Ahem...

"because of 'data protection laws'."

Jesus H Christ, what is wrong with these morons. Are these the same data protection laws that prevented the examiner giving reasons as to why my work colleague's son failed his driving test? Yup, they wouldn't tell him or his driving instructor why he failed his driving test because of 'data protection laws'.

Idiots in control

WTF does that operator think - the boy bought the suit as a secret surpise for himself?

Please, please, please stop using the DPA as a cudgel to beat people senseless with idiotic suggestions that people cannot talk about stuff cos of DPA. If you come across this, please throw the person out of the window (if on first floor, take stairs to achieve useful height)

"a gold mine for lawyers "

Sums it all up, really!

good old daily mail.

I find it quite funny in a bizarre sort of uncomfortable ironic way.

The mail story made me laugh though,

the M&S operative even admitted "he had even had to speak to a four-year-old before."

yet M&S say "It was a one-off human error" ... sounds more like at least a two-off to me.

Perhaps they need fire this idiot and employ some people who have at least one brain cell? At least we know what gordon clown's next job won't be.

What's good for the goose...

Why is OK for the police to use laws for purposes they were never intened for, such as using terrorist laws to spy on dog owners and give teenages criminal records for having a fake ID so they can by a bottle of cheap cider. Yet it's wrong when companies use the DPA for purposes it was never intended for?

I don't agree with the misuse of the DPA, but laws are being misused all over the place

Paris, because if she used the DPA, there'd be nothing worth watching on the Web!

Jees

Better not buy any nappies from M&S or you could be waiting till your kid learns to talk before you get any customer service.

Call centers as useless

I am not surprised this sort of things happens, I am only surprised it is not reported as often. I opened a savings account for my new baby daughter and proved her date of birth etc as you usually do. About a week later the phone rings from the bank asking to speak to my daugter. Eventually I found out she was calling to offer my girl car insurance!

Paris as even she can read date of birthday!

Par for the course

My wife received her first statement for a HSBC credit card last week but hadn't received the card. A simple matter of calling up and telling them it hadn't arrived.

Unfortunately not. It took 4 people over 20 minutes to sort out something this simple. First of all they wanted to card number, something she couldn't give as she has never had the card. Then they wanted they last couple of transactions, of which there weren't any as she has never had the card. And so it went on. And on and on.

She's never called them before so has no telephone banking password set up, not accessed her account via the internet, so has no internet password set up.

How can major organisations get things so wrong?

Not just overpriced stupidity

But M&S overpriced stupidity

Paris .. even she gave up on M&S and its dumb ads

Vodafone are just as bad

I rang Voda as I needed a phone number retrieving from a past bill - as I had deleted it but knew I had rang it at a certain date and time.

When I got through, I authenticated myself with the usual PIN number, account details etc. I was then told I couldn't have the number off my own bill, as it was against Data Protection. When I tried to explain that I obviously was who I said I was because I authenticated myself, the call center monkey just said "sorry, I'm not willing to break the law for you".

Classic.

Outraged!

I'm outraged that M&S could use such an obviously insecure method of confirming identity. The caller could have asked any 7-year-old to answer the questions! They should have asked him to do an RSA signing operation (in his head) using his secret key!

<remove tongue from cheek>

As long as a package arrived, they didn't need the identity, or to confirm the identity. They only needed two questions:

"What's the tracking number on the label?"

"What's missing?"

"We're sending it now, have a nice day."

NSFW CP

You linked to a picture of a 7-year-old in his birthday suit!

Some examples of such idiocy...

This reminds me of some stuff that I have come across...

Worked for a charity for Deaf People, and some of the interpreters would help when a Deaf client gets a nasty letter from their bank.

The number of times that the bank asked to talk to the Deaf client was mad - but we only need to ask their permission...

hmmmm

Better safe than sacked?

