Automated insurance calls

Forums › Off topic › Automated insurance calls

1 | 2

Kraven

729 posts

Ultimate Geek

#683245 8-Sep-2012 21:51

maverick: We have seen these a little bit, it appears to be coming from the usual supplier when these things pop up.

Purely out of interest, can you block calls from a certain "supplier" if a customer requests it?

mattwnz

20165 posts

Uber Geek

#683258 8-Sep-2012 22:34

The way I see these cold calls, is they are worse than email / fax spam, and should be treated as such. If a company doesn't have the respect to use a real person to make the call, then why should the receiver give them their own personal time in return.
Normal cold calls are bad enough, let alone automated ones. Many of the cold calls coming out of asia use an automated dialer, where they wait to hear a reply on the phone, and you then get a delay of a few seconds before it is forwarded to a call centre worker to talk to you.
I don't answer the phone now if the number is blocked, or I don't recongnise it. I wait for it to go to the message and will then phone them back. I know quite a few people who now do this.

Kyanar

4089 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#683343 9-Sep-2012 10:37

mattwnz: The way I see these cold calls, is they are worse than email / fax spam, and should be treated as such. If a company doesn't have the respect to use a real person to make the call, then why should the receiver give them their own personal time in return.
Normal cold calls are bad enough, let alone automated ones. Many of the cold calls coming out of asia use an automated dialer, where they wait to hear a reply on the phone, and you then get a delay of a few seconds before it is forwarded to a call centre worker to talk to you.
I don't answer the phone now if the number is blocked, or I don't recongnise it. I wait for it to go to the message and will then phone them back. I know quite a few people who now do this.

You just described a Baycorp call as well. I've had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of calls for people living here from those people. You pick up the phone to some silence, followed by "We have an important message for <name>. Please press 1 if you are that person" (not exactly that, my memory isn't perfect) at which point it finally puts a rep through to you, who starts grilling you on your personal details before even identifying themselves. Just "Hi, <name>. Can I please have your full name, address and date of birth for identification purposes?" Worst thing ever for teaching people to protect their information (although my brother got hung up on by them once for asking the rep for their personal details too, at which point they said "none of your business").

Another company that does this is Home Direct, who run those red clothing trucks. Worse is that they robocall you, then when you pick up, they play "This is Home Direct with an important message for <name>. Please stay on the line for a customer services representative". Then they stick you on hold - once it got to three minutes before it said "I'm sorry, there are no available customer representatives" and hung up on me.

stevenz

2802 posts

Uber Geek

#683941 10-Sep-2012 15:56

I had a call from someone from Canteen on the weekend. Obviously an autocall with the few seconds delay before a human started talking who, judging by the call quality, audio delay, and accent, was in another country. Once again, presumably number-block calling as they shouldn't have been able to get my number from any legit source.

Pity, as they're a legit charity, they shall get no further money from me as a result of this, bit rough if it was a scammer.

Interestingly, I've never these calls to my SIP\VoIP number, probably as it starts with 9 and most other Wellington numbers start with 4.

@KnightNZ

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#684148 10-Sep-2012 22:02

I hand up immediately now if there is the few seconds of silence on the end that lets me know if I have connected to one of the predictive autodialers beloved of telemarketers.

I have also (as have a fair number of friends & family) started to get regular calls (about 1 every other night) with no one there when you answer. They always seem to come between 7.30 and 8.30 at night. If you hang on, eventually you get a disconnected beeping sound. Unless it's scammers autodialling through blocks of numbers to find out which ones are assigned and have a human at the other end, I am struggling to see why anyone would be doing this?

So now I just hang up quickly.

Re: The Canteen call, I never, ever, give money when people call unsolicited like this. Often it's a campaign run by a marketing company, and something like 75% of donations can be gobbled up by the marketers rather than reaching the the charity. Even worse, it's hard to be sure it isn't an outright scam. Instead, I have a few causes that I support, and (other than the occasional street appeal I know is legit) I give money directly, so I know it ends up with bona fide outfits, and all the money reaches the intended cause.

If its a marketer, political pitch, survey or appeal I just say "Sorry, I don't take unsolicited calls" and hang up.

gzt

17159 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#687259 17-Sep-2012 17:31

Just got an automated life insurance marketing call. The recording was extremely professional and very clear. My impression was local given the quality but maybe there is no good reason for that.

The marketing was along the lines of our life insurance is better than your existing life insurance and you owe it to your family to talk to us and find out what we offer. At no time did the recording mention a company name. I pressed 1 to leave a message saying remove me from your list.

Is this a scam or an established based in NZ company doing this kind of marketing?

The professionalism of the message suggested NZ based to me.

Yeah, I should have left a message to find out but I didn't want to get even more annoyed when they call back.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79309 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#687293 17-Sep-2012 18:48

I don't answer surveys or unsolicited business and charity calls. I am not in the bussines of handing out money to strangers on the phone or door knockers. If I want to support a cause I try and find their offices (such as the SPCA).

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

stevenz

2802 posts

Uber Geek

#688068 19-Sep-2012 10:59

The spams I received kept reiterating over & over about how their policies would never increase. If it was something along those lines then it's likely the same outfit.

@KnightNZ

choccers

64 posts

Master Geek

#700626 13-Oct-2012 13:11

gzt: Just got an automated life insurance marketing call. The recording was extremely professional and very clear. My impression was local given the quality but maybe there is no good reason for that.

