This Won’t Be a Shock to some of you, but Verizon Wireless is absolutely obliviotic. Let me count the ways! And reveal something shocking.
Today I got a security alert from Verizon: my account email had been changed. That’s of course quite concerning! Is someone trying to take over my account and charge, say, a cell phone to my account? It’s a concern even though I closed that account last year when I ported my phone number away from VZW to a different carrier — they had my credit card info stored there.
Here’s Obliviocy point #1: “If you didn’t request this change, please call us immediately at 800-922-0204 or use the link below to contact us.” Seems totally normal, right? It does if you live in the U.S. and are currently in the U.S. Outside the U.S., you can’t call American toll-free numbers. Oops. It’s obliviocy to assume your customers are always in the U.S. all the time.
VZW “knows” I don’t have service with them anymore, and the only other way to contact them is via that button …and to “Contact Them” you first have to log in to your account. My old account credentials, saved in my password manager, no longer work. Which makes this Obliviocy point #2.
Ah! There’s a Chat function! Obliviocy point #3: their chatbot refused to connect me to a human without my logging into my account first. Round and round I went with no way to break out of the circle (other than closing the browser tab, which I did).
Now, I’m a pretty good researcher, but it still took some digging to find a non-toll-free number to call (put it in your phone if you use VZW and ever intend to travel outside the country: (908) 559-4899). I called and, after waiting 15 minutes with grating “Hold” music (“Hold” music is always awful …why?!), got a nice guy.
#4 I’ll simply call an eye-roller: he wanted to know my security PIN. Well, lessee… I have an old PIN and a new PIN. It’s an old account, so old PIN? Nope.
I tried the new PIN; right, he said, but apparently since it took two tries I had to give a second “secret” to ensure I’m the real guy. How about my email address? Well, that’s what I’m calling about. YOU think it’s X — an address that I never give out. It’s on gmail, and is my actual address there without a period in it. (Mine does have a period in it, and I never give it out without the period.)
Now, most people don’t know that with a gmail address, you can insert all the periods you want in the area to the left of the @ — example@, e.xample@, and e…x……….a…m…………………..p.l………e@ are all the same to gmail, including if your “real” address has one or more periods in it and someone leaves them out.
But, the guy said, while the “new” address was gmail, the old one isn’t. Maybe a work address? Ah! I told him my two @thisistrue.com addresses. Nope, not those, he said — “a .gov?” he asked, helpfully. Ah: indeed that sparked a memory that I did use my County email on my VZW account since that got me a discount. Bingo: he believes me now.
Obliviot point #5: if that’s the email on my account, then how did I get their security notification? How is it “secure” to send a message to say my address has changed when it’s sent to the NEW, perhaps a scammer’s, address?! My old County address is deleted, not forwarded.
Something begins to dawn on me, but doesn’t fully form at this point because I have to pay attention to what he’s telling me, and what I need from him right away.
His first order of business: he sees no activity on my account whatever (but then, how did my email address change?) My first order of business: I asked him to delete any and all payment info on my account — no bank links, no credit card info, nothing. Click – click – click – done, he said.
Enter the Bureaucracy
I told Nice Guy that I’ve now spent half an hour to address a “security issue” when the only victim possible is VZW, and that I almost wasn’t able to do that without spending 15 minutes before I called figuring out how to contact them — that here I am on the very-most-western-tip of Africa, and I can’t call American toll-free numbers from here. “Very cool!” he said of my location, and he did understand the problem. “Can you pass that up the line to give the security folks a clue?” I asked.
“I’ll note that in your account,” he said — apparently the only thing he knew how to do — but then Obliviocy point #6: he admitted it was unlikely anyone, let alone someone with any actual authority, might SEE that “note.” It’s such an eye-roller that the only way I know to get word out to someone at Verizon about their huge gaping security hole is to publish this story, knowing that someone reading this either works in Verizon’s executive offices, or knows someone who does and sends them the URL to this page. (In which case, let me know you read this so I can update the page, eh?)
Big cell companies charge top dollar as (they argue) they offer so much more “service” than the discount operators. But then they put as many roadblocks as possible between you, the person who pays, and them — “service” humans are expensive. Chatbots are relatively cheap, but they have to be programmed to deal with exceptions. When someone types “agent” again and again, and “security concern”, maybe pass the customer on to a human who can help?!
