Autopage MD calls

Stephen Blewett, the MD of Autopage called me this morning to apologise about the Look4Me, Look4Help issues. He told me that Autopage does not give out its customer information to anyone, and that if he catches any Autopage employee doing so he will fire them personally.
He explained to me that the call centres guess the number ranges of his and other companies, and then make calls without their knowledge. The first time they hear of the billing is when it comes from the network provider (i.e. Vodacom) as a WASP billing record. This system is full of problems, and can be abused by the WASPs. As an example of call centres guessing cell phone numbers, he told me of his wife being called to be offered a "better deal" on her phone.
Stephen also personally apologised on the HelloPeter web site.

I guess the question is why Cellfind claims to have obtained my number from Autopage and why they say they have contacted Autopage to ensure I am on their DNC list. Is it more ducking and diving? Eugenie from Autopage was also extremely doubtful that Autopage had supplied my number to Cellfind. Yet both Carla Legatt and Neil Barnard from Cellfind say it was so. Perhaps they are getting confused with who they sent the billing info to.

Update 11:30am: Andre Geboers from Digicall phoned to accept responsibility for his call centre's part in the process. They didn't check the numbers against the DMA list at the time of making the call, because they received their first list from the DMA on 1st December. They are doing checks against the DMA's list now. Because he was willing to accept personal responsibility for the call, I have dropped my demand for an advert in the Sunday Times.

Look4Help, Look4Me ducking and diving after getting caught out

These guys are unbelievable. Every time they talk to me they dig their own graves a little deeper. I have been send emails back and forth today, trying to obtain clarification of CellFind's behaviour and response to my enquiries. The last email I got reads as follows:

Dear Mr Edwards
Confirmation: Your wife’s number was added to our internal Do Not Call when you spoke to Carla yesterday. Your number was added this morning after you responded to my initial e-mail.
[Thanks for letting me know. No previous emails or phone calls confirmed this, and no SMS messages have been sent to my phone]
Cellfind notified you/your wife on at least 12 occasions via SMS of the changes. [Earlier in the day you told me that you had only sent 4 messages on 30-11-2007 and 2 on 10-04-2008. I wonder when the other 6 were sent, if at all?] I cannot speak for them but Autopage as a rule notify every customer, every time a new service is added to their account (Also via SMS).

Please tell me what in your view would be adequate:

• We have added both you and your wife to our exclusion list
  
• I’ve also ensured that your details have been added to Autopage and Digicall’s lists
• We have/will refund you in full
• We have apologized (All three companies) in person [All the apologies have been conditional, and in private.]
  
• The Sales Agent has been fired [How convenient. When? Who?]
  
• We have checked our processes to ensure we exclude DMA Do Not Calls to the best of our abilities [How do you do this when there are no ID numbers in your lists and the DMA works with ID numbers?]
  
• We have checked our processes to ensure we exclude our own Do Not Calls [Earlier today you admitted that this was not done in November]
  
• We have removed the services from your account
• We have sent you all the information we have available [I am still waiting for replies to numerous questions not addressed here, for a copy of the sales script and the audio recording]
  

Let me ensure [sic] you that I take this very seriously and even though in our view, we are not in contravention of any law, we have made every effort possible to ensure we don’t have a repeat occurrence and have provided you with as much assistance as humanly possible. So, please let me know what you see as adequate?

Thank you,
Niel Barnard
Chief Executive Officer

Cellfind (PTY) LTD
Tel: 011-8488200
Fax: 011-8488205

Since you ask, Mr Barnard, it would be helpful if you actually stopped ducking and diving and pushing responsibility onto someone else. Autopage did not make the call or send the first 4 SMS messages. Each one of those messages violates the ECT Act, even though you claim you didn't know that I should have been on your list. That was due to your negligence, not mine. Ignorance is no excuse. A thief who gets caught with the stolen goods is still a thief, even if he says "sorry" and gives the goods back.
Secondly, adding someone onto your database without their permission is dishonest, and expecting them to opt out is even more so. In fact it's a bloody cheek, and not the best way to treat your customers. The correct option is "Opt-in", where customers confirm that they WANT the service, rather than being expected to say if they don't, assuming they heard the question.
Thirdly, your call centre first told me that they had obtained the number from Vodacom, and then the story changed later to Autopage. They have yet to confirm that they did, in fact, supply the number. Who am I supposed to believe?
It's all very well to "fire" the person who called my wife, but when are you going to tell me that your company or Digicall made any attempt to contact ALL the people this person subscribed, to make sure they were aware of paying for the service. This could be done by sending an SMS to all the "subscribers", asking them to confirm that they still WANT the service. Clearly this did not happen because we did not receive any messages "several months ago" when the alleged bad apple was "fired".
Either your company is completely incompetent and cavalier in its approach to customer privacy; or you are systematically exploiting loopholes and using convenient excuses to pacify irate customers while you continue to deduct money on a monthly basis from thousands of unsuspecting consumers. I don't know which of the two it is, but neither is a good idea.
If you are genuinely concerned about people being subscribed without their knowledge or permission, then change your business model to an "opt-in" one, and send an SMS to all your existing subscribers asking them to confirm that they still want the service. Also, publish an apology on your web site for the inconvenience caused by your current dodgy practices. Then I'll believe you. Until then, CellFind is the company who got caught with its hands in the cookie jar.

