Scary service

One of the things I now have to do as a home owner is keep my bank satisfied that the house is appropriately insured. This week is the 1st anniversary of taking out the insurance.

So, I just registered with my insurer's rather nifty website, going through a series of screens to prove that I knew both the policy details and my own personal details. All very normal in this day and age. I was duly rewarded with a page showing the details of my house insurance, including the fact that I had renewed the policy.

It even had the option to e-mail a 'certificate of currency' (in fact this was what induced me to register). So I rang the bank to see if their was an e-mail address to send it to as well as the mail, fax and phone options I already knew about.

The man in the call centre told me that, because I hadn't changed any details of the policy, all I had to give them was the new insured value. I did so, he told me what the previous value had been, and said something like "there you go, you don't have to worry about it for another year". I thanked him and hung up.

Just then I realised something: I hadn't told him who I was!

Everything in the conversation strongly indicated, though, that he knew exactly who I was. From my phone number.

I don't know whether to be impressed or a bit frightened. I'm so used to people asking for my name, date of birth, account number, password and so forth that it was a bit of a shock when I prepared myself for that ritual and it didn't happen. No doubt this was partly because what I wanted to do was rather trivial. All that could happen was a little box being ticked in the system to say 'leave this person alone for 12 months'.

Still, it would have been nice if he'd used my name, just to reassure me.