And the little cell company I use? It’s EASY to get a human on their chat system because they’re hungry and want more customers. (If you want to know who it is, I wrote about them on my Residential Cruising site. They resell service from VZW …and AT&T, and T-Mobile — you choose! — and yes, I can use my phone overseas, and at much lower pricing: less than $30/month. So you can still get the Verizon network if you want, with better pricing and better customer service. You’re welcome!)
Obliviocy Point #7
So as I hung up with the guy from VZW, I noticed movement in my gmail window as another message came in. And then another, and another. Wait’ll you see what clicked for me, when that dawning realization fully landed.
The next email: “Thank you for choosing Verizon for your recent purchase!” My eyebrow goes up. Sure enough, they bought a cell phone! So much for “absolutely no activity” on my account! Well, sort of.
Second email: “What To Do Next: Verizon Home Internet”. My eyes roll. OK, so there wasn’t any activity on “my” account with Verizon Wireless, but with another Verizon subsidiary! And their obliviotic left hand has no idea what their occult right hand is doing, even though their account system is tied together enough to send me an email from VerizonWireless.com to alert me.
What I thankfully don’t see: any charges to the credit card that was on my Verizon account.
That’s when the thing that was dawning in my mind hit home — the thing that I couldn’t pay attention to since I was on the phone with VZW: someone else gave VZW that address. MY gmail address, but without a period.
And who could possibly do that?
A few years ago I discovered there’s another Randy Cassingham, and in the most ironic of places: Florida. That discovery came thanks to him giving out my email address as his, which means only one thing — that if there has to be another Randy Cassingham in this world, he’s naturally going to be a Florida Man through and through, in that he doesn’t know his own &#$%ing email address.
But how do I know he’s in Florida? Because the first time he did it, I got the receipts for what he bought, and it showed his home address in Holiday, Florida.
When that was happening several years ago, I emailed the vendor repeatedly to complain …and they ignored me. So I called them to explain that he is decidedly NOT at my email address, and because they are selling medical devices, sending me details of his purchases could be considered a HIPAA violation, and did they know how big the fines were for such a breach? They removed my address from his account immediately, and I never heard from them again.
But here we are again, since yes, Randy Cassingham is an obliviot. Very thankfully, that particular obliviot is not me. But he has now found a company that does obliviotic things, and once again gave them MY address, instead of his. Him and VZW: a match made in obliviot heaven.
Update
The emails from Verizon Wireless continue: “Redeem your ViX Premium 12 months on us offer within 60 days.” Whatever the hell that is. “Randy, 5G Home Internet was successfully installed.” Who cares? “Randy, set up your Disney Bundle.” I doubt that’s the last one. [Update: Not by a long shot.]
Yeah, it’s on the other Randy Cassingham’s account, so it comes down to Obliviotic Point #8: Verizon has no confirmation process whatever, and I continue to get some other customer’s email messages. I’ll give Verizon one last call to demand they stop emailing me. If not, every last message will be marked as spam in my Gmail, counting against them and making it harder for actual Verizon customers to get actual account notifications.
But hey: I didn’t start this war, they did.
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Well, I was just about to volunteer to drive the 35 mi up to Holiday and explain it to him and then I read the last couple paragraphs. Maybe not.
Ha! I feel your pain, Randy! I have exactly the same problem.
Not one, not two, not three, but at least *four* people with the same name have entered my email address (without the period) as theirs:
– one in South Africa
– one in Ireland
– one in the UK
– at least one, possibly two in the US.
It took a phone call to the Australian branch of American Express before the US version would stop sending me someone’s else’s credit card statements. Same sort of problems you had with Verizon: they wouldn’t let me contact them without logging in to an account.
I’ve managed to stop most of the other incorrect emails, but I still get them sporadically from a church group in the UK, and about half a dozen a day get spamfiled from real estate agents and political organisations in Arizona (who, naturally, ignore any and all requests to unsubscribe to their newsletter).
I have a filter in gmail that if it doesn’t see the “.” between my first and last names, it will label it with “moron”. Saves me a lot of aggravation.
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😆 -rc
I also have this problem! There are a shocking number of people who share my first and last name and don’t know their actual email addresses. I’ve had my firstname.lastname Gmail account for a long time and keep a folder of misdirected emails. A sampling:
It’s mostly amusing, but it does make me wonder about people sometimes!
