So there’s some fella out there named Patrick Lastname who thinks his email address is plastname@roadrunner.com.
That’s not his email address - that’s my mom’s email address.
So far he’s signed up for Netflix, Dish Network and something called the “Blaylock Wellness Report” using my mom’s email address. She keeps getting bills and notifications for Patrick.
My mom’s not scared or anything - we know Patrick hasn’t been using her home address or credit card info. He just truly believes his email address is plastname@roadrunner.com.
She’s been forwarding Patrick’s mail to me, as I am amused by calling the companies and explaining the situation to the CSRs on the phone. Luckilly all of the CSRs I’ve talked to so far have understood me…I hope I don’t run into any language barriers on future calls.
Now, we could be malicious and use “his” email address to change account info and get free Netflix and stuff, but I’m doing the right thing. For now.
I suspect Patrick recently moved and/or recently got Roadrunner and doesn’t know what his real email address is.
In all my years of using email, I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m surprised it’s not more common…
Has this ever happened to you?
(As a side note, I am still fielding calls for Nick & Cynthia, now going on 5 years. I’m still calling CSRs on THEIR behalf too)
Not exactly the same, but my gmail account is last.first@gmail.com. Last year some friends of mine were organizing a 50th birthday party, and instead of including me on the distribution list they included first.last@gmail.com on the list.
After the email circulated for a while, first.last chimes in and says he’d love to attend, but he’s in West Virginia, as opposed to Ontario.
Anyway, we all had a lot of fun with it, including first.last. We invited him anyway, and I could tell he was tempted to make the 12 hour drive! It would have been awesome to have a complete stranger with my name show up!
My first name is a fairly common name, but with an uncommon spelling. Think “Atheena” instead of “Athena.” (and it’s not my fault! My parents chose it, not me!)
Unfortunately, no matter HOW careful I am whenever I give out my email address, it gets transcribed as Athena.Lastname@gmail.com about 75% of the time. It’s amazing. I say “Here’s my email address. The first name is spelled a little odd - there’s 2 e’s instead of 1.” Then I spell it out. Then I ask them to read it back to me. Despite all this, 3 days later I start to wonder where that email I was expecting is, I call, and lo and behold, they sent it to Athena.Lastname@gmail.com.
Poor Athena Lastname gets a LOT of my email. I’ve considered emailing her and offering to buy the address.
I’ve been dealing with something like this for the past year or so. My email is FIRSTINITALlastname@gmail, and someone with the same surname but different given name has been giving out ‘her’ email address as FIRSTINITIAL.lastname@gmail, which of course gets routed to my inbox.
It’s aggravating when I get huge emails (many MB) that I have to download and it turns out to be pictures of some dogs I’ve never seen. Or when she signs me up for random online games. Or even worse, she volunteers for some historical society that won’t remove me from their email list despite all their assurances that they have. I’ve emailed all her friends who send me stuff, telling them to tell their friend to stop with the damned emails, but it’s only slowed and not stopped the deluge.
I’ve had quite a few emails intended for somebody with the same name as me who lives in Australia (I live in the UK). They were all from his broadband provider, mostly relating to installation stuff. I did email the company and tell them they had the wrong address on file for him, and they stopped for a while, but recently I’ve had a few more.
I don’t know what his email address actually is - mine is (short form of first name, which is what I generally use).lastname@gmail.com.
In the early days of the Irish internet, I managed to bag jim@indigo.ie (Indigo was one of the biggest ISPs at the time). Some business bigwig clearly thought Jim was the email address of an Indigo executive, and I used to get a lot of enquiries and information about how much to invest in fibreoptic backbones and the like.
There’s a man in Singapore with a name similar to Jimmy Woo, and I get a lot of mail for him about buying and selling container ships sent to my gmail account, which has a similar name.
About 10 years ago there was a guy in San Francisco who apparently used to hand out my hotmail address while cruising the Castro. I got a heap of “It was great to meet you last night Jim, here’s a picture of my throbbing cock with all spunk coming out of it” emails. They dried up eventually. If you pardon the pun.
I have at least three people who think my email address is theirs - a realtor in Phoenix, some alumnus of Michigan State who bought a Chrysler, and the latest was a man in Australia whose taxi confirmation came to me.
I get an e-mail with travel confirmation booked through Expedia. Social, address, phone number, the works. It turns out that a college-aged girl had her dad FORWARD her the e-mail, and he thought her e-mail address was mine.
Obviously, at this point I’m aware that this family must have my last name. I reply back to the father and explain his error. He is gracious for the fact that I did not do anything malicious. I decide to call the number listed on the Expedia booking, and I strike up a conversation with (apparently) the girl’s mother.
It turns out that I am actually distantly related to these people. We start talking about the origins of our respective families and everything is adding up. It was a very enjoyable conversation and I’m glad I have some (random) family across the country.
