Bank of America robocall grieving widow 48 times a day - How it really works

snooper2

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Sep-09-11 09:31 AM
Original message

Bank of America robocall grieving widow 48 times a day - How it really works

Edited on Fri Sep-09-11 09:42 AM by snooper2

Anybody here know what an Autodialer is? That other thread is full of so much misinfo I had to purge my pretty little brain (Is babs still alive?)

Well, if you are running a collection agency, a good chunk of your monthly budget is spent on telecommunications. I don't know if BoA(Bank of America) has that in-house, or outsourced, but works the same way.

You can configure the autodialer with list of TN(telephone number) to be dialed, and there are variations/options in the rotation. Obviously the lists can be from thousands to hundreds of thousands of TN. A lot of these have moved from a TDM(time division multiplexing) to SIP(session initiation protocol) environment over the past five years, and if you are on the provider side you kind of frown on this type of traffic for a number of reasons.

First off, these call types have a high CPS with a low call hold time. Nothing worse for capacity planning your network, and also it taxes your switching systems. (CPS - calls per second; Hold time is the duration of the call) Last thing I want is a customer anchored to one of our edge switches trying to send me 30-40CPS with a completion ratio of 10-15% and average hold time of 17 seconds. But there are providers who specialize in this type of traffic and in most cases a premium is charged by the provider.

On the autodialer side, there is a lot of flexibility. I know of another of companies who wrote their own code and usually have it running on an Asterisk box. COTS(common off the shelf) solutions, even the shitty ones, let you configure how often a number is dialed, how the pool is routed, even the CPS settings. Also, you can set how the number rotates back in the pool based on whether the call was connected or not. That's why sometimes if you answer your phone and you realize it was a collection agency and hang up real quick, within a minute or so it will dial your TN right back. This is to cover cases where the call was inadvertently disconnected.

On the comments about the CLID(calling line identification) and blocking, that is basically a free for all. Sometimes they just call as private or blocked, sometimes it's an 8xx number they want people to call back into for missed calls, sometimes they spoof the CLID. FCC rulings actually have specific verbiage around collection agencies and what they can and can't do. Makes for some interesting readings if you want to go goooooogleees it :)

So anyway, now you know. BoA was completely bullshitting the masses with this comment-

"The bank told the widow that it was unable to stop the calls until the debt was paid as they were computer generated."

But in reality it was probably an outsourced company running the autodialer, and a couple BoA telecom guys had the basics on how it was running. Oh, and the voice trunks/circuits would be dedicated to this traffic. It's not like there is some evil dungeon with a bunch of nubs calling the same numbers over and over and over with their pointer finger :rofl: . When the call is connected, then the puter' bridges up an ext. to the call center- (rings phone on desk of next available agent).

So, now you know. You can go home and tell mom and dad you learned something at school today :)

ON EDIT- Added some additional information on acronyms so folks don't have to gooooooogggless those too...