It could be intentional… Several years ago I started receiving emails from a hotel rewards program addressed to a “Juan A____”. The really funny thing is that they were being sent to the contact email for my company, which looks nothing like anyone’s name and very far from Juan’s — an address like “tireshop@mycompanyname.com”. I don’t know anyone with a name remotely close to Juan A.’s, and in fact I know Juan has never availed himself of the program since I get his account summary, still at zero points lol. If it’s a prank or a con it’s a long one, but in the meantime those emails provide a tiny bit of entertainment.
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I doubt it’s intentional: I’ve seen the receipts that O’Randy has paid; he’s real. -rc
They don’t teach them how to think for themselves.
My husband once worked for a company that had 2 people with the same name (common last name, non-standard spelling on the first) on the same job, and their payroll folks got their paychecks crossed. Even when he gave the woman on the phone his employee number, she didn’t want to believe him. “There aren’t enough numerals in that number.” “Lady, I’ve been in the company’s system since before you were born. Just look it up.” She finally did. Whenever he signs with them, he now checks that there isn’t another guy with the same name just in case.
I used to work in tech support. As soon as I got to “note on file” I rolled my eyes so hard I flipped over and landed on my back.
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Super helpful, ain’t it? -rc
My gmail address is my first initial and last name, and while my last name is uncommon, I do get other people’s e-mail too often. I’ve “met” several distant cousins that way. The last one I found because a service sent me a receipt, complete with home address and phone number, for a service he was paying for.
Gotta keep life interesting, right? Worst I’ve had was when we received a bill from my cell phone company several years ago showing a balance owed of MUCH more than expected. This was several years ago, I think I was still with T-Mobile at the time. Someone walked into one of their stores several hundred miles away in eastern Kentucky and bought five of the latest and greatest iPhones under my name. It took a bit but thankfully all that was cleared up and I understand they bricked all those phones remotely.
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Ohhhh… it cost them a lot of money due to their sloppiness? Good! Maybe they’ll work on cleaning up their systems. -rc
Allow me to tell a pandemic story. When the vaccine finally came out, I tried to book an appointment at a CVS near me (in Richmond, VA — hold that thought). They cancelled it. I rebooked. They cancelled again.
I went to the CVS and was (regrettably and extremely) rude to the pharmacist asking why I kept getting cancelled. They said, “you already got the shot in Birmingham, Alabama”. Different person, same name, same birthdate. CVS decided that (instead of asking me anything) we were the same person and didn’t need the vaccine. The solution? Set up a CVS account with my info in it so I could identify myself. It worked (and the vaccination drew a good deal of blood, which I considered the universe’s response to my rudeness to the pharmacist). Hasn’t been a problem since.
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I know your surname and it’s not THAT common, even if Robert is. Imagine the problems all the Robert Smiths have. -rc
I’m reminded of that old adage to “Beware of being rude to your server or your cook.” I guess we can now add pharmacist to the list! lol.
But honestly, having to take more steps to prove you’re you when the problem is on their end? Ridiculous.
Also, imagine if you had gotten it before the Alabamian, then he’d have been the one in your situation.
I’ve had the misfortune of losing my identity to other countries — thanks federal government employer, OPM. I’ve also (about 30 years ago, before it had a name…) had my identity stolen when I moved out of California to another state. Somehow, someone got enough verification documents to get their picture on my CA ID number. Luckily, DMV caught on before I did. They cleared up credit accounts opened in my name for me too. Then they told me what had happened — after the fact. I got to see the other woman’s picture, but never got any other information — not even a name to go with it. I never even filed a police report at the time — it was taken care of prior to anyone telling me. (Waxing quixotic about the “good ole’ days” and I’m not even 50 y/o.)
I had to abandon my phone number last year after I spent a week trying to transfer it. I lost the phone on a roller coaster. Without it, they were all ten kinds of clueless. I never got the phone back either (while it was picked up and moved, it never made it to lost and found. I wiped it, but I wanted the SIM card with my number).
I’m convinced cell phone support people are lost when someone goes off script.
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Maddening! Reactivating an account on a new phone should be a cinch. After all, they WANT you to do that every two years! -rc
Wow, that’s absurd. My first thought as I read was that it was an issue porting the number between carriers or something, but it seems insane to run into so much trouble transferring/reactivating the *same line of service* on a new device. Especially these days in the era of eSIM, when transfers between SIMs are even more common than they were back when you could always just pop the card out and stick it in the new phone.
