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At my job (collections department for an insurance agency) we are bound by privacy laws. That means we can't disclose certain info and we also need to verify other info to make sure we are speaking to the person we think we are speaking to. Easy, right? *pffft*
Scene:
This morning
Characters:
Me:
SD: Sucky Dude
Sup: Super Supervisor (tm) comic books forthcoming
Incoming call.
I do the standard greeting, asking for the claim number. SD doesn't have it. I am able to find it by looking up name and state, with much grumbling from him. He complains about the phone calls he's been getting. I see in the notes he refused to verify info the day previously so my coworker refused to discuss the claim (as we should). He grudgingly gives up address and ph#, griping the whole time.
Me: and, Date of Birth please
SD: You don't need that! I'm not telling you.
me: Yes, I do. It is part of the verification and for privacy reasons.
SD: Well, I'm not giving it I know you don't need it.
me: It's the law, I need to make sure you are who you say you are before details are discussed
(short interlude where he tells me he just gave address and ph# and I inform him his neighbor or his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend could both have that info, we need more)
SD: You don't have that info anyway so I'm not giving it to you.
Me: You need all of that info at the DMV to get a license, so I assure you even if we didn't have it initially, we have access to it, sir. (Once I break out the Sir, he's getting nowhere - and true, I didn't have that info.....yet)
SD continues to blow hot air, complaining about the calls and how it's harassment. I assure him it's a valid claim and would be happy to discuss it with him once he verifies DOB. Doesn't do it, so I induce him to hang up on me by telling him I will do nothing more for him without that info. Three fricking words. Month, day, year. Sheesh!
So I ran our data search and get his DOB, SS# and DL# (be very scared what info is out there about you btw).
Of course that's not the end of the story - those are a dime a dozen. Along with the incoming, we have an outbound dialer which was turned on shortly after this.
The. very. first. call. I got was to HIM! I recognized the name immediately and did a "Can I speak to.....oh, sorry. This is a computer dialer, have a nice day!" and got off the phone. I really should have tried to talk to him, but I know it would have gone nowhere - although it would be fun to tell him the last 4 of his social and hear his blood pressure go through the roof.
Twenty minutes after that coworker gets a screaming man spouting about harassment phone calls and he's getting a lawyer and so on and so forth. Of course, even if we *would* we *couldn't* fix those calls for him because he refused to give his name!
FTR, this guy was involved in a car accident with one of our customers and either didn't have insurance or refused to give his info, so we are contacting him to make payment arrangements. Unfortunately, we can't request driver's license suspension in his state but he is slated for a collection agency tomorrow. Over $560.
When relaying this (having his inbound call and then getting the outbound to him directly after) to Sup - her immediate reaction was "you're buying a lotto ticket this weekend, right?"
(We have hundreds if not thousand + people on the dialer and there were 14 agents logged in at that time. The chances of me getting him twice in a row like that are very low.)
I understand people being protective of their info. But HE called us, and I was the SECOND person to tell him we will not discuss the issue without some basic info. Trust me dude, if I decided to go into the illegal biz of identity theft, the people I deal with on a daily basis are hardly people whose identities are worth it!
Scene:
This morning
Characters:
Me:
SD: Sucky Dude
Sup: Super Supervisor (tm) comic books forthcoming
Incoming call.
I do the standard greeting, asking for the claim number. SD doesn't have it. I am able to find it by looking up name and state, with much grumbling from him. He complains about the phone calls he's been getting. I see in the notes he refused to verify info the day previously so my coworker refused to discuss the claim (as we should). He grudgingly gives up address and ph#, griping the whole time.
Me: and, Date of Birth please
SD: You don't need that! I'm not telling you.
me: Yes, I do. It is part of the verification and for privacy reasons.
SD: Well, I'm not giving it I know you don't need it.
me: It's the law, I need to make sure you are who you say you are before details are discussed
(short interlude where he tells me he just gave address and ph# and I inform him his neighbor or his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend could both have that info, we need more)
SD: You don't have that info anyway so I'm not giving it to you.
Me: You need all of that info at the DMV to get a license, so I assure you even if we didn't have it initially, we have access to it, sir. (Once I break out the Sir, he's getting nowhere - and true, I didn't have that info.....yet)
SD continues to blow hot air, complaining about the calls and how it's harassment. I assure him it's a valid claim and would be happy to discuss it with him once he verifies DOB. Doesn't do it, so I induce him to hang up on me by telling him I will do nothing more for him without that info. Three fricking words. Month, day, year. Sheesh!
So I ran our data search and get his DOB, SS# and DL# (be very scared what info is out there about you btw).
Of course that's not the end of the story - those are a dime a dozen. Along with the incoming, we have an outbound dialer which was turned on shortly after this.
The. very. first. call. I got was to HIM! I recognized the name immediately and did a "Can I speak to.....oh, sorry. This is a computer dialer, have a nice day!" and got off the phone. I really should have tried to talk to him, but I know it would have gone nowhere - although it would be fun to tell him the last 4 of his social and hear his blood pressure go through the roof.
Twenty minutes after that coworker gets a screaming man spouting about harassment phone calls and he's getting a lawyer and so on and so forth. Of course, even if we *would* we *couldn't* fix those calls for him because he refused to give his name!
FTR, this guy was involved in a car accident with one of our customers and either didn't have insurance or refused to give his info, so we are contacting him to make payment arrangements. Unfortunately, we can't request driver's license suspension in his state but he is slated for a collection agency tomorrow. Over $560.
When relaying this (having his inbound call and then getting the outbound to him directly after) to Sup - her immediate reaction was "you're buying a lotto ticket this weekend, right?"
(We have hundreds if not thousand + people on the dialer and there were 14 agents logged in at that time. The chances of me getting him twice in a row like that are very low.)
I understand people being protective of their info. But HE called us, and I was the SECOND person to tell him we will not discuss the issue without some basic info. Trust me dude, if I decided to go into the illegal biz of identity theft, the people I deal with on a daily basis are hardly people whose identities are worth it!
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