Update Monday 14 th April: Autopage company policy is that they don't give out lists of numbers to anyone. What do you say to that, Mr Barnard? You were very vague about who you got the numbers from.

Update 21 November 2008: It seems that their practices have not changed. Here is an article from the Independent Online web site.

Look4me and Look4Help Billing Fraud and Privacy Violations | Autopage MD calls | CellFind caught out again

Look4Me and Look4Help Billing Fraud and Illegal Privacy Violations

In November a call centre agent phoned my wife's cell phone and offered her services called "Look4Me" and "Look4Help". We don't like marketing calls and she did not agree to anything. Even so, we started getting billed for this service, in spite of the fact that no permission was obtained from the account holder, i.e. me, violating AutoPage's own policy on customer accounts.
So I called AutoPage (0860 23 2424) and they promised to cancel the service. I also asked for a refund. Judging by the complaints on HelloPeter, I am not the only one to be billed in this way. As far as I can tell this is a case of fraud.
Then I called the Look4Help call centre for on 086 010 5774, and was told that Vodacom had supplied them with my wife's number. Later I received an email from Carla Leggatt who claimed that AutoPage had supplied them with the number. Since AutoPage has done this before, I am not surprised, but now CellFind have added an ECT Act violation to their billing fraud. By phoning a number that is already marked as a Do Not Call (both by Autopage and the Direct Marketing Association), they violated the ECT Act, and the penalty for this is 1 year in jail, with no option of a fine.
What also gets me is that at no point was I, as the account holder, notified, either by mail, email or SMS, that we had been signed up for this service, and it was only because I checked my cell phone bill that I noticed the problem. Scumbags like this should rot in jail, and I am considering charges against them for both fraud and privacy violations, unless they make a public apology, preferably in the national newspapers, and request anyone else billed in this way to contact them for a refund.
Update Friday 10am: Niel Barnard from CellFind confirmed that the details were obtained from AutoPage, and admitted that they did not check the data against the DMA's list. He has promised to send me a copy of the recording of the original call. I spoke to the secretary for the MD for AutoPage, who put me through to customer services without really listening to my enquiry. I spoke to Andre Geboers at Digicall, the call centre company in Cape Town (021-405-1425), and he explained that they only get cell numbers from AutoPage, not ID numbers, so they can't really do any checks against the DMA list. It seems to me like a deliberate loophole to avoid prosecution, and the call verification process sounds a little vague. I have asked for a copy of the "script" used by the call centre agents, to see how well it complies with the DMA's Code of Conduct.
Update Friday 12noon: Neil Barnard informs me that

The person who spoke to your wife has in actual fact been fired a few months ago. I have an agreement with Digicall that any transgression of the script, etc will lead to an immediate dismissal of the offending agent on their side.

How convenient. Employ a temp worker for a few months (say November and December), sign up as many people as possible, legally or not, and then when anyone complains tell them that the person was fired. But they cannot tell me who this person was, or whether any of the people he/she called have been contacted to confirm that they did, in fact, agree to the service. So the firing does not absolve the company of the ECT Act violations or the billing fraud, for which the company as a whole is responsible.
Then there is the question of the SMS "confirmation" messages. They sent 4, all at 2007-11-30 11:50:50, shortly after calling my wife:

• Look4help is designed to help you when you need it most. Please reply to this sms with the way you would like to setup eg. WWW, WAP, SMS or call 0860105774
• Welcome to Look4help, a panic button on your cellphone & costs only R12.08 per month, easy setup details to follow. To unsubscribe sms STOP to 31888
• Look4me is designed to help keep your loved ones safe. Please reply to this sms with the way you would like to setup eg. WWW, WAP, SMS or call 0822360919
• Welcome to Look4me, a service which allows you 2 track cellphones & costs only R11.13 per month, easy setup details to follow -sms unsubscribe to 31888 to stop

So if you don't get the messages, ignore them, or just delete them as spam, you have effectively "agreed" to their service by not doing anything. Not only is this dishonest and unethical, it's also a violation of the DMA's Code of Conduct.
Update Monday 14 th April: Autopage company policy is that they don't give out lists of numbers to anyone.

