Un. Be. Lievable.

Hahaha, that's just great. There's nothing better than a pissed off CSR handling your data!

Wow. If I were told that pens and papers were verboten, I'd be so screwed. Besides, I'm so paranoid about my clients private information being shared that I have anything with that info shredded - even if it's just their name and a phone number.

You can't have pens or paper, but that flash drive is just fine...no worries there.

Most prisoners are allowed paper and some sort of writing instrument

Ironic since Sarnia, Ontario is such a nice and quiet place. It'll be interesting to read about the increased murder/suicide/violence rate in that city :P

Ummm isn't it easier to copy/paste or Printscreen a bunch of jpg's? What about the notepad on each of their phones?

Never mind... this is the mobile phone industry I'm talking about. Black IS white and vice versa.

lunacy....

CSR's should have to take a pill after work to erase their memories of that day. You know... just in case they remember any customer data.

for call centers located prisons, this is pretty standard...

solution, a laminated sheet of white paper, and a dry erase marker. That's neither paper nor pens!!

Actually this is for our protection, to prevent them from writing down confidential information and forcing all notes to be written digitally into their computer database.

Call centers in other countries have done this for years, to prevent someone who's making $1.00 an hour from writing down a credit card number and selling it.

They probably prohibit cellphones for the same reason to prevent the use of cameras to trap info.

I'm all for this.

Such an awesome rule. It's not like these people have small organic devices more powerful than any computer that they leave with every day.

It's hard to believe you can get hired anymore if your typing is slower than your handwriting. I guess you're just limited to crappy jobs that like to treat you like a misbehaving child. Like Tmobile call centers.

When I was a CSR/tech support, pen & paper were REQUIRED... and in fact, they were absolutely necessary. I couldn't imagine trying to do that job without them.

@djanes1:
It's no joke--another reason why we should be nice to the CSR--piss them off and when they get parole...well, you know what can happen!

Who would you trust with your credit card number: an Indian college grad, or an American felon?

In 2004, USA Today [www.usatoday.com] reported:

About a dozen states - Oregon, Arizona, California and Iowa, among others - have call centers in state and federal prisons, underscoring a push to employ inmates in telemarketing jobs that might otherwise go to low-wage countries such as India and the Philippines. Arizona prisoners make business calls, as do inmates in Oklahoma. A call center for the DMV is run out of an all-female prison in Oregon.

an article from NPR [www.npr.org] comments:

Labor unions and some states say they believe it's too much of a security risk to have prisoners talking to the outside world, even if they're being monitored. Private businesses say it's also a security risk to have prisoners taking down customers' credit card information.

Ben, I gotta say I just love your method of randomly inserting punctuation in odd places. Do you have a comma-shaker that you just sprinkle over these entries, or what?

@dotcomrade: Holy crap!

@unklegwar: I now have the BEST visual in my head of someone using one of those large shakers for larger herbs except it's full of commas (which is giving me flashbacks of The Phantom Tollbooth).

I think they just need to finally get around to installing the memory holes in their office.

@unklegwar: commas, are great.

I agree with Tzepish. It is way too hard to do a job without Pen and Paper sometimes, and taking notes to keep your head straight isn't a bad thing at all.

When I worked in a call center, we were forbidden to write down credit card numbers. That was fine with me; they're pretty easy to type down into whatever program we needed quickly enough. This sounds WAY too extreme, though.

When I worked at an AT&T call center last summer we were not allowed to have pens/paper. Doing so would result in a firing or so I heard during training.

This is not uncommom, I used to work at a call center for a certain, un-named Finnish mobile phone manufacturer and they would not let us bring in our own mobile phones. I worked at a call center for an un-named web service that lets you download audio books and they would not allow paper or pens either. They also made you pay for coffee, parking and your own headset, so I bet you can tell how much fun working for those jerks was.

When I worked at a credit card company in 2005, we weren't allowed pens/paper out on the desk either. In my first week there, three employees (two working together) were let go for fraud -- as they took the call, they take down (on pen and paper) all the details -- cc#, cvv, dob, security question answers, etc -- and resold to third parties for a mint.

And yes, you could text some 3rd pty this same info, but trust me, it's easier to write it all down while on the phone and look like you're working than it is to text someone the info and look like you're seriously doing your job. Also, you can scramble/block cell phone signals. Kinda hard to block someone giving another person data off a piece of paper.

@hi: That mind-erasing drug is called Jack Daniels.

@unklegwar: Commas, they're, like, jimmies, for text!

I work for T-Mobile in a T-Mobile owned call center. The call center in the article is not owned by T-Mobile, but is a "Service Parter" also known as an Outsourcer. The policy of no paper/no pen does not apply to all T-Mobile call centers. Startek is the first one I've heard of that does that... Kinda stupid if you ask me. In our call center, everyone has some sort of paper/writing device. Our facilities team even provides pads of paper and pens to the reps on the phones.

@James Gamble: Having worked at StarTek I can safely say that everything they do is in fact... very stupid.

@James Gamble:

Ah, thanks, that clears it up. I just skimmed the consumerist's thing at first and was really confused...since T.Mo employees are usually in great moods, and ever since Nokes showed up, the CSRs tend to be respectable, ie not the type to try to pull this crap!

This has "made life considerably less pleasant for them...There are a number of reps who write faster than they type, so they use a notepad as a sort of buffer."

I think it's dumb that they have to ban pens and paper, but this is probably a habit a call center would want their reps to kick anyway. Writing information down and then typing it into the computer results in wasted seconds you could be spent taking another phone call.

Anytime I saw this, it was for one of two reasons:
1) The rep was writing novels in the call notes instead of using shorthand used company-wide
2) The rep typed 15wpm

In short, type less and type faster.

