cold calls from Egg

[nig'n'em]

I recieved a telephone call from Egg the other day. The person who called insisted upon talking to me as the account holder, I assured her that I was in fact me. She then went on to ask me to answer some security questions.

At this point I refused claiming that she had called me and how could I possibly know who she was.

She listened to my concerns and actually agreed that she was compromising my position by asking for security details.

I wrote to Egg to complain and suggest that they put an end to the practice.

I have today recieved a very straight bat back from them claiming that they would not ask for ALL of the password!!!

I cannot believe in this time of phishing etc..... a bank would condone such behaviour.

In reply I made it clear that if they ever rang to discuss any of my accounts I would not give any details and that if they want to communiucate with me they need to put a letter in the post, and I will deal with the letter as I see fit.. (bin probably)

 

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

Should the financial institutions be officially stopped from doing this kind of telemarketing?

 

Nig

[Stillborn Crisps]

Yes - about 3 years ago I got a call out of the blue saying it was NTL (who my phone was with) and they wanted to talk with me but could I please answer their security questions first (1st line of address & postcode, etc).

 

???????? ????????

 

I said, 'Yeah mate, I could phone you up and say I was NTL and could you give me your details - you could be anyone'.

 

He said ok and was sorry to bother me, etc... and hung up.

 

Idiots.

[chesham]

I have been contacted by various people by phone, all of whom have (thankfully) been genuine.

 

However, as much as I believe I am security concious, I've never given it a second thought! But I think that is more to do with the fact that they don't ask for a full password or just general information, which is lax!

 

On another note, I called BT yesterday regarding a bill on the BT line which is not in my name, and the customer services rep (who was not in England) divulged all the account information I asked for without checking who I was - and I did tell her twice I was not the account holder!

[lau555]

I had someone call me a few days ago and they claimed to be from G E Money.They asked me to answer some security questions and I refused and told them thet they could be anyone.To this he replied that I would be able to see from the number on caller id that he was calling from G E Money.As if I know there tel number off by heart !!

[half ax I]

So GE assume every one has callerID. Maybe you could respond along the lines of "I don't have caller ID. Let me hang up and use 1471 and then you call me back in half hour after I check the number you are calling from." Of course when they ring back you start again at the beginning as they don't know if you have a callerID phone and so it goes on. But of course as they use am automatic dialler it will be a different person who next rings you.

 

The cold calls I get from Egg are from an automatic system checking recent transactions are not fraudulent. Pretty swift as well.

[nig'n'em]

I had absolutely no reason to doubt that the person calling was from Egg, however, how could I know?

I couldn't. As for caller ID. The system relies on one important factor, the caller has to allow their number to be visible! When I checked on my caller ID list all I got was number unavailable!