Unfiltered Story #102704

(I work for a major credit card company, in fraud prevention. Customer service calls in with a customer transfer for a suspicious caller, and it’s New Year’s Eve. The customer failed questioning with customer service and they were transferring him to me for further questions. I thought “no biggie, I’ll ask the highest level questions to fail him and put it into review.” Immediately, I can see he’s calling in on a number that’s not on file for the true customer’s phone information. As I’m going through the questions, however, it’s clear the caller is trying to sound sick, and he says this gem several times instead of a legitimate answer:)

Caller: “I’m too sick to answer these questions.”

(Of course, it’s a fail and I place it under review. I tell him the department security specialists will “straighten it out” and call him back within 48 hours, but he’s not done with trying to access our customer’s information.)

Caller: “Where’s your local office? I want to come talk to your specialists and explain what’s going on.”

(We only have four centers that customer-accessible departments are in, and you can only reach them by phone or online. These centers are in Utah (the office I’m in), Arizona, Delaware, and Ohio. The account address is in Florida. And even if he somehow gained knowledge of where we were located, he would be unable to get into the building without a badge.

So that call ends, and another one a few hours later really broke me.

This customer, thankfully, was a legitimate cardmember. However, his grasp of English left a lot to be desired. But from the broken language I could understand, I gathered quickly that his car had been broken into, that it was a rental, and his possessions had been stolen. But he still had his card and no fraudulent charges had been made on it. But he made mention of what he was trying to do, and it made me go completely silent for a few moments when I realized what that was:

The customer wanted to get rental car insurance THROUGH us, his CREDIT CARD!

Today made me lose a lot of my dwindling faith in humanity.