About 10 years ago, my phone was stolen while holidaying in Italy. I quickly emailed my phone company to block the sim and it was done immediately. Back home, after buying a new phone, I received a new sim card with my phone number. I’ve changed phone companies but still have the same phone number!!
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And it SHOULD be that easy. -rc
I know the feeling about people that have the same name…first I have a cousin with the same name and we use to live next door to one another. Oh and we had bank accounts at the same bank. I’m glad I knew a few tellers there and the president. Oh and we both married girls with the same name that lived next to each other. I finally did a little research and found out that there were 7 of us with the same name within 25 miles of each other…I met 2 daughters of one of them who had not seen their father in 10 years. Oh and last (time to stop) one was wanted by the IRS. I had several friends that worked for the IRS in New Orleans…they warned me and set the record straight. I’ll stop here… because there is more…lol.
I had a somewhat similar experience with Verizon Wireless in 2010 that lasted for about a year. They called me incessantly about a bill that wasn’t mine, but couldn’t talk to me about the bill because I didn’t have the account information. I won’t use any carrier that even rides on their lines to this day. I see they’ve made no improvements, and I’m sure they never will.
I worked for a small police department just outside of Philadelphia and handled all the emails. There are only three towns in the world with the same name as ours, us, one in England and the third in Australia. We consistently got emails for the English PD. I would forward them and let the sender know they had reached the wrong department. The funniest actually involved snail mail. We received a return receipt from the Australia postal service. We also received a block party application for the English department. When I notified the sender (after scanning and emailing it to the correct country) they wrote back to say it served them right for blindly accepting the first Google search result.
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And they were right! -rc
Not saying this is what happened. But of a similar vein when companies were starting to collect email addresses of those that did business with them, and some utilities were forcing customers to provide email addresses, my dad ran into a problem. He never in his just over 70 years of life had an email address. I created one to get the local phone company to leave him alone. HisFirstName at myvanitydomain.tld (Not looking to join any lists today, thank you.) This allowed him to get a discount on a phone service bundle with internet services. (Guess who still lived at home and was USING and paying for said services?)
Anyway, fast forward to 20 years later and he is having problems in one of their subsidiaries buying some equipment. They want an email. He explains over and over that he does NOT have one. Finally the CS rep says “Oh here it is.” He had searched my dad’s very unique name (In my 50+ years never met anyone but my dad with that name and spelling.) and found the email address I had given them to get the discount 20 years before. They put that on it and so he was shocked when I called him later and asked him, “Did you buy XXX at ABC Telco today?” “Yes, how do you know that?” “They emailed me your invoice and stuff.” Since some of it was stuff he needed, I printed it out put it in an envelope and snail mailed it to him.
So I wonder if perhaps Florida Randy is a bit older or just analog and never having had an email address, some enterprising CS rep went “above and beyond” and found your email address from the database and boom.
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Entirely plausible. Based on the medical invoices I deleted after seeing what they were, I’d guess that the Florida RC is significantly older than I am. -rc
I wouldn’t even assume that he didn’t supply a *correct* email address.
I’ve had online forms auto-corrupt mine a few times, and I *expect* a human entering it over the phone to mistype it about 1/3 of the time. (I typically use a middle initial as well, which looks like a typo for FirstLast.)
I’ve certainly used programs where typos were easy to make and hard to correct. I’ve seen people using programs where “corrections” were made automatically, or at least so often that they were accepted automatically.
And when I’ve been able to track down the wrong account, it wasn’t always a remotely similar name/address, which suggests the computer was having some sort of hash collision (two things mapping to the same internal ID essentially at random).
My brother here in Canada started getting emails for someone with the same name for their Scottish Power account. After finding someone with that name in Scotland who was not the same person, he tried calling SP’s support to get it corrected. They also could do nothing. He was able to log into the account by resetting the password, since the link came to his email address and he could tell support the address for the service and everything, but there did not appear to be anything they could do.
Eventually he looked up the VP of SP and changed his account email to that. Never got another email.
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Oooh… I like it! -rc
I received email for someone in New Zealand from his lawyer. His name is similar to my email address. I replied to his lawyer, informing him about the mistake, but still got a few more emails from them. I tried one more time, after that I marked everything as spam.