Look at it from the view of the call centre workers for a second here - obviously this was a case of taking it way too far, but generally you'll get chewed out or stuck in a disciplinary if any call you're monitored on shows any deviation at all from standard DPA policy.

As you've probably guess I am one of these workers (tech support), and I've usually been able to work around the restriction by giving out general advice (i.e. nothing involving any account access etc) but the whole DPA thing is drilled into us because the companies are so scared of ending up in court (or worse in the press) about a breach.

Ultimately it's one of those tricky balances, but in todays legal climate who isn't going to err on the side of caution?

Reminds me of my loan at Harvey Norman..

Picture this.

Sitting in my office, niece day outside, getting through the day's work.. and a phone call on my mobile comes in (unregistered number of course).

"Hello, this is Tom, can you confirm your address please?"

"Huh?"

"Yes, this is tom from HFC; I need your address to confirm your identity."

Yeah, right I'm going to give you my personal details just because you say so. Riiight.

Fast forward a bit, and I get a vaguely threatening letter from HFC with Harvey Norman's invoice. Ok, now it's clear: Harvey Norman's banking facility is HFC.

Go to call them, and I think.. two can play that game.

"Hello, HFC how can I help you"

"Hi, this is your customer can you confirm your address?"

"No, I don't give out personal details over the phone."

Funny thing is, the above is exactly as it happened.

Re: Vodafone are just as bad.

Maybe you should have said that you weren't you but were working for Hewlett-Packard...........

Unfortunately...

Many of our laws are so badly written that the general public (to whom they apply, strangely) don't have a clue what they mean. The "laws" that we actually obey are therefore arrived at by a public consensus which attempts to interpret a mixture of hearsay, rumour.and more-or-less uninformed articles in the press about what the actual legal text means for our daily lives.

This mix is, of course, spiced up by self-interested statements from commercial bodies, trade organisations and pressure groups which seek to take advantage of any ambiguity in the law as written - and there is usually plenty of scope - to influence public behaviour to their advantage, or to persuade the public to tolerate some aspect of their own behaviour.

In an ideal world, we'd be able to ask the police or the courts to clarify the law. But the police don't know any more than the public and the courts are too expensive and risky (why would you go to court to clarify whether what you're doing is legal if there's a 50% chance you'll end up in jail?). So we just accept the "consensus" about what's legal and what isn't and get on with it.

Regrettably, the government has little interest in passing clearer laws as they are one of the worst offenders when it comes to imparting spin.

Welcome to "Cover Your Arse" Britain...

Unfortunately all the stories above are just classic examples of CYA which we are seeing more and more in this country :-(

Because we now have the sort of "No Win, No Fee" ambulance chasing litigation which has blighted the USA, laws and safeguards that have been put in place supposedly to protect *us*, the public, are, instead, being abused and exploited by businesses and even Councils and elected officials simply in attempts to excuse themselves from any liability should something go wrong.

In other words, instead of these people and groups actually trying to *help* us, they're going out of their way to *hinder* us and protect themselves.

@Reminds me of my loan at Harvey Norman..

I had something a few years ago. A caller (who turned out to be legit) asked for my mother's maiden name. I couldn't get him to understand that there was no way I'd give that sort of info to an unidentified caller.

Mine's the blue one with the red "S" on the back.

MS muppet

Surely under Parental Responsibility the mother had full right to speak and act on hehalf of her SEVEN YEAR OLD son anyway??

Idiocy

This is the problem with call centres. It's nothing directly to do with the DPA. It's call centre workers forced to read out a script and only say the words on their screen. Probably the script says "Tell them you can't do it because of the DPA". And these days you even get speech recognition software that ensures all your workers stick to the script. It's a wonderful way to run a business.

