For the last few weeks I’ve been receiving a handful of phone calls every day from the same few numbers. It just feels like I’m in some kind of bad advert!
Here’s the script for a fictitious government ad campaign on data privacy:
Int. day. A small home office. Emails are flying, deals are being made, code is being written, coffee is being drunk. Suddenly a vibrating iPhone flashes up an incoming call. “Hold that thought” is instant messaged to someone in San Francisco.
A man’s thumb hits the ‘answer button’ and lifts the iPhone to his ear.
(Slightly too much silence and a bit of delay)
Anonymous Bangladeshi: “Hello, can I speak to Steefarn Le… Lieu… Lieuwarnskee?”
Man: “Yes - speaking”.
(Click) - the phone goes dead.
Man looks confused and looks at his iPhone. Returning to his instant messenger client he sees the message “Sorry man - I’m going to have to go with the other guys, I don’t have time to waste!”
A fist strikes the table sending the iPhone scattering to the floor.
Cut to Int. Evening. Same office, Man is dressed differently. He is typing furiously whilst web-streaming himself checking emails on a different computer. The iPhone (now slightly scratched) vibrates again. This time the words ‘Spam’ appear on the screen. The room darkens, and Man’s eyes focus into a look of singular intent.
Sweet Northern Lass (spritely): “Hi, is that Mister Stefan Liewanskee?”
Man (cold): “Yes, speaking.”
Lass: “Hi this is Sophie, I’m calling from Halifax First Assist! How are you doing this evening?”
Man (colder): “Good thanks”
(pause, sensing trouble)
Lass: “What it is, I’m phoning you to let you know about a special service that we’re offering just for Halifax customers called ‘Life Insurance’ that we think you’ll be interested in. But first I just need to confirm your identity so could you just confirm your Date of Birth?”
Cut to ext. Apocalyptic Sunset. London on fire. 50 story-high Large Fat Man in a Chicken Suit jumping up and down on the Houses of Parliament, with one hand gripped around a teetering Big Ben. Artillery is going off left right and centre aimed at the Large Fat Man who shrugs it off. Children are crying, pedestrians are running, the army is out with tanks trained on the Large Fat Man. Sirens are going off!
Suddenly he pulls out an oversized megaphone a huge placard reading “STOP”.
Large Fat Man in a Chicken Suit (screaming): “Stooooooop! Don’t give out your details to anyone you don’t know!”
Close up of Large Fat Man in a Chicken Suit staring imploringly at the camera. Slightly too long edit.
Cut back to office. Still night. Spotlight shines on Man and background noise fades to silence.
Man (purposeful): “No. I don’t think so.”
Spotlight cuts out, reverting sound and light to normal. Fade sound to background over man ad libbing a coherent rant about how Sweet Northern Lass should quit her job and go and do something purposeful with her sad short existence.
Overlay graphics with voiceover:
Remember: Say no to strangers.
Ends.
Back to the real world
If you receive any phone calls from anyone claiming to be Halifax First Direct they are under investigation at the moment for either being a scam to gain personal details or a ’scrape data and sell’ outfit for a disreputable nuisance-calling insurance company. It’s not really clear which.
[Update: looks like it's not a scam - just a bad PR own goal. A lot of people have been receiving irritating phone calls like these from Halifax First Assist, often tens of times per day. They're often cut off before anyone speaks and repeatedly call back. Many people don't know how to stop them and are getting frustrated and angry.]
The numbers that they may be calling on include:
But they can change numbers all the time.
Their business model
- Get a database of numbers from somewhere. [Update: Apparently from their other businesses when you ticked or didn't tick an 'opt in' box]
- Set up an autodialling service so that random numbers are dialled every few seconds.
- When one of these numbers is answered, patch them through to Random Bangladeshi (cheap labour).
- Get them to confirm that the name on their database is correct and then put the phone down abruptly.
- Wait a couple of days then add that number to a ‘data clean list’ for numbers that ‘are who they say they are’.
- Start the autodialling process again.
- When the number is answered patch them through to Sweet Northern Lass (more expensive but can do the convincing job).
- Hard-sell the person on the end of the line some useless service or product using a ‘verbal contract’ that is binding even though not in print (’recording for training purposes’ - rubbish, that’s for legal purposes). [Update: someone from Halifax got in touch saying "you don't know what you're talking about" in response to this. Care to elaborate then?]
- Put the phone down and repeat.
What can you do to stop it?
