When you run a business you have to stay aware of ways to move it forward but that also includes making sure you know who you’re doing business with. Many businesses start off or are run daily by making connections with other people and businesses via cold calls to people they don’t know. I’m not a fan of making or receiving cold calls but I understand that it’s part of business and for some businesses it’s a great model. One downside of cold calls is that the recipient has no initial information about who is calling them, which puts the caller at the advantage even though it’s the recipient that’s going to make or break a successful call. To make the call easier, some businesses gather just enough information about the recipient to make it seem like they’re not calling completely unsolicited.
At my office, we have a copier that is under a contract with a local vendor. We get all our supplies directly from them and the supplies are only sent when we ask for them. A few years ago, I received a call from someone that asked me how the copier was performing for us. The call seemed to be legitimate, as the person on the other end of the phone knew what make and model copier we have and whom I was.
They explained that the reason why they were calling was that our cost for toner would be going up and they wanted to send us a few more toner cartridges at our current rate before it was going to cost us more. It seemed a little odd during the conversation, as I was sure we had a contract that locked in our toner costs at a set rate for the duration of the contract, but seeing as how the caller knew a lot about our copier and me it didn’t make sense that it wouldn’t be a legitimate call. At the end of verifying my contact information, the caller said that in a few minutes I would get another call from their distribution branch to confirm the order and send out the toner.
After hanging up I had a suspicion that something wasn’t right. I looked at the number on my phone’s caller ID and conducted a search for the number online. There were a few results for blocks of numbers that contained the number as part of a sequence, but then the search results turned lots of results from people complaining about a company that calls businesses claiming to be offering toner at a cost just prior to it increasing. That was enough for me to realize what exactly was going on and just before I received the follow-up call.
The phone rang again. I picked up the line and it was the shipping department asking me to verify that I had spoken to their sales person. I said that I had but I asked them what their company name was. <click>. They instantly hung up at that question. I guess that answers my question of the validity of the first call.
The funny aspect of this story is that since the original call I’ve received at least four additional calls in the past six years and now whenever I get that call my first question to the person on the other end of the line is “what company are you with?” And, as it happened before, they always hang up instantly.
The disturbing aspect of this story is that somehow my contact information along with the information regarding the exact make and model number of the copier was obtained by the company that called. That doesn’t really make me feel that great about my privacy nor the privacy of my company. I understand that many companies need access to information that helps them to sell their products and that there are many companies that sell customer information. I don’t mind getting junk mail informing me of products that exist but when I’m contacted by a company that’s passing themselves off as someone I already do business with it makes me apprehensive about what type of sneaky business practices we’re going to see the more we move towards internet based business and sharing of information.