OT: 'Phone call today

Jun 28, 2022 Last reply: 4 years ago 26 Replies

"Good afternoon, this is Affinity Water. Am I speaking to Mr. S.?"



"Yes, that's me".



"To confirm your identity, please state the first line of your address".



"You tell me what you think it is, and I'll confirm if it's correct. You called me."



"That would break GDPR laws if I did that."



"Well, I see no point in continuing this conversation. I know who I am, I don't know who you are."


They have to guard against the possibility the phone number they have for you is wrong. So, if you are their customer, it would have been simpler to say you'll call them back on a number you can confirm is good. But it is of course your right to make them incur the extra costs of writing to you - costs which Ofwat take into account when deciding how much you pay.

Why ? It'll only be a sales call although they'll try and pretend it's not.

If Affinity make such calls to people who have told them they don't want marketing calls then it's quick and easy to follow the complaints procedure and hit their bottom line. I have no experience of them; and we get no such calls from any of our utility providers.

The chances - here - of a spam call are many times greater than a wrong number.

I got caught in this loop when I was contacted about fraudulent use of my credit card. They wouldn't give me a contact number as it was confidential, and I couldn't phone the bank because the anti-fraud people were a separate company. She said I just had to trust her. The irony wasn't wasted.

ha perfect ...tee hee

I would only deal with the water board ....

I got two from a the card of a major clearing bank. It started by asking for my card number. I said they should tell me the card number so I knew they were genuine. The response was that this was not allowed because of confidentiality. I said I was not satisfied this was a genuine call and I was terminating the call.

Irony was that I found out two days later that it was a genuine call!

It's even quicker and easier to not have a landline :)

I've given up with unsubscribing. I can't think of an occasion when it's worked. Only the ones when it hasn't.

The bottom line is I have engineered mine - and SWMBOs - lives to not need anything that comes with a phone call from anyone. If someone is really insistent they can have my voip number which is permanently set to go to voicemail with an OGM that they can email me with the address they hold. Total calls received since 2017:3 with 0 messages left. Speaks volumes.

Just dealt with a lost AppleID. They seem to be able to supply the last 2 digits of the 2FA number which is a great help when you want to track down the person who holds the phone.

When I made the same assertion I've been told to ring the number on my card and ask for a specific department. I can't remember the precise details.

Of course there was quite a long time when that advice was faulty if you tried ringing from the same phone ...

Indeed. We have a line for DSL and that's all (we are all VoIP).

I used to get regular marketing calls from BT. Then I dumped them and buy just the line off my ISP. At about half the price.

I once had this when saying I would call back on the number on their web site and was told I couldn't contact the caller this way - he would give me his number! I declined to call back.

It turned out it was a legitimate call, as confirmed with a follow up snail mail, but it's no wonder why people get caught by phishing calls.

I don't see what difference it makes if you give a mobile number rather than a landline to a supplier. (I saw nothing to suggest the OP was referring to a cold call from Affinity Water.)

You'd never know when it worked because you wouldn't get calls from them.

Then you can't have any debit or credit cards which must make it very hard to buy stuff online or by phone.

But does mean that if your card issuer sees what they consider to be a suspicious transaction, they will just deny the transaction and that can bite you on the arse if you are out of the country etc.

One way around that might be to ask for individual numbers

Card 5479 8645 1234

Customer "I'm going to read out four numbers"

C is the fourth number 9 ? Bank yes

C is the fifth number 7 ? B no

C is the eight number 3 ? B no

C is the seventh number 4 ? B yes

bb

Not quite sure why you say that since it's absolute bollocks.

Jethro_uk <jethro snipped-for-privacy@hotmailbin.com wrote

Says he after flagrantly dishonestly deleting from the quoting why I said that.

Fraid not.

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