Apparently a bike is stolen every 71 seconds somewhere in England – with central London the no 1 hotspot.
….tell me about it, i’ve has 3 stolen in London on the last 3 years, all locked in public places.
What’s this got to do with supplier management? Well – I have a view that the ‘bike industry’ is at least partly responsible for these high numbers. Each time i’ve had a bike stolen i’ve gone back and got a new one. Each time the seller is understandably sympathetic, for at least half a second, before launching into….what bike do you want, of course you’ll need two locks, a digital tag and some insurance.
And I doubt very much if the bike manufacturers, or the insurance companies are too worried about it either.
Just how difficult can it be to produce a theft proof bike. This is probably the first time ever i’ve thought that maybe I should have done that engineering degree!!!!
Wiping your new PC and starting again gets rid of ‘crapware’…
FSA warns insurers to improve cold calling standards
by Joanne Payne Brand Republic 26-Apr-07, 10:00
LONDON – The Financial Services Authority has said that firms must improve the standards of cold calling when selling general insurance over the telephone to ensure they are treating their customers fairly.
The FSA has reviewed a sample of 43 firms to look at their sales process, systems and controls and whether they were treating customers fairly when selling services by telephone. The review found that the general standard of sales was acceptable, although disclosure of significant exclusions and limitations could be improved.
However, the FSA found that the standard of sales was poor when insurance policies such as personal accident insurance health cash plans and accident and sickness insurance were sold through cold calling.
The main weaknesses were found in training programmes, supervision of staff and a lack of management information other than for sales and call volumes.
Vernon Everitt, director of retail themes at the FSA, said: “The quality of cold calling in general insurance was disappointing — consumers were pressurised and the benefits of the product were sometimes exaggerated.
“We expect to see significant improvements when consumers are cold called. Swift action has been taken to deliver these improvements at the firms we visited and we are following up with other firms which use cold calling as part of their sales strategy.”
Such action included: voluntary suspension of sales until deficiencies have been rectified; reviews of rejected claims to ensure that they had not been rejected where the customer may have been led to believe that they were properly covered and; agreement to assess future claims on the basis of what customers were actually told at the point of sale in cases where the sales person did not follow the sales script.
It has emerged that in 2005, personal details of over 100,000 Bulldog Broadband customers were stolen.
Bulldog was under the ownership of Cable & Wireless at the time but has since been taken over by Pipex. Cable & Wireless has pledged to investigate the security breach.
James Brown, Managing Director of Bulldog Internet, told The Guardian newspaper: “Our understanding is that, following an external enquiry by Cable & Wireless, it has become apparent that at some point in December 2005, Cable & Wireless had some of their customer contact details illegally obtained by a third party. This resulted in a small number of their customers receiving unsolicited calls.”
While it hasn’t been made clear exactly what details were “illegally obtained”, although one of the affected consumers has apparently contacted The Guardian since and told them that the details included credit card and bank account details.
Despite this, a Cable & Wireless spokesperson insisted that none of the 100,000 customers had experienced their cards or accounts being accessed or used illegally.
“We are already taking appropriate legal action against the third parties that we believe may be responsible for this unauthorised use of our customer data,” she added.