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Sounds like malpractice. -rc
My gmail is jim.something [@] gmail, so I have run into the obliviot thing from two CONTINENTS, North America, and the UK, so I know your pain. You are the first person that have heard having the same issue with a Gmail account.
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I have a friend who was a very early employee at AOL, and his email was thus [firstname] @ AOL. He got hundreds of misrouted emails because so many obliviots thought that was their address. -rc
Similar issue with snailmail databases. My husband’s father died in 1989 and never lived at (or received mail at) our address. But about a dozen times a year, we get junk mail addressed to him at our address. I’ve tried to track down the source of the source of the source, but have been unsuccessful in finding the nexus to get it deleted.
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My first wife and I divorced when I was still in California. I moved to Boulder, Colorado, in 1996. In 2003 I moved to the other side of the mountains, a 6ish-hour drive from Boulder, but still in Colorado. And I STILL occasionally got mail in my ex-wife’s name, even though she legally changed her name back to her maiden name upon divorce. Astounding. -rc
Reading this I thought I was deep into one of Cory Doctorow’s novels! So sorry you had to go through this, but it sure is instructive!
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Glad you found it useful. -rc
I feel your pain.
I have mike.(lastname) @ gmail.com
So far, other people with the same name trying to use my email without the period:
3 in the UK
4 in Australia
5 in the US
I’ve received copies of a mortgage application in LA, asked to supply cookies to a fifth grade class in MI, a vet appointment for my dog in Perth, and an invoice for an orchestra member’s performance in the UK.
Most annoying is the guy in AZ who just donated to the Republicans; I’m an Independent candidates. I’m now bombarded with fundraising requests for Republican candidates all over the country.
I feel your pain!
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Ugh, on the political mails. Horrible. And YOUR surname isn’t all that common either, though a bit more popular than mine. I’m starting to feel lucky…. -rc
What’s worse is that my surname contains an apostrophe.
I’m a software engineer myself, and I can’t believe how many programs and forms tell me my name is illegal (!) or invalid.
I’ve joined the group with other name problems — hyphens, spaces, etc.
For an amusing read: https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names-with-examples/
A final note, regarding Gmail’s ignore-the-periods rule: Interpretation of the email address to the left of the @ sign is entirely up to the organization on the right side of the @ sign. That’s why most other companies regard the period as a significant character.
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Yeah, because an apostrophe is SO uncommon! 🙄 It’s incredible: do these programmers not live on the planet?! -rc
And my last name ends in “c.o c k s”
There are sooooo many places I can’t put it in.
XBox being one.
Both my first name and family name are common in French, and I was lucky to the first one to use them early on to get a gmail address.
As a result I regularly get emails for other people in France, Belgium and Canada. Sometimes I answer that they have the wrong address, other times, I just flag them as spam.
It’s like I have a 6 digit mobile number. Current numbers are 7 digits here.
Drop a digit, call me by mistake.
Not a big deal.
Except for the little old lady who gave my number to the health system by mistake. It took nearly a year to figure out why I was getting text reminders for medical appointments.
A bit of a nitpick, but when adding dots to a GMail address, they can’t be added completely freely. For one thing, they can’t be consecutive; there needs to be some other character between each pair of dots (so e…x……….a…m…………………..p.l………e@ wouldn’t work). They’re also not allowed at the very beginning or immediately before the @. Those rules are all part of the internet standards for email.
I also always use a dot when giving out my GMail address, and will occasionally get messages to the address with the dot removed. Awhile ago I setup a rule to direct those to a mostly unmonitored label, and that will occasionally catch a bit of spam not caught by Google’s filtering; although it will also sometimes (less frequently) catch some non-spam messages as well.
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Thanks for the clarification. -rc
This starts off with a bit of a complication — my first husband’s mother had the same name I have.
Back in the late 60s — when I was in my 20s — I was working full time and decided to buy something by opening an account with a certain store. A day or so later I was informed that I had been turned down because I had a bad credit rating dating from some point in the 1930s. I just stared slack jawed at the man.
“Do I look as if I am old enough to have bad credit back then? I wasn’t even born until 10 years after that!”
“Look, miss, all I know is what I see on this paper.”
“Well, how about taking your eyes off that paper and looking at ME?”
“Ma’am, I can’t change what this says.”
