Pro-tip after you read this thread: Every financial institution is aware of this sort of issue. Ask for a “desk name” or internal extension and call back via a known good number. No apology required. It doesn’t significantly inconvenience the person you’re talking to.
The other pro-tip for navigating call trees at financial institutions: call their private bank or other elite service line and say “Hey I was just talking to the Fraud Department but got disconnected; can you transfer me? James Smith was his desk name.”
A “desk name” is a pseudonym which is sometimes per-employee, sometimes per-interaction, and sometimes shared (hence the name). For fairly understandable reasons, customer-facing folks who deal with criminals in the ordinary course of business often don’t work under real names.
A subtext to this conversation which is totally intentional: when you demonstrate that you are extremely sophisticated about things like this you say to front end reps “I’m either in the finance industry or a fraudster so either way you DO NOT want to take this call.”
In other news: you’d be surprised how much mileage I got out of paying for college by working in a call center.
