For about a week, I recieved a call from some bank concerning my Visa account. (All the calls came while I was at work, so they left messages) I never bothered to return any of the calls since I didn't have Visa card with the bank and since I didn't want a Visa card. They finally called when I was home one morning. They wanted me to pay on my deliquent account. I told them I wouldn't pay because I didn't have an account with them. After 5 minutes of verifying to them that I was the person they were seeking, they hung up. After a bit, I became concerned about identity theft and called them back to verify that someone was not using my identity, since they had my phone number. They were just calling evreybody in the phone book with the same name.
But it doewsn't end there. For the next week, there was a message on my machine asking me to call about my Visa account. I returned the calls every other day since I had already taken care of the matter. In the second week, they left a nasty little message on my answering machine asking me to "...please do the decent thing and return their phone calls." I blew up. I called the next morning, immediately asked for a supervisor and read him the riot act. I also the next call they placed to my house would be sent to the State's Attorney-General's office. The calls finally stopped.
So you are at risk whether you have a credit card or not. As long as you are listed in the phone book, chances are you'll get a call like this for some deadbeat that shares your name.
Beware Capital One -- A Consumer's Story
Yeah I know this has nothing to do with EQ or DAoC, and I'm not normally one to use this as a pulpit for things like this, but after a couple of hours on the phone on this, I figured I would give people a heads up about this company's practice.
I have (soon will have had) a Capital One Credit Card. You know the one with those cute "what's in your wallet" commercials. It's actually under my wife's name, which has some bearing on this. Well today I get a call from "Rod" from "The Account Solutions Group", a collection agency, stating that our credit card payment is overdue. Amazed, I tell him that this is impossible, since I pay the card off each month and in fact just sent in a payment last week. He of course insists, in very strong and insistant terms, that we owe Capital One money. Basically, he was rude as hell. Well after much hassle back and forth from him, I finally get out of him that he is looking for a "Tony Moyer", male, born in 1979, instead of "Toni Moyer", female, born in 1965.
Great. So I figure it's just a stupid, if unpleasant, mistake. Nevertheless, to be safe, I call Capital One to make sure they do not have us listed as delinquent and that our credit rating has not been affected. After the usual wait on hold and a transfer, I finally get to "Kevin" of customer service. He tells me that there should be no problem with our credit report since the account would be under a different social security number. But I insist he look further since someone got our number to call us and harass us, so I figure someone thought that was our account. Then he says the most amazing thing: that if they can't track down the actual debtor, the collection ageny will typically pull every phone number in Capitol One's database with the same name as the person who owes them money and call them all to try to collect their debt. I'm like "are you saying that just because some Tony Moyer in Podunk owes you money, you called us and accused us of being delinquent?" Basically yes. There were 15 variations of Toni Moyer in their database and apparantly they called them all over this single debt. They didn't call us by mistake as much as mistakenly called us. He claimed that was the price we are supposed to pay for getting that low interest rate. So of course I told him to cancel my account.
Then, after I had hung up, it occured to me that a company this unscrupulous and unethical could not be trusted to not somehow mess with our credit rating, so I decided I had better get a letter from them confirming that our credit with them was fine just to have on file somewhere. Plus, I had to make sure what he told me was truly correct, because it seemed so incredulous to me. So I called back and eventually got to 'Nancy" in customer service. Yes indeed she confirmed, we will call everyone necessary to collect a debt. "Even if the age, sex, and social security number all don't match?" You bet. That is apparantly a company policy. I believe the exact quote was "Capital One will do whatever is necessary to collect a debt". Apparantly even if it means hassling people who have absolutely no connection to the debtor beyond a similar name.
So if you are considering getting a Capital One credit card, keep in mind that if anyone with your name owes them money, you can expect to get a similar phone call from a collection agency accusing you of not paying your debts. In addition, I ask you to consider this. If they will use the information you provide them in this unsavory manner, how else will they use it? I of course only know about this incident, but do you want to take the chance that this is the only way they will twist your data? Is this the type of company you want to deal with? You may want to consider a different company, and if you currently have a Capital One Card, you may want to consider another option before you too get a call like this.
