Sprint Can't Stop Harassing Non-Customer With Refund Check Offer
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) makes it possible for a marketer, salesman or hacker to uniquely identify you. But what happens when your unique personal data, like your home address or phone number, appears in a stranger's customer's record? Is it still your information to control?
In my last Technorati post on the topic of personal data, "Who's Protecting My Information in the Cloud?", I highlighted a challenge consumers have tracing their identity with platforms that share your account info, like Facebook, in order to extend capabilities through the Internet cloud. But what happens when a company erroneously possesses your data in an account they believe authorizes them to use it to market to you? What rights do you have as a consumer to remove your personal data from another person's account and opt-out of the marketing?
I, like many other consumers, have placed my phone numbers on the National Do Not Call List, so when I received an automated call from Sprint, on my Verizon landline p
hone, I was perplexed. I have not been a Sprint customer since the turn of the century. I have owned this landline number since 2006. My wireless accounts are with T-Mobile and AT&T.
The automated voice on the other end of the phone notified me that a refund check in the amount of $37.67 had been approved and was in the mail from Sprint . The bot repeated the message and hung up. I was concerned this call might be a scam, or reflect a misappropriation of my identity. Thanks to caller ID, I could return the call and the 800 number it resolved to turned out, in fact, to be a call center for Sprint.
After navigating their menu of options that kept asking me for my Sprint account information, which I don’t have since I am not a customer, I got to a live rep. The rep acknowledged after a few minutes she couldn’t access the customer account where my landline number was stored to remove it. Why? Because I couldn’t give her the PIN for that account, let alone the Sprint account number.
I requested they stop calling me since they had no explicit permission to use the number as the listed owner of the landline. I offered to fax an affidavit and a copy of my phone bill which showed my address, to verify it didn’t match their records for the customer who was associated with my home phone number.
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