As an aside, what on earth is that "The Story of Stupid Aid" website about? Utterly incomprehensible. "He had earlier literally created a vehicle for his creativity consultancy work, ‘the world’s smallest conference centre’, a two-seater car to cater for 1:1 consultations at conferences and special events." "In his study and teaching of creativity he believes flexible thinking is at the heart of creative thinking." "He was also developing his expertise in word of mouth communications and was sensitive to the need to brand and make any message sticky. He knew from experience that you may need a legitimizer to help sanction an idea which might be regarded as outrageous." NOW THAT'S STUPID!

Ha ha!

They tried that with my young kids they would have a lot of fun. They hate using the phone and just about manage "Hello Grandma!", then off to get on with more important stuff like chasing the cat up the garden or leaving the lights on all over the house!

Typical officious num-nuts in charge decides that all the low level people, who have to take the flack from customers, are not allowed to exercise any common sense or discretion of their own so we end up with this kind of stupidity. The stupid leading the blind.

@Reminds me of my loan at Harvey Norman

I had the same thing with Halifax bank when they rang me.

"Can I speak to Mr Tanner please"

"Speaking"

"Can you confirm your mothers maiden name please"

"Once you confirm my account number to me"

"I can't give out that information until I've confirmed who you are sir..."

"I won't confirm any personal details until I know you're who you say you are..."

Round and round it went until they hung up on me.

2 months later they rang back, and have obviously changed their policies... I had

"Hello Mr Tanner, can you confirm your identity please? Your postcode is W1B 5 - can you tell me the last 2 digits please?"

Similar situation continued for 3 or 4 questions - a nice solution all round I thought.

Common sense win - for once.

RE: Idiots in control

Who else saw that program on the telly last night about benefit fraud? The people receiving and checking the forms are equally as moronic as the people fiddling the system. So yes, the idiots ARE in control. Common Sense - no - it's not allowed. Stick to the protocol, never make decisions yourself or stick your neck out and guess what.... you'll be fine in your little jobs. Oh and funny how all this benefit fraud has been going on all this time while nuLabour are in control? Anyway I'm off now to read the nuBOFH.

HSBC do this also

HSBC asked to speak to my girlfriends 6 year old son to get his agreement that they could allow his mum to operate his account on his behalf. She put him on the phone, and predictably, he did not understand the question. The result was that they would not allow his mum to operate the account until she went in person to the account branch with various forms of id and completed a paper form filling exercise.

But of course the law doesn't protect you...

...when an organisation or the goverment want to abuse it. I've had a great deal of personal information about me spread to whoever was listening by a DWP worker. You write and complain and invoke the Data Protection Act and they either laugh at you, insult you or ignore you, or in my case, all three. The Electoral Roll willingly give out your info to anyone who wants it, in spite of your current girlfriend having been repeatedly threatened and stalked by her ex. If you contact those in charge of enforcing the DPA they too ignore you or fob you off, and if you read their website carefully you see that really they have no power whatsoever. They can't shut someone down, they can't impose fines, they can only suggest and advise that the offending company or government organisation take a look at their internal procedures...yeah right.

I had a car accident where I was a named driver and after weeks of reporting the accident, dealing with the assessor and many many phone calls, it turned sour, as it always does, as the insurance company in question started breaking the law with regards transfer of ownership. So I had a go at them and low and behold, all of a sudden, because of the DPA they couldn't talk to me and had to talk to the policy holder only. Even though they'd told me everything there was to know repeatedly, already.

The DPA is a joke and only stands as another layer of bureaucracy that companies and the government can use to obstruct when it suits them, to get out of facing up to their responsibilites or putting something right, but when the shoe is on the other foot it's an empty, meaningless, unenforceable load of insulting garbage.

56 comments and not one person has mentioned...

...that the contract is between M&S and the mother - since she paid for the clothing. The fact that the clothing is for the child is irrelevant.

Thumbs down 'cos the readership is losing its touch

@ 56 comments and not one person has mentioned...

Actually to be uber pedantic the article says the boys Aunt bought the costume and gifted it to the boy - so the mother isn't technically involved at all. But thats still no excuse for the call centre employee to do what they did!