I paid an insurance bill yesterday by telephone to avoid the stress of attempting it online. Still, providing my name, address and phone number was not enough.
Certainly one name can serve several people, but you’d think that when an address is added, the chance of duplication is virtually eliminated, and a telephone number should assure exclusivity.
Originally, ZIP codes added five digits to our addresses. Such a numerical sequence could provide a different number for each of 99,999 communities — more than twice the number in the U.S. Now, four optional digits may be added to ZIP codes so just short of a billion individual locations could be identified.
Currently, domestic telephone numbers total 10 digits. With that sequence, a discrete number could identify every human being in the world, some 6.6 billion of us. According to projections, there would be sufficient numbers to cover everyone expected to be alive beyond 2150.
But was all that potential for identifying me enough for my insurance company? Not by a long shot. I also had to provide my personal billing ID number of eight digits, a bill account number of 10 distinctly different digits, plus my policy number of 11 mixed numbers and letters. Across the bottom of my invoice was a composite number which was probably required for computerized record- keeping that amounted to 60 digits. Sixty digits, I suspect, would comprise more than enough discrete numbers to identify every grain of sand on the Earth.
My wife and I booked a trip abroad several months ago. They identified us by a tour number (eight letters and numbers), customer number (six digits), and reservation number (nine digits). The company’s formal invoice number constituted 23 unique digits. When circumstances required our canceling that trip, we were issued a six-digit claim number plus a different six-digit incident number.
Our HMO, like our dentists and banks, demands our Social Security number (9 digits). The HMO then creates a slightly different number. You might think that number would be enough to allow me to e-mail my doctor, but it’s not. I have to log in my 27-character web mail ID, followed by my eight letter password. But communication with my doctor necessitates a different, HMO-required ID of 17 letters, plus another password of eight different letters.
This is a great deal for a man of 70 to remember.
I appreciate that some of the numeric and alphabetic sequences I’ve noted are organizational codes important for marketing and/or accounting categorization — but why should the customer be responsible for retaining them and providing them for personal identification? The potential of the computer should have simplified, not complicated, our lives.
When I was a boy, we knew who we were and could communicate that quite easily. We went by our names, and rarely our address. I recall my grandfather lifting his telephone receiver, turning a crank to ring “central,” and saying, “Agnes, get me Furman, please; he’s either home or at the drugstore.” That was all. If Furman wasn’t where Granddad thought he was, Agnes usually knew where he’d gone.
According to the February 2008 issue of Smithsonian, in 1878 there were just 50 telephone subscribers in New Haven, Conn., whose names only appeared in the telephone directory. The following year they were assigned the very first telephone numbers. And I believe it’s been downhill ever since.
Stuart Clark Rogers (srogers@du.edu) of Highlands Ranch is retired clinical professor of marketing at the University of Denver.
