To have reported this in work today?

[Sunshineforeverandever]

I work in a press office. Someone (claiming to be a journalist, I can’t verify that he was) called us this morning with a media enquiry, he provided me with a booking reference for the customer that his article was going to be about. I spent a large part of the day diligently investigating his media enquiry and it turns out the booking reference he gave me doesn’t exist on any of our internal systems and we had no record of the customer (he gave us their name) being involved with our company either. I decided to pass this to our legal team to investigate as I don’t think he was contacting us in good faith. My colleague (junior to me) says I overreacted by passing this to legal to look into to. Was I being unreasonable? I’m almost certain his enquiry wasn’t genuine (a few more reasons why but can’t go into them on here).

I didn’t disclose any sensitive information to him and he didn’t ask for any. He just wanted a statement on a customers experience with poor customer service from our company.

Do you actually know what GDPR is? How can there have been a GDPR breach when the customer doesn’t exist?

You're being belt and braces. If legal aren't concerned it'll take the person responsible a few minutes to respond to you. I don't think you've done anything wrong.

I agree with other posters that you should report this to colleagues if in doubt, so I think you did the right thing. Do you have a customer services team you could have approached, to check if the customer the caller mentioned was actually genuine?

Yes we do and it was actually customer services who confirmed to me that the booking reference didn’t exist

So have you seen the published story OP? I presume it will be online.

Nope can’t find it anywhere, part of the reason why I’m not sure if he’s genuine

I am wondering what he had to gain? Very odd.

I thought this too, it was all very odd

He was fishing for a comment that he could turn into a story, surely?

Yes but the way he went about it was all just very odd

Was the booking number even in the format you use?

Yes it was

I’m not even sure he was a journalist if I’m honest

If the customer name didn't exist on your system why did you need to spend a lot of time looking into it? Presumably that was the first piece of information you asked for

I have no idea of the internal procedures in your workplace so can't comment on whether the action was appropriate

Check his name on Gorkana. I think you’ve massively overreacted if you’re head of department.

In my opinion you are giving this way too much headspace. You are not obliged to bow to callers’ demands. There was no booking reference so nothing to see here. Reporter could well be bona fide who has been given false information by weirdo. But them saying, too late, already published, doesn’t ring true. Just doesn’t happen when there is no story which there isn’t in this case.
probably some twat with an axe to grind.

He wasn’t on Gorkana

I wonder if it was someone clumsily trying to get a “refund” for something they haven’t paid for. I saw a programme once where a guy would buy things and then ring and make up a complaint and demand compensation and was open about the fact he did it and made money from it. It’s not a leap that some idiot would try to do it with a fake booking number. Especially if they haven’t been back in contact.

You were uncomfortable about something that could affect the company you work for so its reasonable that you wanted another person's view of the situation. Your problem is that you don't know who to discuss this with. Legal, HR or your boss or owner (depending on how many management layers).

I think your question should be "who should I report to if there's another time" rather than "should I have".

Ignore your junior colleague, there's a reason they are junior.

I run a press office and my comment would be “we actively encourage customer feedback and take complaints extremely seriously. We have been unable to identify this particular customer from the details provided. Providing a high standard of service for our customers is always a priority so we would ask that mr smith contacts our customer experience team to enable us to investigate further.”

I would also speak to the editor to establish likelihood of an error in the reference number or malicious libel, requesting the unsubstantiated story is removed until further evidence is provided.

I have done this. I sent a very similar email to him and put on the end that we have passed it to legal. I will also be contacting his editor tomorrow

You're the head of department but are worried about what a junior colleague says and decided to post on MN for answers? You do know journalists pick up stories from here so if your rogue journalist is a journalist that frequents MN, they now have a great story about your company fishing for advice on social media.
As for passing it to legal - with literally no details - it sounds like you over-reacted but legal will just bat it back to you. And your manager will have a chat with you about processes if they feel you've misjudged it.

He did give us an email for the customer (her email wasn’t on any bookings on our system either as we checked again when he sent the email to us) so we passed that to customer services and they reached out to her but the customer (If they even exist) hasn’t got back to customer services yet.

I work in media relations and YANBU.

I’ve had customers call me pretending to be journalists and journalists calling me trying to get special treatment in legal matters relating to their own behaviour by telling me they’re journalists who will cover is negatively if we don’t pull strings for them. They get reported to their editor and to Legal.