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BUDGET TAI TAI
Tabitha Wang
It’s scary how much telemarketers know about us
I am all alone at home. Suddenly the phone rings. The voice at the other end of the line is more frightening than the one talking to Drew Barrymore in Scream.
"Hello, can I take a minute of your time to tell you about this wonderful offer I have for a time-share/credit card/insurance policy/home loan?"
The first few times I was cold-called, I listened to their spiel then turned them down. The next few times, I answered politely: "No, thank you. I'm afraid I'm busy at the moment."
Then it became: "No, sorry." Then a curt "no". These days, I just hang up.
I wonder why they bother.
I've been a target of telemarketers ever since I started working (and appeared on their radar as someone with disposable income). But in the decade or so of getting their calls, I have agreed to sign up for only one thing - a credit card.
And that was only because I had already planned to do it and all the caller did was save me the hassle of filling up the form.
Usually, they're quite harmless, even those who claim I have won something but can claim my prize only when I sign up. But what concerns me are the ones who seem to know a lot about my habits.
I recently had one who offered me a store card for a certain mall because I shopped there a lot. How did the caller know that?
Has someone been secretly spying on me on my shopping expeditions?
Even more worrying was my colleague's experience. She had been maxing out her one credit card for a few months. Suddenly, she started getting calls offering her overdrafts at favourable rates. They were from different banks and insurance companies.
So how did they know about her debt? Her card was with a reputable bank, surely they couldn't have told anyone about her embarrassing secret?
These are legal touts.
I haven't even started on those scammers who call you about great investment opportunities usually involving exchange rates or money transfer to the banks of a certain country.
So I shed no tears when I read about how Hong Kong call centres and businesses cut staff recently because of new privacy protection guidelines.
About 200 direct marketing workers lost their jobs in the recent cull. There are an estimated 100,000 telemarketers in Hong Kong. The guidelines came into effect because of an uproar over the sale of personal data by Octopus a couple of months ago.
Octopus cards are like a combination of an ez-link card and a CashCard. You can use them for commuting, buying items and - this is what started it all - sign up with your name and contacts for points, which you can use to redeem rewards.
It later transpired that the company had been selling the data of about 2 million customers who had signed up for the scheme to merchants since 2002, earning it HK$57.9 million ($9.7 million).
Since then, there have been more scary revelations. The privacy commission is investigating complaints that three telecommunications operators had given customers' personal data to other companies.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has also said that some banks had sold customers' data to insurance firms (which might explain the calls my colleague had been receiving).
In a bid for understanding, Direct Marketing Association chairman Eugene Raitt told the South China Morning Post: "Consider also the tens or even hundreds of thousands of consumers who received benefits, including millions of dollars in insurance benefits they would not have received were it not for the marketing-partner relationships. Have they been harmed? We don't think so."
Harmed? Well, maybe not. But I feel a teensy bit unclean, a bit like knowing somebody has been rummaging in my underwear drawer.
I don't like to hear of people losing their jobs, though, so I have a suggestion: Employ them to man help lines.
So I don't have to wait an hour - constantly being reassured that "all our operators are busy at the moment. We will attend to you shortly" - only to get a heavily-accented voice at the other line barely speaking English.
Surely now that is one industry that won't need outsourcing.
Tabitha Wang can't talk right now but she will attend to you shortly. Your feedback is important to her.
From TODAY, Voices - Friday, 29-Oct-2010
Hello, where is my privacy?
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