

Only one problem. Once this happened, I found out that you can only apply one gift subscription at a time to your account. So as of the last week, all 11 subscriptions began ticking down in value as if they were being used, but couldn’t be applied to my account.

I assumed that I could call customer service and get this taken care of, but of course the person answering the support line didn’t have the authority, (nor could they gain it, evidently) to retroactively apply my free months in a logical way. Frustration began to creep in, but then something magical happened. The hack.

The customer service guy (I want to say his name was Matt maybe?) suggested an alternative. First, he asked if I had any friends I could send them to. Sure, I have a couple. Second, he asked what I thought about taking the time to manage a couple extra queues.

Over the next couple minutes, he explained what he would do if he was my position. His advice wasn’t from the manual, and it wasn’t, I’m sure, taught to the support people by Netflix. But he solved the problem. It wasn’t slick, and it was kind of a pain in the butt for me, but the bigger point is that it worked.

The reminder is this: when people call support, they’re seeking solutions, not answers. There’s a big difference. Matt could’ve easily told me “There’s no way to apply those subscriptions to your account,” but giving me a solution to my problem allowed me to get what I really wanted.