We Also Need To Verify If You Have A Brain

I’m working in fraud protection for a department store’s credit card while saving money for college. One day, I have a call from the store. A woman was putting in a request for a card at the store and was told she had to talk to my department before the card could be used.

Caller: “Why do I have to answer all these questions?”

Me: “Your credit bureau report has a note saying you’ve been the victim of identity theft in the past and that you would like extra verification to prevent anyone from fraudulently opening a card in your name.”

Caller: “Yeah, but that was years ago. I haven’t had trouble with that for a while.”

Me: “I understand, but since the credit report says you’ve had someone steal your identity, we need to do a few extra verification steps to ensure that no one else is capable of opening accounts in your name.”

Caller: “But I’m the real person! I don’t need anyone checking things now. Whoever was doing all that stopped years ago.”

Me: “Well, ma’am, you can always contact the credit bureau and ask them to remove the warning if you feel it’s no longer required. But I’m afraid since the warning is currently on the report, my system won’t let me move forward until I’ve done some extra verification.”

This is a lie; while our customer service team has very automated systems that control what they can do given the widely different types of fraud and how they should be handled, it generally requires a human who can use their discretion to handle these accounts, and as such, we don’t have automated systems restricting our actions.

However, I’ve found that blaming my computer for why I’m doing something tends to appease customers more than trying to tell them I’m not stupid enough to ignore a giant warning that someone may try opening fake accounts just because she asked me to.

Caller: “They didn’t tell me I’d have to do all this when I put that on the report!”

This begs the question of what she thought we would do to stop someone from opening accounts in her name if not verifying things like this.

She continues to grumble but does begrudgingly allow me to verify everything we need. I’m pretty confident that she is the real person, even assuming the thief knew enough to pass our extra verification, they wouldn’t have wasted time fighting me about it first. The fraudulent folks treat this like a job and ironically tend to be more professional — when not actively trying to upset us to distract us — than our regular customers.

Caller: “Finally! I hope you all at least put that guy that stole my social through this much trouble, also.”

Me: “That is the point of this, ma’am.”