Baffled

[channonyarrow]

So Cingular calls me and asks me if they can speak to "Mr or Mrs channonyarrow." Already going "bwuh?" I say that I'm speaking. (What the hell, I owe them a lot of money.) They ask me to verify my last four digits of my social for them.

Wait, what? YOU call ME and want ME to VERIFY THAT I AM WHO I AM?

Asking why causes the blowup doll on the other end of the line to explode.

I did not, and I should have, ask HER to verify who SHE is.

But apparently she can't tell me what the call's about - beyond that it's a thank you call - without knowing that I am who I say I am. Jesus fuck, I answered the phone and it's not like you're saying you want to discuss my account, right?

WHY DO I HAVE TO PROVE WHO I AM SO THAT YOU CAN THANK ME FOR SOMETHING THAT I DID NOT DO?

So I hung up on her.

I think I need a new service provider.

Comments

[jkivela.livejournal.com]

Or they were trying to identity theft you, good thing you are smart, eh?

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Actually, the number matched the one I have in storage for Cingular, so I wasn't too worried about it, but dude.

[jkivela.livejournal.com]

Oh, then she was just an idiot. Much better...

nice icon, as usual

i deal with this every day

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

When I call people from work (I work in collections) we have to verify people before we can discuss the account with them. There are major privacy laws in Canada that dictate that if I tell somebody something confidential about your account - and in Canada even whether or not you have an account is confidential - I go to jail and the bank gets sued.

And people do lie about these things. Why, I don't know, but it does happen fairly regularly.

So if you owe them money, that may have been the reason for the phone call. What she should have done was give you a phone number where you could call back and verify that you were speaking to the company before giving her any personal info.

Re: i deal with this every day

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

But she said it was a thank you call, rather than an account information call - I got that much out of her before I ended it. If it had been a call about my account, I'm down to give my info, and I would insist on being able to call them back to verify that it was who it was.

They need my account number to tell someone thank you? So what if it wasn't me? Make someone's day a little better and tell them thank you, for all I care - it didn't sound like she was going to discuss the actual account, for god's sake. Just thank the person for whatever you're thanking them for, and get off the damn phone.

[florahart]

Heh. DirecTV won't stop calling me. They want to sell me a service I don't want. (and the Oregon do not call list went unactive because now there is a notional one, and the people in charge somehow did not make the unbelievably obvious leap of logic to assume people in Oregon STILL DIDN'T WANT SALES CALLS. Morons. So now we're waiting to be listed on the national one. Anyway.Anyway, it's a long automated pitch, and then you press something to talk to a human. Finally the other night the hub waited for the human to tell him do not call us any more fuckers, and dude yelled at him and hung up. o.O

So that alone was like, okay, well if it was just that we didn't want your service NOW? Now we don't want it EVER, so good job. So yesterday? They called again.

In Spanish.

From a number that is disconnected if I try to call it back to complain.

Heh. Good thing it was me and not the hub who answered because I laughed myself about sick. He would probably have had a stroke due to rage.

[jdezredel.livejournal.com]

*uses called ID, lets everyone else pick up on the numbers he doesn't recognize for the moment*

Daily conversation in my house:
Parental: "Did anyone call?"
Me: "Yep."
Parental: "Did you answer?"
Me: "...no."

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

My parents were happier when I didn't answer. Now that I am older and my social anxieties are developing, I'm really having to work to answer the phone - honestly, I wouldn't normally have answered this one except it was awkward not to, and I resolved to answer the phone whenever actually possible.