Positive (but Unsatisfactory) Resolutions

Yesterday was stressful, not going to lie. I had a lot of questions about how I’d found myself in the predicament. I was being chased for a debt that wasn’t mine, where I was specifically told someone had talked to a debt agency, given my details, and “passed security validation” with them. It was now on me to prove I wasn’t related to the debt in question. As the facts I’d been given and questions started to roll around me head, it seemed more and more likely I was the victim of identity theft/fraud.

So first thing this morning - after sending off the “proof” the debt agency had requested - I phoned up Police Scotland’s 101 phone line. The person I spoke to was lovely, and understanding, as I explained the situation and what I’d been told, gave me an incident reference, and scheduled a time for a dedicated officer to give me a call later in the week.

I then shot off another email to the debt agency, to give them the incident reference and explain I was treating this as the person who had run up the debt was committing identity theft and/or fraud and was involving the police.

Dear Reader, you’ll never believe what happened next.

A couple of hours later, I received a call from a manager at the debt agency. Still referring to “my” debt, I might add, and asking what the problem was that had seen the case passed to them. They start to take me through the “standard” verification - name, address, date of birth… only, lo and behold, my date of birth doesn’t match their file. They confirm it with me twice, just to be sure. Then they check some other details and when I explain the only reason they have those details was because I contacted them for the first time ever yesterday, they started removing them from the file. As they did, it became more and more clear to the person on the other end of the phone that I was not who they were looking for. You don’t say.

“So how did two of your colleagues ‘pass’ me through verification yesterday?” I asked. I got an unclear answer about how “sometimes the tracing software merges records that are similar enough to each other”. I’ve been in the presence of too many people and organisations who have messed up that I can tell when someone is trying to avoid any accountability, and this sounded like that. But I didn’t really get the chance to get myself straight and grill them on the details. They were trying to get rid of me, quickly. I was told my details had been removed from their files, I wasn’t responsible for the debt, and they wouldn’t be contacting me again. If something similar ever does happen again I’ve to tell whichever agency calls that it’s a “tracing error, and it’s happened before”. And with that, the call ended and I was set free.

Only, I still have loads and loads of questions about what happened, and why it was allowed to happen. Was there no verification step to check “merged records”? Was noone I spoke to yesterday paying even the slightest bit of attention to the inconsistencies in their data and what I was telling them? Or was I being dismissed and ingnored in a Shawshank-esque “Everybody is innocent in here” manner? How would this have turned out if I didn’t have the privileges I have and wasn’t able to fight my corner? More questions spawn everytime I go over events. It’s quite maddening.

But it’s seemingly over, and I don’t have to worry about this mess any more. It’s a positive outcome, but all the unanswered questions make it deeply unsatisfactory.

One of the most annoying parts of the saga is I’ve (almost certainly) tracked down the person they actually want to find. It took me a couple of the details they gave me on the phone yesterday, and less than 10 minutes in DuckDuckGo. The fact it was this easy without their extended toolset just adds to the frustration!