incorrigible

I have always known that you can Google search yourself, or someone else, and possibly have some luck finding something but this peoplefinders.com site is a little troubling to me. This coming from someone who's had his identity stolen.

For a fee ($39.99) you can find out a weath of information about anybody ..... phone numbers, addresses, tax records (which I thought was illegal to do) roomates, aliases, crimal records ( I have none by the way)... etc etc etc.

I wonder where they compile all of this info from? Anybody have an idea? If it is coming from the credit bureau's that is a little troubling since just about everyone I know has found errors on their credit reports.

Please chime in everyone and be sure to let me know if you feel troubled by this or not. B)

Thanks J.

1 COBRA

Many banks and creditors have sold this type of info in the past. Some have stopped this practice.

houtex

The truth is that if you are really worried about it, never pay anything but cash, and never fill out any form of credit or bank application, or any application that requires your personal information. Which is ludicrous, of course, but it drives home the point:

The internet isn't the only concern you should have. Plenty people's identities were stolen from a Macy's purchase...

(the above Macy's example is just a pulled out of thin air example, and not an endorsement nor accusation. The laywers made me say that.)

incorrigible

Very true but this company is freely advertising this and making a profit off it. Just life in the big city I guess. B)

ItsNotABulliT

Shouldnt be Peoplefinders.

Should be called Theft & Stalkers-R-Us

The whole thing troubles me.

Your beard is troubling.

pilot1129

funny story. today I went on a house call to set up someones wireless network. the lady told me she had *** Cable scheduled to come in and do the hardwiring in her house for the high speed internet. They never showed up. So, she used a site like people finder and got hold of the HOME phone number of the president of *** Cable and told him off. He was uber pissed. anyway, *** made a special visit out to her house on a Sunday when they never go out on calls on that day.

goes to show, sites like these, when used properly, can be very helpful

PaulF

I think the President of *** Cable has a right to be uber pissed. I'd be pissed too. I work for a cable company (not ***) and this stuff does happen frequently. Too frequently.

I have a friend that I work with that has a very uncommon last name...the only one in the phone book. Someone at work gave the customer his last name and the customer wasn't happy with the way that my friend handled their account. The guy called him at home. At 12:00am during the week and woke him up....kept him on the phone until 2:00am. All because his internet connection wasn't working and we have people staffed 24/7 at the office. The customer wanted resolution and my friend was in no position to help him get it taken care of.

As it stood, there was a general problem in his area and we had techs out working in the field to correct it. But the customer kept calling my friend at home every time he had a question or problem, until my friend was forced to change his home phone number. How is that fair?

Where do you draw the line? Did your customer have repeated problems? Who else did she talk to at *** before calling the President of the company? If she talked to anyone, did they not offer her a resonable solution with some type of compensation? Because it sounds like they missed their install appointment. It stinks, but it happens. The techs that do the installs do get overbooked and some jobs do take longer to complete than others and appointments get missed. Should your customer have gotten a phone call explaining the situation? Yes. But does happend really warrant a phone call to the President of the company, when there were more likely people in their call center that could have resolved the problem for her?

Plus, I bet she probably got someone fired, possibly for an honest mistake. You call the President of a company at home for something of this nature and I'll bet 7 times out of 10, someone's head is going to roll. Especially with a job like that, where the personnel is easily replaceable. Paperwork does get misplaced and errors do happen.

Sounds like a bit of an overreaction to me by your customer. How would she like it if her clients called her at home to get a minor problem resolved during her time off? Better yet, how would she like it if her clients called the President of her company to get a minor problem resolved during their time off?

JessicaRabbitt

I wish heads would roll. I am not going to go into it, but I have had CSRs go out of thier way to be rude, and uncooperative, and when the issue is taken to thier super, nothing happens.

I have worked both sides of the fence. The bottom line is, this countrys large corporations have forgotten what real customer service is, and lost empathy for the people who are paying them.

If your being overbooked, that is not MY fault, and frankly *I* should not suffer from it. It is another example of companies losing sight of treatment of human beings. A happy employee is a productive employee. Productive employees make happy customers, and those customers buy more services/product. Those dollars pay the employees to make them happier, and the cycle continues.

The general rule of thumb is "It doesnt matter, because they cant do anything about it cept complain, so dont worry about it." Maybe if more people got fired, CSRs would try harder to not make the same mistakes.

Yes, I have been a CSR, for one of the top three giant cargo companies. I know when things happen and your hands are tied, and all you can do is apologize. I also know that if I did my job well, and properly, that customer is going to hang up the phone frustrated, however they will call back.

/rant off

PaulF

I understand that and agree with you, but that's not the issue here. Jessica, when you worked as a CSR, what would you do if one of your customers repeatedly called you at home, for problems that could be handled by the companies 800 number? You sure couldn't do anything to help them from your house...How can you be productive for the customer? All you can do is call the 800 number yourself, eat up your free time and not get paid for it. Oh and keep a smile on your face the whole time. Maybe that customer calls you at dinner time...or while you are asleep.

As I stated before, did pilot's customer ever even call the cable companies 800 number to get another technican out to her address the same day? Was she compensated in any way?

Yes, there is a problem with customer service in large companies, but not all CSR's are like that and it's not all companies. Before getting into the technical field that I'm in, I worked as a CSR or a CSR supervisor for two large companies for 15 years. One of them was rated in the top 10 companies for customer service in multiple financial magazines. Even with that being said, about 25% of customers didn't even give the CSR the chance to resolve the issue, they just start berating the CSR's and that company. The customers can be every bit as rude if not more so than the CSR's.

My point here is this: Customers shouldn't be calling people at their house, unless they are told by the employee to do it. The whole reason that the customer started the phone calls in the first place was because my friend wouldn't help him figure out another companies software. Not our product, the customer just refused to call the other company and request assistance. Somehow, that was our fault?