I finally contacted a credit company and got it straight — and started using my middle name.
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Reminds me of the Do Not Fly list that denied boarding to babies because they were suspected terrorists. Hello, Common Sense? Are you in there? -rc
I’ve experienced all the above, and also had my AOL screen name broadcast on CNN in the late 90’s. Well… Almost. One of the L’s was changed to a digit one. The official transcript showed my actual name.
Several months later had to tell that CNN employee that another employee was harassing me because they didn’t believe I wasn’t her!
Also had multiple phone systems set up with my vanity domain… Used a password reset function to fix the settings configured into some church in New York last year because I was tired of having their voicemails constantly emailed to me. Found the administrator’s address in the system phonebook and subjected the torture back to him.
There are at least 2 people with my first and last name. I receive their email, but I don’t understand why they tell people my email address instead of their own.
I receive email from Subaru in Chicago, even though I don’t own a Subaru or live in Chicago. I’ve also received a teacher’s schedule, emailed the school to let them know they’re emailing the wrong person. I received a reply that they will email the teacher and the following week I received email from the same person who forgot that my email address was the wrong one.
The funniest case was when I was signed up for their family newsletter and when I asked them to remove me from the list, they thought I was their cousin and was pranking them.
I have a Czech surname, and my address is just surname@gmail.com
I regularly get emails to that address which I have established should be to s.urname@gmail.com and surnames@gmail.com. If I could determine which of these addresses was the intended recipient I used to forward them on, but they still keep coming, so now I just delete them.
My email address has appeared on several Have I been pwned listings, but when I check these it is clear from the other leaked information that they are not me, but one of these two others.
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My addresses are all registered with the pwned site, and I encourage people to sign up to increase their awareness of data breaches. -rc
I’ve had my phone number for about 14 years. The person who had my number before me likes to give it out whenever he doesn’t want to use his real number. I’ve been called and texted by insurance companies, friends of his family, police, and businesses. I thought he’d finally stopped, but just this past weekend I got a text from a restaurant in the town he lives in that he used my number when putting his name on the wait-list for a table. I don’t think he realized that restaurant doesn’t just take your phone number for spam, they use it to hold your place in line and you actually have to give the correct number, but I’ve been to that town and that restaurant and I do know that, so I immediately texted back and cancelled his spot in line.
Hope I wrecked your night Nick.
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I hope so too! He’s a dick. -rc
Heh, the situation is a very familiar one. I have relatives who have (besides each of their individual addresses) a shared Gmail address consisting of their first names concatenated. However, if you drop the last letter of the combination, you get another not-too-uncommon American first name, and for years and years they’ve been getting emails for a person with that name (and I think that last initial, although I don’t remember for sure) from somewhere in the U.S. I don’t remember. They’ve tried to get it to stop, but to no avail, to the point that they’re considering shutting it down altogether.
On another note, regarding “Outside the U.S., you can’t call American toll-free numbers.”: I believe this isn’t true, at least not as a blanket statement. Unlike in some other countries (e.g. here, toll-free numbers actually do start with “1-800” followed by 6 digits, in a format that’s completely different from other numbers, which all start with 0 followed by area/carrier codes, and afaik can’t be called from abroad), my understanding and experience over the years has been that American toll-free numbers function similarly to any other number, just with a “area code” of 800.
Every so often we have reason to need to call various American companies, whether that’s financial institutions, airlines, tech support, you name it. Back in the day (a decade+ ago at this point, probably) when we just used regular phone calls for everything, we could call 800 numbers exactly like any other American number, with whatever international prefix and the same country code (1). There was a recorded message that came on before the call connected warning that the toll-free number we dialed was not toll-free when called from outside the U.S. Later, we discovered that Skype’s phone calling service works well for that purpose — and that while you can call anyone for a couple cents a minute, American toll-free numbers specifically can be called from Skype with no charge. More recently, at one point while visiting the U.S. I signed up for Google Voice, and ever since I’ve simply had a completely free, fully-functioning U.S. phone number that can call any number (whether toll-free or not). And to circle back, just now while writing this I remembered that my current cell plan includes a few tens of international minutes, so I just tried dialing +1-800-MYAPPLE (the first 800 number that came to mind), and sure enough, it rang normally and I got the beginning of the IVR’s welcome message before hanging up.
