Yesterday, I received delivery of a BT Home Hub. Strange thing is I have no BT line so a BT Home Hub would be useless to me. I looked on the box and found an order number which I tracked on BT's website. To my horror I found someone had ordered a new BT phone line in my name! I immediately called BT to say I had not placed the order and they promised to do some checks. Later the same day BT called back to say that a salesperson in an Indian Call Centre had placed an order in my name - even giving me their name! Apparently, that salesperson placed the order on 24 December and even tried to make a second order on Xmas Day! The salesperson used a fake email address, a false SMS contact number, a false date of birth and even my own surname as my mother's maiden name! I have told BT that I am within my rights to keep the goods as they were unsolicited, but I have said they are quite welcome to come and collect the Home Hub. I guess they will not bother to do so! Under the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971 the goods become the recipients property as soon as they are received! I also learned that this salesperson changed contact methods as soon as the order was placed - from post to e-mail; that means confirmation of my order went to a fake e-mail address and any texts confirming the order went to someone else's phone! The salesperson even manually entered that a credit check had been made when it had not! I will be writing to BT stating that any orders made in my name must be verified by writing to my postal address and getting written confirmation in return! I will also make notices of correction on my credit files with Experian, Callcredit and Equifax that any applications in my name must be checked by writing to me first and getting my written confirmation of any orders - the last thing I want to happen is for orders to be made in my name when I am in the Philippines getting married! It now makes me wonder if all those phone calls from India telling you that your PC has a virus - which can be fixed if you pay by credit card are made by BT staff?
Every time I have a query, and my call is transferred to another country, I usually make my apologies and ask for a supervisor or to be connected to a british call centre, quoting language barriers, and start mixing the old "italiano" in........ If somebody calls me unsolicited, I cut them short asking what is their business as they called me and not vice-versa, without giving them the chance of starting their sales pitch or "security" questions... I usually say, thay they have called me, so they should be already in possession of my details, and further questioning is unnecessary. They soon give up. But I suppose your scammer, in the call centre, must have been under some stress to perform, as pressure from above can be umbearable, luckily you have been smart to query it at the origins, and he won't be working there for long anymore, unless it is the done thing.......... In sales we have a small say......... Sling enough s""t at a wall, and some is bound to stick...........
The problem with any sales role is that the rewards can sometimes be too tempting for rogue sales agents to just blag the odd sale or not take no for an answer! I know that in the energy industry, rogue sales people will usually just turn up at someones door, advise them that they should be getting a £100 discount off of their gas or electricity bills and then asks them to sign the dotted line. The £100 being a credit offer from the company that they work for... I have also known of a man who fell out with his father and signed him up to everything under then sun.. Imagine finding out you had a credit check done every week???
I had a similair problem many years ago. My phone line was disconnected and the number 'transferred' to a 'Mr Shah' at the same address I was living in at the time. I had a letter from BT to say they were going to disconnect me on xx date and will send a final bill, so I called them, they said no problem, all sorted out, but guess what? Yep, the disconnection went ahead. So this time I called BT and spoke to a supervisor got a bit angry with them, and the problem was sorted. Turns out someone I knew, who obviously didn't like me, worked at the old BT call centre in Aberystwyth had managed to access my account details and go through with this nonsense. The Aber call centre closed down a few years ago, BT obviously could not trust Welsh people to sit the right way on a toilet let alone operate a call centre correctly and instead gave the work to India.
That's a bummer, notices of correction will cause every application for credit that you make in the future to trip out, so you will end up answering endless questions on the end of a phone line.
I agree it will add a little overhead when applying for credit but nothing like the headache caused when someone orders services in your name! Someone at BT placed another order in my name at 6:43am today!
It transpired that having a notice of correction, or even a CIFAS protective registration marker on credit reference agency files would not have helped in this case as the BT salesperson manually amended the account, indicating that a credit reference check had been obtained, even when no such check had been made!
The Good News and the Bad News! The good news is that BT paid me £300 compensation a week ago and told me the order was cancelled. The bad news is that BT had just confirmed my order for a new phone line today!
BT must have called me at least a dozen times over the last month, telling me about their super-dupa, fibre optic broadband cables in my area, and how I can be "upgraded". It always starts off with ... "we can save you money" Me: tell me more BT: how much do you currently pay ? Me: If you're BT, you should already know that BT: We can't access that information on your account Me: So when you do, and if you can offer it cheaper, then call me back. BT: It doesn't work like that. Me: It does with me...... goodbye