The marketing was along the lines of our life insurance is better than your existing life insurance and you owe it to your family to talk to us and find out what we offer. At no time did the recording mention a company name. I pressed 1 to leave a message saying remove me from your list.

Is this a scam or an established based in NZ company doing this kind of marketing?

The professionalism of the message suggested NZ based to me.

Yeah, I should have left a message to find out but I didn't want to get even more annoyed when they call back.

found one of these on my voicemail when I got home yesterday. makes me mad there is a reason I have an unlisted number.

added myself to the http://www.marketing.org.nz do not mail and do not ring register. Not that I think it will make any difference.

Note the insurance company never said who they were if you are going to advertise you should be forced to identify yourself. If it works for political literature it should be compulsory for this type of crap.

mattwnz

20165 posts

Uber Geek

#700656 13-Oct-2012 14:24

choccers:
gzt: Just got an automated life insurance marketing call. The recording was extremely professional and very clear. My impression was local given the quality but maybe there is no good reason for that.

The marketing was along the lines of our life insurance is better than your existing life insurance and you owe it to your family to talk to us and find out what we offer. At no time did the recording mention a company name. I pressed 1 to leave a message saying remove me from your list.

Is this a scam or an established based in NZ company doing this kind of marketing?

The professionalism of the message suggested NZ based to me.

Yeah, I should have left a message to find out but I didn't want to get even more annoyed when they call back.

found one of these on my voicemail when I got home yesterday.? makes me mad there is a reason I have an unlisted number.

added myself to the http://www.marketing.org.nz do not mail and do not ring register.? Not that I think it will make any difference.

Note the insurance company never said who they were if you are going to advertise you should be forced to identify yourself.? If it works for political literature it should be compulsory for this type of crap.

You could make a compliant to the insurance ombudsman, telling them the contents of the phone call and the number. The number should be enough to identify the company. Most cold callers I have found withhold their number on caller display for obvious reasons. I will never buy anything off off a cold caller, because there is no way to identify that they are the person or company they say they are. I recently got cold called by someone who said they were from Orcon with a suopposedly price beating deal, and after contacting orcon about this call, they said they didn't have any record of that call being made by them. So I now treat 100% of cold calls as scam calls. Cold calling door knockers aren't much better.

choccers

64 posts

Master Geek

#700657 13-Oct-2012 14:30

mattwnz:
choccers:
gzt: Just got an automated life insurance marketing call. The recording was extremely professional and very clear. My impression was local given the quality but maybe there is no good reason for that.

The marketing was along the lines of our life insurance is better than your existing life insurance and you owe it to your family to talk to us and find out what we offer. At no time did the recording mention a company name. I pressed 1 to leave a message saying remove me from your list.

Is this a scam or an established based in NZ company doing this kind of marketing?

The professionalism of the message suggested NZ based to me.

Yeah, I should have left a message to find out but I didn't want to get even more annoyed when they call back.

found one of these on my voicemail when I got home yesterday.? makes me mad there is a reason I have an unlisted number.

added myself to the http://www.marketing.org.nz do not mail and do not ring register.? Not that I think it will make any difference.

Note the insurance company never said who they were if you are going to advertise you should be forced to identify yourself.? If it works for political literature it should be compulsory for this type of crap.

You could make a compliant to the insurance ombudsman, telling them the contents of the phone call and the number. The number should be enough to identify the company. Most cold callers I have found withhold their number on caller display for obvious reasons. I will never buy anything off off a cold caller, because there is no way to identify that they are the person or company they say they are. I recently got cold called by someone who said they were from Orcon with a suopposedly price beating deal, and after contacting orcon about this call, they said they didn't have any record of that call being made by them. So I now treat 100% of cold calls as scam calls. Cold calling door knockers aren't much better.

no caller id here would have to get the number out of the phone company

casewindow

310 posts

Ultimate Geek

#700658 13-Oct-2012 14:34

choccers:

found one of these on my voicemail when I got home yesterday. makes me mad there is a reason I have an unlisted number.

added myself to the http://www.marketing.org.nz do not mail and do not ring register. Not that I think it will make any difference.

We added ourselves to these lists.

We very rarely (less than 5 times a year) get any sort of marketing call. I immediately say "we are on the do not call list" and they say sorry and hang up.

Strongbad1905

94 posts

Master Geek

#700660 13-Oct-2012 14:37

I recently got cold called by someone who said they were from Orcon with a suopposedly price beating deal, and after contacting orcon about this call, they said they didn't have any record of that call being made by them. So I now treat 100% of cold calls as scam calls. Cold calling door knockers aren't much better.

Ha yeah I had that Orcon call, but I am a Orcon customer so a scam. As for the life insurance I have had two of the same recording left on my work numbers answer machine in the last 2 weeks one left at 12.03am!

nickd

447 posts

Ultimate Geek

#700666 13-Oct-2012 14:53

We got these at work about 6 months ago. The problem was, we always missed the calls (during lunch/before/after work) so couldn't push 9 for an operator at the end of the message. It got so annoying I started plotting the day and times of the calls so I could predict the calls as they were coming in. I got down to a 20min window for the calls to come in but then all of a sudden they stopped calling us. 4 months later, they started up again but not as frequently.

Interestingly enough from the data I gathered, it was always in the few days after pay day and around lunchtime that they called.

1 | 2