Oh, ffs...
I'm all in favour of trying to identify fraud, but honestly....
Why stop there? Why not insist we all write our claim forms by hand and employ graphologists? Or get us to send in photos of our heads and employ phrenologists?
Researchers at BT, working with UCL, have been looking at voices to see what's stopping the machines from working out how you feel as well as what you're saying. Today's call centres routinely use stress analysis to see if callers are lying, despite the fact that such systems generally don't work, but up at BT's Adastral Park …
Premiums dropped? are you new to this planet?
Premiums will of course go up, to pay for all the expensive technical equipment the poor insureers need to purchase and maintain in their ongoing fight against the lowlife scum that screw it up for everybody, and of course for the new executive cars, Jet and racehorses.
So it's OK to commit a little fraud here and there? Ever-so-"slightly" jacking up the price of something that you bought 10 years ago, or claiming that your wallet had more cash in it than it actually did? Or "dropping" your (probably already broken) laptop/TV/computer/whatever down the stairs? Claiming that your kids dropped your (again, probably already broken) phone in the toilet while they were playing?
And I always thought that voice-stress-testing-at-insurance-companies thing was bunk anyway - one of things that you always hear about but can never actually confirm. Any fraud analyst worth his salt should be able to spot inaccuracies and inconsistencies with someone's claimed version of events. Failing that, you always have a stand-by: it's up to the customer to prove it, not for the ins. co. to disprove it.
"Premiums dropped? are you new to this planet?
Premiums will of course go up, to pay for all the expensive technical equipment the poor insureers need to purchase and maintain in their ongoing fight against the lowlife scum that screw it up for everybody, and of course for the new executive cars, Jet and racehorses."
It ain't all about the zek'tiv bonuses. The reason that so much money is spent on anti-fraud stuff is because of the reasons I outlined in my post. Joe Average claiming that his TV cost him £500 when he knows full well that it only cost £400 is still fraud. So is claiming that the replacement TV he's offered isn't as good as his old one, simply because he doesn't like the one being offered. Of course you can never prove that, so people very often get away with it. Hence the premiums go up to take into account the increased cost of incidents such as accidental damage and theft.
Working on home insurance claims was an extremely enlightening experience. I don't want to come off as cynical, but you'd be surprised at just how dishonest the average person can be - especially when dealing with insurance companies, and particularly insurance companies that are owned by banks.
all my calls are usually made with the 5 and 3 year old battering each other in the background. Either that or the 8 year old is playing something loud on the ipad. On this system they would probably think im not even who I say I am or my policy number is not the one connected to my name etc. Plus my blood starts to boil when you get put on hold and asked the same questions again, then passed to someone else who asks you again, of course you will get stress accents.
"Plus my blood starts to boil when you get put on hold and asked the same questions again, then passed to someone else who asks you again, of course you will get stress accents."
You sure you want to risk something like this?
operator #1: "hello can I take your name?"
crook: "I need to talk specifically to <operator #2>, can you transfer me?"
operator #1: "sure one moment"
operator #2: "hello can I take your name?"
crook: "yes I am Danny 14, why do I keep getting transferred?"
operator #2: "I am going to need to ask you some security questions"
crook: "*angrily* but I already did all that with the last guy before I was transferred to you!"
operator #2: "Oh okay then, what can I do for you today Danny 14?"
It's not hard for someone to tell if a cold-calling telesales person is lying. Just as soon as they say
"Hello Zir, my name is ........ William" you know you're on a loser. If the very first sentence out of their mouths is such an obvious untruth, what's the point in believing, or even listening to, anything else they say after that?
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Maybe I should use my field recorder to make some recordings of my fuckwit neighbours, who have raised door and window slamming to a sort of musique concrete art form, and whose unpleasant little toddler seems to be a fan of TVGohome's "Jump Up And Down Screaming Your Fucking Lungs Out".
This morning, I was woken by at least five building-shaking door slams in under a minute. I am probably rather grumpy as a result.
I mean, what better way to secretly gather biometrics than to use the one thing you cannot avoid in a phone call?
This is why I don't like services like Viber and Siri - you're giving a company in a nation that isn't above spying on everyone and their dog voluntarily a voice print. Now is Apple more a hardware than an info merchant, but Google voice is an obvious candidate to do the same.
Paranoid? Nope - I worked with these people. The size of their haystack is more important than the needles because the haystack draws the funds. It's not about those few needles anymore - they just form convenient excuses.
The post my "A Non e-mouse" goes to show why this isn't likely to take off any time soon.
The general public don't want HD phone calls, it sounds "weird". I turned G.722 on for internal calls in our office and it takes some getting used to.
There's no point in the businesses paying a load of money to BT for HD audio since it'll only work if the entire call path is in HD, including the physical hardware the person at home has.
People are too used to 64kbps G.711a for fixed lines and even lower quality on GSM.
I am always stressed when I talk to my insurance company (Lloyd's/TBS home insurance). They are muppets, often can't find the policy, and will sure as hell try to wriggle out of paying for anything, however obvious. Also, by the time I have got that far, I have usually been listening to horrid hold music and nerve-jangling canned announcements for ages, too.
Why don't I change? Because as with courier firms, they all suck about as much, sadly.
So yes, I always sound stressed, because talking to them is unpleasant and irritating.
Nope, not offshore, just estuary mouthbreathers who seem unable to spell, retain simple information or operate their own computers. It takes multiple attempts even to find the damn policy- and that's if you have the documents to hand. If you don't, then good luck with a name/postcode lookup.
(Actually, I am rather partial to an educated Dehli accent, it is frequently dangerously distracting. That's another issue altogether, though)
Almost by definition the majority of people calling claims departments are going to be stressed. Been in a car accident? You'd be a bit unnatural if you weren't a bit stressed. Come home to find your house broken into, or the bathroom flooded & brought down the ceiling into your kitchen? Liikewise.
They were recently considering employing voice stress analysis for people calling to claim benefits (not sure if they went ahead with that or not); well if you've ever lost your job & had to claim, that in itself is very stressful & the initial claim has to be done over the phone.
But I'm with Irongut when it comes to motorcycle sounda making me happier if anything.