Call center rep wanted too much info

From our University of Minnesota student reporter, Jessica Van Berkel:

Last November, Tom Driscoll of Tonka Bay was adding minutes to his Virgin Mobile USA cell phone account when the call center representative started asking "uncomfortable" questions, like his mother's maiden name and the three numbers on the back of his credit card.

Driscoll gave out the information because he thought he had to. That day, someone in California used his credit card to buy Sony PlayStations, charging up "hundreds of dollars."

The next day, he reported the identity theft to another Virgin Mobile USA customer representative who assured him the issue would be taken care of, Driscoll said. He went ahead and canceled his credit card.

Instead of investigating the fraud, Virgin Mobile USA cut off Driscoll's service when his credit card payments wouldn't go through. Driscoll contacted the company once again to see what was going on, and again, the case wasn't reported to the fraud department. For the next two months, Driscoll called 20 times but failed to get Virgin Mobile USA to turn his phone back on.

Then he contacted Whistleblower last month. Days later, he got an apology, a restoration of his service and one month of free use of his phone.

"Please know that we take any potential advisor fraud extremely seriously and do not tolerate this behavior from our customer care representatives," said Corinne Nosal, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey-based company. "Rest assured that the appropriate measures will be taken."

"It's been a cold, hard winter thinking something's going to be resolved, something's going to be done. But it never was," said Driscoll, who owns a fitness center.