This happens to me all of the time – three times a week or more. Because of a very kind Doper, I got lastname@gmail.com and lastname is fairly common.
I’ve gotten hundreds of mis-addressed emails: credit reports, job offers, naked pictures and videos, private emails, family pictures, invites to parties and bookclubs, and other personal email. Not to mention a heap of misaddressed sign-up emails, Amazon notifications, etc. My friends have suggested that I blog it since it is sometimes interesting, but that wouldn’t be right.
I’ve considered showing up to the parties and bookclub since they are local. I’ve also corresponded with a few people when I think their email is very important. They are always appreciative.
Tons of people try to reset my gmail password as well.
My brother, who also posts here, could never remember if I was @hotmail or @yahoo, so he would put both. He would joke that the other address was my Nigerian twin.
After about 5 years of this, including some fiery intra-family email discussions, my Nigerian twin wrote and asked that he be removed from the list.
A new realtor in Ohio assumed he could get my firstname.lastname at gmail, so he went ahead and published it last year before bothering to check and see if it was taken. Dude, there aren’t good address on gmail still available in 2010. None.
I get all sorts of super-confidential stuff sent to me, like credit reports and bank statements. Good thing I’m not a criminal.
What a cool story !! The closest I can come to that is after my father died, my Mom received a condolence call from a local couple with the same last name as us, they did not know my father but his name appears in the family geneological records. They introduced themselves and invited us to a local meeting of a family history association. My mom and I went and had a great time.
Roadrunner can!
The OP knows that the incorrect email he is using is hers (plastname@roadrunner.com) and that his firstname is Patrick. That ought to be enough for them to reach him. (And since the OP & Patrick are both customers, roadrunner ought to be willing to work on this.)
Yes, this has happened to me! Only, you’re quite lucky! I have about 5 people who are so friggin stupid they think their email address is rlastname@triad.rr.com. And these users are so damn stupid, they sign up for about every type of spam known to man, too. I’ve gotten all the refinance your house, etc. things (and I know they’re not directed to me b/c they use the other idiots’ addresses, names, etc.). I’ve had Victoria’s Secret orders and other things WITH THEIR ENTIRE CREDIT CARD NUMBERS, ship to address, etc. I get all kinds of crap - church newsletters, financial spreadsheets, ALL KINDS OF CRAP. I’ve sort of learned to live with it by now, but it still pisses me off every time I read some of the junk they sign up for.
You have to wonder how many of these poor schmucks who can’t remember their own e-mail addresse, do get ripped off.
The bad guys aren’t going to post, “Yeah, I got an e-mail with someone’s whole life history and used it to my own great advantage. Go me.”
This is why any business that’s not brain-dead sends a ‘click on this link to confirm you e-mail address’ mail before associating an e-mail address with a customer.
My case is somewhat different: I own the domain lastname.net and have created e-mail forwarding addresses firstname@lastname.net for myself and some family members (with mistyped firstname mails forwarded to me because people will spell my first name creatively.)
Unfortunately some people are under the expression that some total stranger (to me) will have a firstname@lastname.netaddress. Nobody has signed up to anything themselves using such an address but I have received some interesting mail (including a quite well done morning-after thank you note - going to consult that one if I ever have occasion to send one ) - I have responded to the senders to the effect that I don’t know the recipient.
I also am a Gmail early adopter, and got firstname.lastname@gmail.com, so I get tonnnnnns of misdirected email. It’s entertaining in a way. Around this time of year every fall, I get emails from young girls in a “women in technology” seminar in a private school in Australia, asking if they can interview me for a class project. I get invited to the same birthday party in LA every year. I get emails about mold remediation intended for a realtor in Hawaii. A cheeky British lad who’d been away on holiday for a long time and missed his firstname lastname sent very detailed instructions for what I was to do with the Union Jack thong and bra set he’d be bringing home. I share a name with a sci fi author (well, it’s a pen name for her) and get lots of fan mail. Some government worker with a .mil address has, on more than one occasion emailed me documents, and when I reply to tell him of his error, get a panicked “OMG PLEASE DELETE”. There’s a piano teacher in Australia with my name as well; I get lots of “Timmy won’t be able to make it today” emails. I used to get ritzy holiday photos from a family with the same last name of their Greek luxury yacht trips, etc.
It’s funny. I always reply to tell the sender that they have the wrong firstname lastname, and I usually get a grateful reply. I really think some of the senders just assume that they can make up addresses and they’ll work, if the person has the same name.
I have lastname@gmail.com, and for the most part I don’t get other people’s mail except for two people. She is renata.lastname@gmail.com. She is a marketing type in either Colombia or Venezuela since I have been getting planning e-mails for a magazine, golf course promotions, etc.
I also got an email intended for an Italian lawyer about a case. I’m not sure how he managed to send it to me because the correct address was in the chain of emails. I replied to him telling him what the proper email was.
) - I have responded to the senders to the effect that I don’t know the recipient.