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Nice to know there are some exceptions! But it has been drilled into us so hard that even credit cards have (in tiny print) the “International Number” to call for customer service. I used it in Spain when trying to get a charge to go through. The 800 number didn’t work, but the other number did. (Charge went through.) -rc
I’ve had this e-mail address for at least 15 years. I keep getting e-mails for Clarence. I’ve never even known anyone named Clarence. His e-mails usually go into my Spam folder, never to be seen again.
Clarence, if you’re out there, I’m sorry you’ve missed out on so many opportunities. Well, not really, but I have no ill will towards you.
In snail mail, I get pieces addressed to prior occupants of my apartment, which I’ve had for over 19 years. Straight to trash.
After my father died, I wound up on his college’s mailing list. I never went there, he never donated to the school in the 53 years he was alive after he graduated, he never notified the school of any of the 13 address changes he had in four states, he never lived at my address or in my city. It took five years, multiple requests, and finally threats to get them to stop sending me their solicitations.
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It’s amazing how many companies/organizations just won’t take No for an answer. -rc
I live in Germany and have had the same experience as Micha. I call US 1-800 numbers all the time. But that’s from a land line or German cell phone number. I’m guessing that it’s not possible to call a US 1-800 number from outside the US using a US cell phone (probably something to do with roaming). Seems it should be technically possible though, with a recorded warning that the call is not toll free and normal roaming charges apply. But there are probably too many obliviots who wouldn’t listen to the warning and later complain about the charges that it’s easier to just not allow those calls.
You know how my Gmail address has the word burger in it. At least once a month I get an email from some restaurant thanking me for joining their loyalty program because someone used a fake email to get the sign-up bonus and cleverly “invented” mine.
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Who knew gmail would be so popular back when WE signed up? Invitation only! -rc
My primary gmail is my name and year of birth. got some clueless namesake in the US who used my address. Following the repairs of his apple watch was fun, getting his taco bell coupons was interesting, but then his daughter’s teacher started sending weekly updates to all the parents of the class, without using BCC. She ignored two emails asking her to stop, so I sent her an explicit photo off the internet and told her the next email would get a “reply all” with the same image attached for all the parents to see. That got her attention and the emails stopped. Have not heard from the guy in some years. I hope he’s doing ok
My very first gmail (the invitation only period) was a minor character in an obscure fantasy novel. I used it on a whim to register for snapchat and discovered it was already in use there, by some teen in the UAE.
Later I got his account details from disney+ and his approval for some credit card. The most annoying was disney because they were not available in my country at the time so I could not log in to their site to complain.
Stupidest same name issue….
I worked as the director of the ICU at a fairly large hospital in Alabama years ago. A classmate chairing my high school 10-year reunion committee told the other members there was no need to send me an invitation: She told them I had been arrested in Illinois for murdering my wife when her body was found in the trunk of my car. Adding to the obliviocy issue, she worked the evening shift in the Business Office at the same hospital as I did. Fortunately, her duties did not include any patient care responsibilities. Yes, the guy in Illinois had the exact same name as mine. I later found that there are 137 guys in the United States with that my exact same name in the United States! Should be entertaining if I win the lottery….
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You will probably be inundated with “relatives” asking for the money if any of the others with your name win big in the lottery! -rc
A mutual friend of ours has a common name, and his stories of wrong emails are legendary.
The good news is, he just had a hospital in Texas named after “him”.
Same story for me, albeit without the gmail angle. My email is firstname.lastname@[emailprovider]. A few years ago, I started getting emails addressed to a Samuel [my last name], which I dismissed as junk. Then came messages addressed to my name, but from Kia dealerships (I drive a Subaru), insurance agents, and realtors, all in Arizona. The kicker: the realtor emails included the address of the intended recipient’s home. When they ignored my unsubscribe requests, I eventually looked up the address and found out it’s owned by a woman with my name and her husband Samuel, so she apparently keeps giving out her email address wrong. (Most amusing are the spam emails addressed to Samuel urging him to cheat on his wife… sent to what is given as HER email address.)
With some of the more official-looking ones, I reached out to the sender and told them they had the wrong email address, and suggested they reach out to her using another method, but to stop sending me her emails. No luck — I still got them.
