Why should I supply my personal details over the phone when a bank or customer service department calls me?

[heheheheheheh]

Call on my mobile: this is John Lewis customer services, please can you confirm your name and address?

Er, no: you rang me - you should be confirming my name and address to prove to me you are who you claim to be.

Call from my bank wanting my name and date of birth before they'd tell me why they wanted to talk to me.

Again: I'm not giving personal info out in response to an unsolicited call

In both cases (this week) I told the caller that unfortunately I couldn't take the call as I wasn't willing to give my personal details out without proof of who I was talking to. The chap from John Lewis seemed to think this was preposterous, yet he told me he couldn't tell me what he was calling about until he confirmed my identity!

AIBU here or is it flipping cheeky for companies to expect people to divulge details on the phone when cold called?

It could be a scam - also they can keep the line open, so when you call back, you are talking to the same person. Always call back on a different line or wait 10 mins.

The point is if I call them, it's totally fair that I should authenticate myself as anyone could call John Lewis pretending to be heheheheheh.

But if they call me, they should authenticate themselves to me. They have called my number which is a reasonable (although not fail safe) means of knowing who they're talking to but I have totally no idea if I'm talking to my bank or some random criminal.

There was a thread about this between capital one and some dude on MSE. Capital one caved in the end though it had me in stitches.

If a provider rings me they tell me either a dd, standing order or purchase to confirm they are real before I give details. Or I ring back on another phone in case they do that line holding scam like with the stolen card.

Yabu to be annoyed at people doing their job to protect your info. What if they had a digit wrong in your number (either your fault or theirs) and they give all your info out to a random person who answers the phone? You'll be complaining then I'm sure.

I work in inbound customer service and people get cross about security questions then, which is thoroughly unreasonable. However when I do make outbound calls its almost always regarding a previous call (so they recognise my voice and my name) or about something they've sent in so I can refer to that. However, I and all my colleagues would never pressure someone to disclose info if they say they don't know who we are. I always give my full name and extension number and our phone number, tell them they can check it online or against previous letters they've had etc, so they know it's genuine, and call us back and whoever they speak to can verify that I am who I claim to be. I'll also describe what they've sent without giving out actual personal details.

I did have to laugh at one lady recently though, after answering all my questions and giving her bank details, she asked did I work for my company, I said yes, she asked if I was sure, I said yes. I then described what I had from her and assured her she was welcome to call us and verify that I was genuine. I think she was reassured!

Yanbu to be concerned and to politely refuse to answer questions and insist on calling them back on a number you already have. And any genuine caller should respect that. But yabu to be rude and make "funny" patronising comments to the callers unless they are rude first.

Yanbu but don't then get annoyed if there is something wrong with your account And you only find out days later by letter.
Yes it's irritating but it's not something that will change.

lists not a scam, banks call their customers regarding their accounts or mortgages being in debt all the time!

toadsthat won't work as ( or shouldn't) as you then wouldn't pass id checks so hopefully they wouldn't continue the call.( if they did then they're not very good. If it was someone else answering my call i wouldn't want them knowing who was calling me.

YANBU - I've argued this for some years - there's no way I'm giving out that information to someone who calls me, they could be anyone.
Fair enough - I'm pleased they do the ID checks if I contact them, but, like you, I won't give any information like that out on the phone to anybody.

I got a bit pissy with a woman who had called me about my debt.
She said that some of my creditors had informed her that i hadn't paid my bills on time and wanted to know if i was having trouble managing my debt.
I asked her the names of the creditors and she said she couldn't tell me because it was personal information. So i told her i wasn't giving her any information until she told me who the creditors were. We went round in pointless circles until she hung up. I haven't had one of those calls since. I'm happy.

So totally YANBU

After major ID fraud a few weeks back anyone calling me and asking for verification (and there have been lots of genuine ones necessitated by our reporting of fraud and credit and loan applications in our names) get a stock response of "if you're going to ask for verification from me I'm afraid I have recently experienced ID theft and I dot. Give out any information on the phone. I will call you back on the number I have for your company"

Incredibly varied responses going from incredulity to (thank you Cahoot) "oh that's fine, I'll email you to remind you now and put a note on your online banking"

It's got to be sorted somehow - it's a massive flaw