RSS Feed
Print Story
E-mail Story
Robert Price: Privacy is a one-way street in consumer-corporate relationship
| Saturday, Jun 7 2008 5:43 PM
Last Updated: Thursday, Jul 17 2008 11:35 AM
The customer service representative placed me on hold. I had called the financial-services company's toll-free line with questions about my 401k account, and now the rep had to step away to fetch some information.
BAKERSFIELD.COM HOT TOPICS:
Loading Stories
Advertisement
But when she returned a moment later, her tone was different. A buzzer was blaring in the background and I could hear voices and clatter. "Sir, we're havin' a tornado alarm here, and we have to all leave the building right now!"
"W-w-well, go then!," I stammered. "Bye!"
"Well, have a pleasant day, sir, and thank you for callin' XYZ Investments," she said. Geez, faithful to company-mandated telephone protocol to the bitter end. Get out already.
I called back the next day, partly because I still needed to get my account information, but mostly because I wanted to hear about the tornado. After all, the customer-service rep and I had bonded in those brief, harrowing moments.
But this time it was a different voice. Pleasant enough, but different. This customer-service rep wanted to know my Social Security number right off the bat, same as the day before, and I gave it to her. Then I asked about the tornado. "Pardon?" she said. "What tornado?" Seems I'd been routed to a call center in a different part of the country. Maybe the first one had been whisked into the stratosphere.
"What city are you in?" I asked.
"Sorry, sir, I'm not allowed to give out that information." What? You're kidding. It's not like I'm asking you where you hide your spare house key. Sheesh.
"I'm sorry, sir," she said. "Now, may I have your address?" I gave that to her, too, and everything else she asked for.
Yes, I was sharing practically every morsel of private information she would need to steal my identity, tap my credit and reduce my family to living in cardboard boxes along the riverbank, but I was not permitted to even know which municipality I'd called. My plan to devastate the U.S. economy, Unabomber style, one call center at a time, had been foiled before it ever got off the ground. Curses.
Feeling jilted and annoyed, I Googled around a bit and discovered that Tuesday afternoon, tornado warnings had sent people scrambling throughout Indiana, Ohio and northern Kentucky, including Florence, Ky. -- where, I eventually learned, the investment company has one of its two call centers. (The other is in San Antonio.)
In fact, employees at Florence City Hall had to evacuate their work stations and huddle under a stairwell for 20 minutes that afternoon, a city clerk told me in a why-on-earth-would-you-care tone of voice. No actual tornados touched down anywhere in the region that day, as far as I could tell, although a few buzzed through Minnesota and Iowa a couple days later.
So no one had been hurt in the earlier tornado scare. My mind at ease, I felt justified in returning to my previous level of resentment.
Why, I asked anyone who would listen, is privacy such a one-way street? Why has the implication always been that the consumer is the one most likely to harbor criminal intentions? Why can't I check the ID of everybody who gets to check mine?
I know, that's just silly. But the fact is, a leading cause of ID theft, right after check fraud, Dumpster diving and purse snatching, is "inside source" theft. The clerk who gets your info from a credit application or other personal file, for instance.
Online identity theft gets most of our attention, but experts say it represents only 14 percent of ID theft. The majority is much less sophisticated stuff, like mail-stealing and file-peeking. In other words, customer service reps can be suspect too.
I'll write my Congressman about it, just as soon as he puts an end to surprises on phone bills, retail rebates that never arrive and dinner platters that look nothing like the menu photo. Until then, consumers will continue to be fooled, dissed and mistrusted in the name of security.
At least some companies make a point of thanking us for our business. (Even amid tornados.) Well, you're welcome. Now, excuse me while I go and check my credit report. Nothing personal.
Reach Robert Price at 395-7499 or rprice@bakersfield.com.