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Harassing Phone Calls From HSBC
I received a call a couple of days ago. The person that called (I will refer to the caller as Eve) had some information about telephone calls her family received. If you have an account with any of over 60 merchants as listed on the bottom of this page you may be at risk. With identity theft, even if you do not have an HSBC account you may be at risk. Read this article for more on this true story from May 2005.
Telephone numbers were recorded on caller ID, from Household International, Household Financial, and HSBC. Eve tried to answer the calls at first. The result was hearing a series of clicks and beeps. Eve did not get a voice message, recorded or live. Eve tried to call the number shown on caller ID. There was no answer and the connection would be terminated. I verified the information by calling two of the telephone numbers on the list.
The earliest calls were received at about 9:00 AM, the latest calls at 8:58 PM, as recorded by caller ID. In three days more than 38 calls were received generated by 32 different numbers. Due to insufficient memory on the caller ID device, some numbers were omitted. Calls from the following numbers were reported:
| 847-498-0185 847-498-8812 847-513-0033 847-513-0181 847-513-0183 twice 847-513-0186 847-513-0187 847-513-0188 847-513-0191 twice 847-513-0192 847-519-0182 847-562-8595 847-562-9102 847-562-9256 |
847-562-9263 847-562-9264 847-562-9269 847-562-9276 847-562-9279 847-562-9285 847-562-9289 847-564-4981 847-564-5019 847-564-5074 847-564-5129 847-656-8690 3 times 847-656-8934 847-753-9793 |
Eve contacted a customer service representative at 800-340-7866. Jacqueline James was the name provided by the CSR in India. Ms. James told Eve that it may be an attempt to fax, and she would try to resolve the problem. She gave Eve an address to forward her written complaint.
HSBC
PO Box 4592
Buffalo, NY 14240
The calls were generated by an auto-dialer from telephone numbers listed as HI, HF, or HSBC. The grouping of the telephone numbers indicate the calls were made from a call center (possibly more than one), using whatever outbound line was available during the initiation of the sequence. Whether it was a recorded message that malfunctioned or an attempt to fax remain to be seen. Eve's description of hearing a series of "clicks and beeps", did not sound like the normal "screech" of fax negotiation tones.
In my conversation with Eve, she told me they had the same telephone number for 3 years, had not knowingly applied for credit or received credit from Household International, Household Financial, or HSBC. She did not know how HI, HF or HSBC got her number or why they would be calling her. She wanted the calls to stop. She was very concerned about why the calls started in the first place.
From the FDIC Fair Debt Collection Regulation the following is a violation:
"Causing a telephone to ring or engaging any person in telephone conversation repeatedly or continuously with intent to annoy, abuse, or harass any person at the called number."
Proving intent may not be possible, however the calls were annoying and abused the normal systems in use by Eve. The calls overloaded her caller ID blocking out information on other calls they may have received and filled the answering machine so no messages could be recorded. Important messages, that ordinarily would have been recorded and returned.
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