/threadjack

@evslin: Or worse, writing notes down, then moving on to the next call and never actually entering the notes into the record. Resulting in countless Consumerist posts that include something like, "... but the next rep I talked to didn't have any record of what the first rep said would happen."

Not too mention even if they are not stealing information, what about after they type it in? Does it get shredded? I doubt it. This is not new. The telemarketing place i worked for did the same thing and we never took any information other than the address. Then we'd mail the paper that they would put all their sensitive info on.

Woah, I'm from Sarnia. And hearing that is not a surprise... everyone who works at the call center hates it there.

I'm on leave right now from my call center job because of a broken left hand...obviously I can still type (a bit slowly with just my left thumb free) and mouse OK, but since I'm a lefty I can't take notes, which on my usual 10 hour shift take up 3 or 4 big notebook pages.

If I can't take notes I can't give good service on long calls. Of course, I could just not give a crap, like 99% of the call center reps I've ever dealt with (including plenty in my own company), but I'd rather not work than work poorly.

Maybe the nature of the accounts/calls T-mobile gets don't require note taking? I just know I get pissy when I've already explained problems in detail and then get asked about those details 30 seconds later.

I always wondered how safe my data (bank account, ss# etc etc) is among lowly paid foreign call center workers.

I have nightmares about my life's savings disappearing into some lowly paid call center employees account.

I worked a brief stint in a call center. We weren't allowed to have any paper or pens/pencils, but each workstation had a 9x12" dry erase board and a dry erase marker.

I worked at call centers back in my college days and we weren't allowed pens/paper or any electronic devices on the call floor. All personal possessions had to be kept in your locker. People got fired pretty quickly for bringing anything other than their name badge and headset to the floor. We had no assigned seats, so there was no decorating cubes. You couldn't even take out your wallet. Oh, and our compys didn't have internet, so no email either.There was also a guy beating a drum up front to keep time, and we were whipped if we didn't keep our call times under 4.37 minutes.

If I hadn't made $18/hr I'd have quit.

Only part of this post is a joke. Yep - it's the pay!

I work at a credit card call center that's outsourced to a prison (in for a coupla counts of identity theft) I'm gonna call the author out on this article. Each cell block gets T1 lines and local gigabit ethernet connectivity (COD4 during break and after the shift ends) and we can write down whatever, wherever, we,, want.

PS Ben- Remember your visa payment is due on the 9'th

See, the weird thing is that the headline says "Tmobile Forbids Use Of Paper and Pens In Call Center" but then the article says "If they are used, they must be put back inside the desk and locked after use," which makes the headline sound inaccurate.

I think what's actually going on is that reps, after taking down your personal information, are supposed to keep that information under lock and key, not out in the open while they're out of the office.

I can't imagine being able to write faster than I type. My handwriting is already bad enough.

Yeah, this is pretty standard at call centers. I've worked in the telemarketing industry for almost three years now and for any program where a rep might have access to - or ask customers for - a credit card or social security number, pens and papers are forbidden. However, many call centers have the ability to put the customer through to an automated line where you can use your phone to key in sensitive information. They don't always tell you but if you're worried about giving a stranger your info (and we've had instances where they've used customers' credit card info to go shopping for themselves), ask if they have a secure system - the reps will never see your information.

In our call center we were not allowed pens, paper, markers, crayons, or dry erase boards. The supervisor was allowed one dry erase board to post outages on. Cellphones were to be left in cars along with any electronic device. You were not allowed to have anything posted in your cubicle, including pictures. Books, newspapers, etc were not allowed. All computers were blocked from using word, notepad and outlook. Websites were limited to internal websites. It was complete lock down so no customer information could be stolen. Why? To protect the customer. I learned to do my job without saving customer information, it was no big deal.

It appears that at least one company is grooming inmates to become CSR's after they're released from prison:

+ Watch video

It bears repeating, if you must call customer service, be kind to that person on the phone.

@full.tang.halo: Nope. At least not in the call center I worked. No writing implements of any kind or any paper. And not just left out at night...period. Ever. None on the call center floor, which meant no whiteboard and dry erase marker to put people's schedule for the day up where it could easily be seen. We also weren't allowed to have cell phones out on the call center floor either.

Nevermind that these rules were being enforced when the RFID locks on the doors weren't even being used because we had no key fobs, so anyone could walk in off the street and wander the call center, in theory.

The best though was when, like outsiderlookingn's place, we eventually had web filtering software put into use. The problem there is that the entire company was run by morons (Digital Dialogue), and pretty much anything that wasn't internal was blocked. That's a problem when you're a call center for hundreds / thousands (CU Service Center) of credit unions. Some of the CU websites would work, but at first, there were TONS that wouldn't pull up at all. They got it a little better, but even by the time I left there, there were still plenty we couldn't pull up.

They actually employ people at call centers? My God. I never can seem to get ahold of the El Dorado of customer service.

/sarcasm

Yeah, I'm not too surprised. The call center where I work recently decided to enforce a "no internet" rule since they caught someone playing online games between calls. Instead of simply blocking game sites, they have restricted us from all non-work related sites permanently; the first person who violated the rule last week was fired.
We can't even check our email during lunch or breaks - We have a list of "allowed" sites and can not go anywhere else (even for work related searches).
The worst part is that we have a weak scheduling department and frequently have 30 minutes between calls! One word: boring.

Idiocy.

This policy penalizes only honest CSRs.

Criminals are still one step ahead.

Many BofA call centers have also gone to this policy; they are allowed to use dry erase boards and pens, or Notepad on their PCs....