Whistleblower: I was forced to harangue OAPs

A CALL centre worker paid to ‘harangue’ the elderly to make charity donations revealed yesterday how she was forced to quit because the practices were so ‘awful’.

Lucy Draper worked for a call centre that was subcontracted by several charities to get donations.

She said: ‘Every week it would change and we would call on behalf of a different charity.

‘I quit after two or three weeks because of the practices of where I

was working and the fact they actively encouraged us to harangue people and hound them and not take no for an answer and you had certain targets to meet and if you didn’t meet those targets you’d lose your job.’

Miss Draper, who didn’t want to name her previous employer, told Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2 that the final straw came when she was calling on behalf of a blindness charity. She said: ‘The lady I was speaking to said that her son was actually registered as deaf so she gave all her finances to the deaf charities and I said “Oh that’s fine, I’m really sorry for bothering you, I hope everything goes well”, and my supervisor came over to me and said “Why did you just let that call go? You should have kept going, you should have kept pressing her, kept pressing her”.

‘I didn’t feel comfortable with it so I left that day.’

Miss Draper, who lives in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, added: ‘In those call centres it was awful the things I heard people say. People really putting pressure on.

‘I didn’t know who they were talking to but it could have been anyone, i t could have been someone like Olive.

‘I thought it was disgusting the way they had absolutely no compassion and the pressure the people working there were being put under.’

‘Really putting pressure on’