Survival Instinct

Is Customer Wars real?

The interactions showcased on Customer Wars are certainly difficult to believe sometimes, but the show does seem to use real, found footage.

If you have ever worked in customer service, or you have found yourself near an uncomfortable public confrontation, you will know that customer service workers all around the United States (and around the world, for that matter) have to deal with an array  of unexpected things on a daily basis.

And between irrational rideshare customers, theft-prevention brawls and in-air confrontations, and just about anything and everything in between – it is really no wonder that there is enough found footage out there to make a reality television program from.

And this is exactly what the executives at A&E did with their hit reality television program, Customer Wars, which debuted in 2022.

Difficult to believe – but real

Unlike many of the other documentary-style reality television shows on A&E, Customer Wars follows a more clip-style video format, which showcases the wildest, weirdest and most unbelievable customer interactions ever captured on camera.

But even though it can be difficult to believe that the fights, tangents and downright unacceptable public behavior that you see play out on the videos featured on Customer Wars is real – it seems as though the show is a prime example of truth being stranger than fiction.

Customer Wars from then until now

However, before we can dive into all of the minute details which prove that Customer Wars is not simply an elaborately staged acted-for-the-camera show, it is important to recap just how far the show has come through the years.

The very first episode of Customer Wars premiered back in 2022, but the show has now aired more than 44 episodes across 3 seasons. The show’s impressive run on television, thus far, can be summarized as follows:

Customer Wars Total episodes Initial air dates
Season 1 15 November 15, 2022 to January 24, 2023
Season 2 16 June 6, 2023 to July 25, 2023
Season 3 18 November 7, 2023 to January 23, 2024

“From behind the register and beyond”

Before Customer Wars even hit the air, one of the phrases which A&E used to promote the series was “Featuring the wildest moments from behind the register and beyond”.

And while this does sound like pretty standard “never-before-seen”-type sales talk, it turns out that this is exactly what makes the reality series seem so legitimate.

Whereas other shows like Impractical Jokers or even Deal with It are usually filmed in a controlled environment with hosts who could quite easily get away with scripting some elements, Customer Wars’ found footage format makes the show much more difficult to fake.

And while it is certainly possible that some of the found footage shown on the show was faked or scripted in some way, this footage comes from all over the country and is shot in a variety of locations, including retail stores, airports, planes and even gas stations and more.

So it just seems highly unlikely that any producers would go to all of the trouble to fake so many different interactions for a single reality television program.

You can’t make this stuff up

Season one of Customer Wars showcased footage from a convenience store in the Lake Tahoe area, in which two bears (on two separate occasions) enter the store through the automatic doors, in order to grab a few snacks for the road.

In a different instance, a disgruntled customer set fire to a storefront (and himself) after a seemingly unsuccessful shopping trip.

Not only would these kinds of interactions and stunts be extremely difficult, time-consuming and expensive to fabricate for the cameras, but Customer Wars also sometimes follows this unbelievable footage with real-life accounts from the people involved in the incidents or even police records explaining what happened after the fact.

And all of this leads us to believe that Customer Wars is most probably very real.

Other shows to watch if you like Customer Wars

In the end, Customer Wars’ real-life edge is a large part of what makes this series so entertaining to watch.

And if you have exhausted every possible second from the past three seasons of Customer Wars, and you are looking for a new show to enjoy while you wait on those brand new episodes, A&E actually has a variety of shows that should be able to fill that gap.

This includes shows like Neighborhood Wars and Road Wars, which were both predecessors to Customer Wars and which follow a very similar format.

It also includes shows like Parking Wars, The First 48 and 60 Days In, which have more of a documentary-style format.