[wolfgang42]

The first time my insurance company did this to me, the woman who called me (from a random phone number that didn't belong to the insurance company) sounded confused about why I wasn't going to give some random person my PII. When I called their 800 number, I was on hold for 20 minutes before they finally tracked down the entry in my account explaining why they had called.

Apparently, every time I order medical supplies they call me to tell me that they've sent a Very Important Letter, but they can't say what it is. When it arrives the next day, it informs me that they've approved my request for the supplies, which by this point have already arrived a week and a half ago.

It's gotten to the point where the calls now go like this:

    Them: Hi, this is [insurance company], can I have your date of birth please?
    Me: Is this about the letter you've sent?
    Them: ...Yes?
    Me: OK, I'll keep an eye out.
    Them: Erm... right. Have a nice day!

I have no idea what the moral of this story is.

[lostlogin]

This is so awful. I once got randomly selected to be a survey participant by a government agency while I was building a path. It was on the effect on my life of an earthquake thousands of kilometres away (there wasn’t any). They claimed I was legally obliged to participate or would be prosecuted. ID was produced etc. He sat and fired random questions at me while I broke concrete with a sledgehammer for an hour. I’d give the shotest possible answer, because I was breathless and the time between swings wasn’t long. Then they did follow up calls once every week for a year at the same time each week. These were were never answered and the messages were not returned. I have no idea why your story reminded me of this, but it triggered the same rage centre.

[jandrese]

Unless that was the census I would be extremely dubious of "you must take this survey or go to jail, trust me I'm from the government".

[lostlogin]

It was The Ministry of Statistics census people doing some work post the Christchurch earthquake.