Register with the Telephone Preferential Service but it wouldn’t help you much in this case.
When you receive a call and don’t recognise a number, try to google them before answering. That’s a bit paranoid, but I’ve found it useful. Particularly a service called Who Calls Me that lists nuisance and scam calls.
When you get a call listen for the ’slightly too long bit of silence’ at the beginning and for a very ‘thin sounding’ phone line. These are telltale signs that you’ve been put through to someone at random via an auto dialler. The silence is the time it takes the system to realise it’s ‘got one! w00t!’ and to connect them to a human. If you hear that, just put the phone down.
In response to the question “Is that Mr. Your Name Here?” respond with “Who is calling please?” If they give you some crap about ‘I’m calling to update our records’ just tell them you’re not interested.
If in doubt pull the ‘deceased’ card. If you tell them convincingly enough that the person they are trying to reach has died they will remove you from the list.
Do you get those ‘totally silent’ calls? That’s because there aren’t enough humans to go round at that point, so it can’t connect you and just leaves you hanging. These are illegal and these Halifax First Assist guys have also been doing that. Report these numbers on Who Calls Me.
Don’t give out any information that they don’t already have. These people want your data for whatever reason and that has a price tag. Don’t give your info to anyone unless you know what company they represent.
Don’t give out your personal information before they give you something that you can confirm with them. This is called ‘challenge and response‘ (Like in spy films where they say “The red camel flies at midnight” and in response, “so the goose must take to the east”). If they really _are_ your bank they’ll be able to offer you some information back. Something like, my birthday was in 1972 - what day of the month was it? If they can’t answer then they are not your bank or don’t have an adequate data protection system in place.
The ideal system would be for all of our banks to have some kind of public password that you give _them_ so that if they phone up and say the word “chicken suit” in response to your question “what am I wearing” (or in fact a number of questions) then you can be a little surer they aren’t data thieves.
Ask to be removed from their database. This won’t help against the criminals but any commerical organisation would be unwise to keep ringing uninterested people.
Leave Halifax. I am going to. It’s just not done giving away my details to a company like this.
Give them grief. Don’t take this lying down. Get angry but not ferocious. Don’t swear or threaten but make them feel your wrath. Tell them that their client has now lost you as a customer and you will be moving banks. Tell them that they should quit their useless and pointless jobs and go and do something worthwhile with their time in this world. [Update: Someone _claiming_ to work for Halifax First Assist said this in response: "if u give us shit then we put u back in for callback after callback to piss u off so dont play with fire or ull get burnt."]
If you add up the number of wasted hours of people’s lives that companies like these generate I would not be surprised to find that it adds up to more hours than more than a handful of people spend on this earth. That’s an ugly business to be in.
There are enough rubbish jobs in the world to do, but I can’t think of many so utterly futile, pointless, soul-destroying and ultimately meaningless than what these people do day in day out.
I know. I’ve been on the other end of the line selling photocopier refills to uninterested office workers at sixteen. And what made me quit was someone telling me exactly that.
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30 Comments
Wow! And within about 5 minutes we’re on the first page of Google for ‘Halifax First Assist‘…
I have a zero tolerance policy for unidentified phone calls. Every call I receive that doesn’t come up on the screen with the name of somebody I know goes straight to voicemail. Every time.
It’s no major deal. I can check pretty much straight away if I find myself worrying there’s a chance it was important (it never is). But if there’s no message, it obviously wasn’t a life-changing piece of communication.
I’d have thought a man who doesn’t look at emails that are not addressed only to him would adopt a similar policy…
@dubber - there is that but I thought I’d share…
The Telephone Preference Service does a pretty good job of keeping our landline clear of cold calls - and with the odd one that gets through I just say we’re registered with the TPS and put the phone down.
I hate these calls with a passion.
my technique for phone spam is to reply back as soon as i can get a word in edgeways with “hold on a sec, i’ve just got a pan on the over i need to turn down”, & then place the handset on the desk.
it’s amazing how long some of them stay on the line waiting for.
Stef
This is a fine piece of writing that I read with interest from beginning to end. It must chime with an awful lot of people; it deserves a wider audience- sell it to the Guardian!
Wow, you got one of them Iphones!
hello all its very wierd.
we keep getting the 08445811014 calling and as the phones answered they put it down , but once they did ask for my a member of the family.
when you call them back an answer machine says the PATIENT REFERAL CENTRE CALLED AND WILL CALL BACK.
i thought it best to google and try and find out more.
once answered the caller sounded a little freshy, like not from england, asia some place.
