AN ARGOS customer has accused a delivery driver of breaching data protection laws to obtain her number and texting to ask “if she is single”.
Katie Lauren, from Hessle, East Yorkshire, shared a screenshot of a text allegedly from the driver, which she received on Monday [10 Aug].
The message explains that the sender “came and delivered to her house” earlier in the day, before going on to ask the “wild question”.
A horrified Katie shared her experience with Argos on social media yesterday [Tue], with the customer service team vowing to refer it for further investigation.
The photo shows the conversation between Katie and the alleged Argos employee.
At 5:22pm, she receives a message saying “Hey”, to which Katie asked “Who’s this?”
“Please can you tell me who this is as I don’t have your number stored.”
The response reads: “I came and delivered to your house earlier today.”
“I have a wild question to ask you I was just wondering if you were single?”
After Katie did not respond, the alleged delivery man sent a follow up message with a question mark.
Katie shared the messages with Argos, saying: “Reporting this as a GDPR breach.
“May lead to this man getting nasty, he now has my number, name, address and came into my house to deliver the item.
“I don’t know his motives; he could get malicious or share my details elsewhere!
“Yesterday I received a delivery, I opened the door asked for this to be placed in the living room, that was all I said, closed the door done.
“At 5 pm I receive a text saying ‘hey’ I ask who this is numerous times.
“Only to discover your delivery driver in the Argos lorry and uniform, has stolen my private phone number and proceeded to message me inappropriately.
“This member of staff now has my name, address and phone number, I do not feel safe knowing my data was accessed so easily and I am concerned as when I report this breach in GDPR he may react negatively.
“I am completely disgusted in both incidents of service If you can kindly respond it would be appreciated.
Shocked Facebook users responded to the post.
Louse Victoria wrote: “Wow very wrong. Sounds like Argos aren’t too fussed, poor customer service.”
Charlie Gilson wrote: “This is a gross breach of confidentiality and Argos are to be held accountable, clearly a poor vetting on delivery drivers for a start.
“Hope you get this problem solved and at least some form of compensation.”
Hana Staley wrote: “This is evil. This is why women are terrified of being harmed.”
Argos’ social media team also responded, saying: “The investigation itself would be outside the scope of what our Social Media team can advise on.”
“What I will be doing is getting all the relevant information reported to the correct team so that an investigation can be carried out.”
GDPR states that any information that can indirectly or directly identify someone falls under the GDPR regulation.
The regulation states: “The protection of natural persons in relation to the processing of personal data is a fundamental right.”
Under the regulation, personal phone numbers are seen as personal data and therefore are expected to be protected.
Argos today [Wed] confirmed they are looking into the matter.
An Argos spokeswoman said today: “We are in touch with the customer and are investigating.”
Speaking today Katie, 25, added: “I was then worried that this man had been in my house, knew where I lived, my name and my phone number.
“I didn’t know his intention for asking, or which of the two men who delivered it was.
“I then began to worry what he would do if I told him I had a partner, if he would be nasty about it or pester me etc, so I didn’t reply.
“I then started to worry if I told Argos, and action was taken or he lost his job what would he do.”
“Would he be angry at me, do something malicious or hand out my details? I’m still worried he’s seen this.
“I’d rather the guy wasn’t fired though, as I don’t want to make him mad or ruin his life, but he needs to know it is not acceptable.
“It is illegal and there are big consequences for this kind of breach from a large corporation.
“Seems like Argos don’t seem to care and the responses I have had though I won’t be dropping it, and want something significant to come from this.
