What If The Phone Company Called Your Friends To Collect Your Bill?

from the ah,-so-much-data dept

Let's say you're a phone company, and someone has been a bit late in paying their bills. You have all their phone records, and you know who they call. Would it make sense to call some of their frequently called numbers and have these friends, family or colleagues put the pressure on the delinquent subscriber? According to a post at Dave Farber's Interesting People list, that's exactly what one mobile phone company in India just did. As the full story notes, the person that Hutch called up happened to be a potential client -- and that can't look good. While someone in the comments notes another local phone company did the same, you have to wonder if this is common practice, or one collections agent simply going to far. Either way, you have to wonder why a collections agent should have access to the phone numbers you call.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    phoenix, 31 Aug 2004 @ 1:03am

    No Subject Given

    I imagine a collections agent needs access to your call records in case you want to dispute the amount on the bill. Of course, in theory that should fall under customer complaints and be separate from collections but that would make collections agents' lives much harder.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.