Sunday is here to take us on a trip to the various carnivals and festivals hosted this week. We took big mugs of organic green tea and eased ourselves into our chairs for a long session of reading. From the readings emanated our favorites of the week:….

Please don’t believe the agent’s claim that their “phone system is complicated” as their excuse for not displaying a caller ID number on your telephone.

Over the past fifteen years, I have worked for much larger phone operations than these companies call centers, and my teams have set up many multi-line call systems across multiple locations in multiple countries.

If the company that hires me wants to me make a number public when their operators make outbound calls, I can do it. In some cases, it’s a little more hassle than in others–but by no means is it so “complicated” as to be undoable.

It is a deliberate decision by the credit card company to _not_ present a number to your caller ID display.

Many call centers choose to do this because they do not want to receive any inbound calls. They take this step largely to make it more difficult for you to contact them in the event you are dissatisfied with their service.

I would never call a number provided over the phone, but rather look it up myself. Even if it means i have to be transfered several times to get to the correct department, I at least know it is safe.

But anyway they asked me to verify something and I said, wait a minute, how do I know who you are? The operator was very polite and told me that she understands my concern, and if it would make me feel better I could call the number on the back of my card, and I would be automatically redirected to her department. I did. It was cool.

Anytime I get a number that I don’t recognize, I always do a reverse lookup to verify the number.

Good advice on calling the company itself.