Good one, Stef.
You should get a public service award for this.
I have googled phone numbers before and found a scam that gives you a missed call on your phone, you ring back and it turns out to be a wrong number. They get the money for you calling them back apparently. The last number to call me like this was in Scotland somewhere.
Perhaps, we creatives should adopt this business model…
First Assist is an insurance company who provides Insurance products, they administrate products for banks and such, they are not scammers.
PS.
"(’recording for training purposes’ - rubbish, that’s for legal purposes"
i have worked in a call centre like it, it is used for training as you have coaches that give you feedback on calls
you have no idea what you are talking about, this post is crap
@vash - thanks for clearing that one up, but are you actually defending this business of phoning people at random and scaring old folks with silent phone calls and employing a third party company to phone up your customers and ask for private details?
Maybe you could also comment on the “business model” part of what I’ve written and tell us which part of that isn’t part of what this company does?
Thanks.
‘defending this business of phoning people at random and scaring old folks with silent phone calls’
But they didn’t make a random call, nor did they call any old folk, nor was it silent.
They called you, knew who you were, and spoke to you.
@James King - maybe I’m not making myself clear but that is exactly what they did. I had loads of missed calls and silent phone calls from them. That’s why I even added a contact in my phone and called it ‘Spam’.
And it’s not just me who’s had hassle from these people:
http://www.pamelaturner.co.uk/2008/04/30/halifax-firstassist-teh-evil/
http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/08701287341
http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/08445811015
I was contacted by Shila’s Wheels who are part of HBOS! There was no scamming or selling about it, I’d not returned a document.
FirstAssist are a legitimate company, they have offices accross the South of England. James Kings comments and responses regarding silent calls is concerning. Ofcom regulates outbound telesales and FirstAssist has for years maintained a low ‘drop call’ rate well below standards set by ofcom. When called by FirstAssist they use an 0845 prefix and if you phone back an answerphone message informs the customer that the company called.
Vash’s comments regarding call recording is also accurate. Calls are used for training and are rarely - if ever used beyond the point of sale. If a customer has a complaint then it is usually resolved on the spot wherever possible. There is a good reason for this because finding specific calls is very time consuming and if a complaint is not resolved by the end of business on the working day when it is first raised then it becomes FSA reportable (something which is avoided at all costs).
Based upon this information and some of the comments I believe that there are fraudsters posing as FirstAssist. If a member of FirstAssist staff asks for personal details then it is reasonable to ask them to confirm some details back to you. Genuine FirstAssist staff will have this in front of them and will do so. If you are in any doubt then explain your reasoning and the staff member will have to remove the telephone number from the database (after all expressed wishes are recorded).
FirstAssist only contact individuals who have strong affiliations with a corporate client. Halifax being one of these. The Halifax customer may have inadvertently given consent (occasionally without having ‘opted out’) to be added to a marketing list. Because ‘consent’ has been obtained the telephone preference service will not prevent marketing telephone calls from FirstAssist.
I hope that this clears up some of the misconceptions.
I’m receiving 10-20 calls per day from First Assist at the moment. Just in from work early and missed 5 an in the space of the last twenty minutes missed another 2 before I googled and found this site. Calls recored for training are held on your file, trust me I got my recordings after fraud was done on my old BANK of Scotland account, and reported then to the FSA. DPA and FOI Act.
Its my belief that this is a scam as I contacted Halifax and confirmed that I opted out of any calls from there service providers, also on TPS.
The call centre was concerned of the number of calls received and are looking into it for me. I am poised to close my accounts with them is it turns out that they have passed on my details.
Oops looks like a bit of my post went wry.
Just had another call from FIRST ASSIST well they never said a name but number came up this time as 08445811013.
So a NEW NUMBER is being used.
I said WHOOOOOOO when they asked for me with sorry mate and they were off.
Looks like Ive managed to opt out.
Cheers for the assistance
I work for first assist, and we are a legimite company that only call halifax customers. And when I mean Halifax it can mean anything from insurance to having an account. When we finish a call we have outcomes to put you in if you ask to be removed from the system 9 times out of 10 you will be!
I have just had cheeky comments made by this company on a cold call to me, before they hung up the phone. i am absolutely outraged by the cheeck received. Of course, only a answer machine to leave a messgae.
