While I was in the middle of work this morning, my mobile phone rang.
It was a lady who said she was calling from Macromedia. She noted that I had attended a seminar before and asked if I could update my contact details. Sure, I said.
She asked if I was still with Fynch, the dotcom company I used to work at. I said no and gave her my new company’s name.
She then asked if my work email address was still xxx@fynch.com. I was slightly surprised at that question, because if I no longer worked at my old company, why would I retain my old address? Anyway, I gave her my new email address.
Then she asked me if I had purchased any ‘Micro-Media’ software lately. I became more suspicious.
“Micro-Media? You mean Macromedia??” I cut in. How could she not even know the name of the company she claimed to be working for?
“Oh yes, Macromedia,” she said hastily. She proceeded to ask me what software I had purchased from Macromedia.
“Waitaminute. If you’re working for Macromedia, wouldn’t you guys have my software registration details??” I was starting to get annoyed. No time-share apartments for me, thank you!
(To clueless or non-Singaporean readers, we sometimes get phone calls from people associating themselves with a company you’ve registered with before. The phone call usually ends up as a sales pitch for an unrelated product.)
“My company is working on behalf of Macromedia,” she clarified, sounding less sure of herself. But she probably wasn’t an imposter because she did have my old details and the name of the seminar I last attended. It was highly unlikely that a company like Macromedia would sell customer names to third parties (I did however have an entirely different experience with a local supermarket chain).
I decided this lady had probably never heard of Macromedia until this task was assigned to her. And I figured Macromedia probably hadn’t quite integrated their software registration database with the local seminar attendance records, and all they gave this agency was the latter.
So I decided to be nice and answered the rest of her questions. And no, she didn’t try to sell me anything new. *Growl*