Look4me and Look4Help Billing Fraud and Privacy Violations | Autopage MD calls | CellFind caught out again

DMA: Privacy on a Shoestring

The illustrious Direct Marketing Association seems to be incapable of protecting my privacy, even among its own members. There is a form you can fill in, but only if you use Internet Explorer. Firefox and Opera aren't supported, even though most privacy-savvy users prefer Firefox with the NoScript extension enabled, and script blocked by default.
If you update your details you get an error message to say "You are already registered", and when I asked, they were unable or unwilling to tell me whether this meant that the data was thrown away or updated. Their "Do Not Call" database has me listed 3 times: twice with the same ID number (records 151759 and 185048) and once without my ID number but with my current address (record 193686). My wife is listed twice, but only with her maiden name, and we've been married for 7 years. So much for data accuracy.
Since DMA members are under no obligation to report back to the DMA, all my requests to FNB, Nedbank, Absa, Sanlam, Standard Bank, Cell-C, Autopage, Discovery, MTN, and the many other companies I have warned against sending me junk mail or SMS mssages, have not been reported back to the DMA, so my information is still woefully out of date.
As a database programmer I understand the complexities of keeping information up to date and accurate, but this is a simple flat file database with no field for first name, only initials. (Huh?) These guys are supposed to be protecting my privacy, but in my experince it is all window dressing. If not, why would MTN, Barclaycard and now Woolworths, all sent me unwanted marketing messages without even bothering to check to see if my name is on the list?

More Privacy Scumbags Float to the Surface

Why do these marketing types think its OK to bombard me with special offers, SMS messages, calls, and so on? Don't they already understand that our society is overloaded with ads, billboards, publications, and other marketing junk? I guess not. And even if they did, would they care?
On the weekend I had the misfortune of getting an SMS from "Call Co" in Durban. The SMS number used was 083-227-2416 and when they called me the number used was 079-204-6982. Their offices are on the 10th floor of 85 on Field Street, Durban. When they called me I informed them that I do not wish to get marketing calls from them, and asked where they got my details from.
They said they got my details from "Durban Database Solutions" and gave me the contact number of a Mr Paul Sartorius 082-659-9309. They apologised. Paul has taken my name of his grubby little database, and apologised for the inconvenience. However, he got the information from either ETL Solutions in Johannesburg or TIS in Cape Town. I have had dealings with ETL Solutions before. Mr Barry Cowden or his BEE partner "Mpumelelo Patrick Snowy Mafunda" may spend a year in jail thinking about their broken database system unless they sort this out.
Their web site has a form you can fill in, but they didn't set it up correctly so it doesn't work. You have to send the information to removemyinfo@etl.co.za instead. I called them on 011-467-2984 to complaint that even though my details were supposed to be removed in August lat year, I was still getting calls. They said they'd get back to me.
The matter gets worse: CallCo made calls on behalf of AutoPage. I have already told AutoPage, both on the phone any via email that I didn't want to receive any marketing calls from them, or on behalf of them. It seems that they aren't prepared to listen either. Even the AutoPage Marketing Manager had to apologise for the obvious and complete lack of thought given to this issue by the company. I hope that forcing the General Manager to send me an apology will wake them up. If not, a year behind bars will surely do the trick. Probably not.

Yet another HelloPeter complaint

DiscoveryCard gives out confidential information to AutoPage

Today I got a phone call from AutoPage, offering me a free contract phone. This is rather sad, because the number they called is the number I got from MTN after having a big fight with AutoPage about their 24 month contract that is actually a 25 month contract. But that's another story.
It turns out that the "promotion" they are doing is with Discovery Card. These are the same people who sent me statements in PDF format that they claim are encrypted and therefore totally private, but which contained my credit card numbers, not to mention the fact that the attachment name used to be "4901 3800 8391 4000.PDF", which looks remarkably like a credit card number.
As you can tell my confidence levels with either company are not exactly huge. What makes it worse is that I informed Discovery Card in June that I did not wish to receive any marketing calls or SMS messages from them. I know they got the message because someone from Discovery Card phoned me to find out if the ban extended to the SMS messages of my financial transactions.
It turns out that they decided to include my name and cell phone number in a database they provided to the AutoPage cell centre, thereby breaking the ECT Act. I have contacted them for an explanation, not that I expect to get a satisfactory one, but still.
Update 01-Dec-2006: A consultant from Discovery Card called to apologise. He explained that when they extracted the data to send to Autopage, they neglected to exclude the clients who didn't want to get marketing information or calls. Presumably they didn't care that this would violate the ECT Act. Of course it wasn't the marketing person responsible for this decision who called, but one of the call centre consultants. I guess he was too important to call himself, which is why I asked for a written apology.
Update (6 years later) 16 Aug 2012: I received the following email:

I am the Chief Operating Officer of Vitality and Discovery Card. The incident that happened below happened before my time but I did ask our team to try and ascertain what happened and what failed.
It was difficult to get to the bottom of this and we have been unable to reconstruct what the failure was and why it occurred.
I do like to think that the procedures and processes that we have in place today are rigorous and sound but there will be times when the human element fails. In these instances it’s important to recover well.
Our team takes customer service very seriously and it is paramount to our business. I know it is late but if it is any consolation, I am sorry for the below incident and I can assure you that were this to happen today, I would like to think that we would be able to resolve the issue and have retained you as a client.
Sincerely
Barry Sundelson.

Thanks, Barry. Much appreciated.