Hi Stef
Ive just googled First Assist after receiving a call from them this afternoon (06-11-08)claiming to be on behalf of Halifax and came across your informative site.The call was virtually identical to the one you described “Hi, could I talk to Mr ****” etc. They are using the number 08445-810316.Ive been looking for an excuse to leave Halifax and now thankfully Ive been given it on a plate.Thanks for the site and the information.
u r all stupid. Halifax First Assist are not cold calling u so the TPS can do nothing bout it. When u took out a service with the Halifax u signed a contract and in the fine print is a box siying tick me if u dont wish to be contacted by us for offers of any services so if ur recieveing these phone calls then its ur own stupid fault for not reading the fine print. And as for the people on the phones yes there are more useless jobs in the world but none pay as well as this job does for myself. Now i try and be polite as much as possible but we can only stand so much, we are only doing our job and dont deserve any shit, normally if someone says they are not interested we just take it as that but if u give us shit then we put u back in for callback after callback to piss u off so dont play with fire or ull get burnt. We do do DPA checks on all our customers and can tell u any info u wanna know within reason so if u listen to people like this stef u r an idiot.
Great to see that they’re employing people with such an eloquent way with words.
I particularly like this bit of that last comment:
your welcome now i put that way for all the thick socialites to understand. You see if i ut it eloquently then people wouldnt be able to understand so i have to speak like im thick fo reasons unbeknown to yourself, now with us working for halifax that actually means we have test to take which makes us qualified insurance advisors, like the ones that you get when you go face to face with at a bank, yeah we have the same qualifications as them and for some of us we have more qualifications than a person that sits on his internet putting knives in companies he knows nothing about. I mean myself i was in the navy for 6 years and have a degree in aircraft engineering 8 A grades and 3 B grades at GCSE level plus 4 A’s at A level standard so get to know some people before you slag them off
@david clarke - This is great - tell me more! I guess one of those wasn’t Creative Writing?
On a related note, I know a lot of companies that would go out of their way to contact someone with an apology for causing a nuisance to them, rather than letting their employees come along and have a go at them online. Another PR own goal?
The flip side is David’s comment above is much more measured - thanks for that.
The fact is this company is winding people up with it’s poor use of the phone and they should stop. That should be valuable feedback for them. And how do you hit back at a company that’s annoying you? By writing a letter to them and being ignored, or by getting to number 2 on Google for a search on their company name?
And yes - it’s still not just me: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1144663
I had these nutters on the phone, imagine someone calling you and then asking for YOUR details, they called me. Thankfully with the recession people are wary about buying what they cannot see, or talk to a pwerson face to face, its a flight to safety and bangladesh is NOT where you want to give your details out. India is the SECOND worst country affected by terrorism and fraud after Iraq. Go figure
i been getting calls off halifax/first assist for every day for nearlly 2 weeks
Nice post fella, I’ve just been woken by these idiotic masterbaters twice and I’m fuming. What gives anyone the right to ring me!?! (And no, I haven’t missed a tick box, or given consent to anyone - it does not pay to be on the radar).
Thought I would share my thoughts of some of the more “colourful” post on here:
Happy as Larry - you say First Assist only contact people with strong affiliations. I have NO AFFILIATION and the gits keep calling me
Vash - scammers or not, they are calling people repeatedly and without consent
James King - on this occasion they rang him, on thousands of other occasions they contact RANDOM numbers, must be a few that are old people, easily scared by the 20 seconds of silence and then a foreign voice.
David - i have no account with any Halifax/First Assist product, why do they keep calling me then?
David Clarke - “thick socialites” “reasons unbeknown to yourself” “have test to take” are you for real? And as for being in the Navy, its no wonder that with people like you protecting our country there is so much friendly fire. “8 A grades and 3 B grades at GCSE level plus 4 A’s at A level standard” - really? Where did you steal them from?
That is all.
The whole business of people being unable to stop unwanted calls is disturbing. Surely, as I can adjust my pc to allow emails through to me only from people I have in a directory that I compile, I should be able to do similarly with calls to my phone?
The technology is obviously there, the will is missing. And why? Because too many with vested interests are making mega money out of nuisance calling and service provider companies such as BT are doing the same. The whole thing stinks, and it’s incredible that not one politician has taken up the banner and rid the general public of this wretched curse! I suppose the Westminster boys and girls are too busy doing important things such as filing in their expenses forms, but what about enterprising techies getting their acts together and providing a filter to fix to the line? Surely there is a fortune to be made? Heaven’s knows one look at the internet and the complaints about the curse suggest they could not go wrong!
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