A few months ago, I received an email for her, about her homeowner’s insurance. Enough is enough. I emailed the company, and heard nothing back, so I clicked the unsubscribe link [yes, I checked to make sure it was legitimate first!], and it took me to a page with ALL of her personal information they had — home address, phone number, birthdate, employer, all of it. No password required, no security. So I removed my email address from the account information. Then I found her on Facebook and messaged her about it — I realize it may have seemed creepy to her that I went that far, but that’s a HUGE breach of privacy from that company, and I thought she should know. I never heard back from her, but I haven’t gotten any emails addressed to her in awhile, so hopefully she at least saw it & dealt with it.
I’ve also struggled with our car insurance company. My son moved to another part of the state 5+ years ago; he never owned a car when he lived with us, has never had insurance with our company, and has never been on our policy. But for some reason, they kept getting wires crossed and giving us rates based on HIS address, thinking it was ours [HUGE disappointment on my part, as rates for our area are higher!]. It made even less sense since our homeowner’s insurance is through them, too, for our actual address. I finally had to tell them to remove ANY reference to that address from our account, since we never lived there, and it never should’ve been there in the first place. Luckily, that took care of it.
Heh.
1. My wife has a gmail address with a dot in it. She gets the odd email for someone we think is in Australia on it.
2. I work for VZC. Last week VZW emailed me to congratulate me on my 5 years of service. Two weeks after our entire office got notified of redundancy.
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Oh good: they’re about to turn over operations to newbies with no experience …because they’re cheaper. -rc
Back in the days of the Long Distance Phone Service wars, we were getting up to 8 calls *per day* wanting us to switch to MCI/Sprint — this despite our number being on the Do Not Call registry. I’d finally had enough and tried to do something about it, only to be utterly stonewalled by the company’s mis-named Customer Service phone numbers.
So I called their toll-free Internet Tech Support line until I got a real human. I explained the seriousness of the dozens of federal violations MCI was facing and told the fellow that I needed to speak to someone who could fix the problem NOW. He gave me a number he wasn’t supposed to give out, and that person made the problem go away. Backdoors are sometimes the best way to get to the heart of the problem.
Later, market forces pretty much made MCI go away, so I was happy.
I’ve worked customer service for three phone companies and also for Western Union, and I have found that when I run into a supposedly unsolvable problem with customer service, the best possible solution is to send written correspondence to the company’s customer service address, and also carbon copy to the C.E.O.’s corporate office. The reason why: 1) it tends to put the fear of God in the Customer Service Department’s head officer, and 2) the corporate office doesn’t want to have to deal with the so-called “minor” problem, and will be highly motivated to make someone, somewhere, find a solution to the problem so that corporate will no longer have to deal with it. I’ve only had to resort to this a couple of times, but it does seem to work wonders.
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Excellent suggestion. My similar method was the time I got exasperated with a bank manager. I wrote to the President of the bank (small regional with around six offices) that started with something along the lines of, “I’m sorry to ask for your time, but I really need help with something your branch manager can’t seem to accomplish.” I dropped it into the mail slot at the post office right around the last pickup deadline of the day. At 8:00 the next morning my phone rang: it was the bank’s chief auditor asking if she can drop by at 9:00. I said yes. She handed me a HAND-DONE spreadsheet (this was around 1981) showing all the erroneous transactions, and the ONE credit to show my account balance …with all fees to date refunded. And then she excused herself because she had an appointment with the bank manager.
It was the most satisfactory conclusion to a customer service problem I’ve ever had, but it probably wouldn’t work for a giant company. (Not to mention the inconvenience of sending mail when you’re outside the U.S.!) -rc
Thank goodness I don’t have that problem because I don’t have a FIRSTNAME LAST NAME email address with Gmail. Some of those stories I read are funny, but some sound annoying. What you went through sounds incredibly frustrating!
I occasionally get very official looking emails that are supposed to be going to the Chief of Staff for a US Congressman, that are delivered to my gmail address — usually some sort of lobbying.
Being in Melbourne, Australia, and not being a Chief of Staff to a Congressman, these messages don’t apply to me, so I usually reply with an email written in the most outrageous “ocker” (that’s Australian slang) tone possible, letting them know they’ve got the wrong person. (Hot tip, chatgpt does a great job of writing such prose if you ask it to write something using “Australian ocker”.)
It amuses me greatly to imagine them thinking that all Australian’s talk like someone in Crocodile Dundee!
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Good on ya, mate! -rc