Thanks for this post. I’m sure it explains why my husband and I have gotten a spate of calls for his ex-wife lately. They’ve been divorced for 10 years, and she hasn’t lived at this address, or used this number for longer than that. Though one of the callers (a debt consolidation service, says that she recently requested info from them. Hmm.)
Gah! I have a similar thing going on. My husband was married before. He was legally separated in 1986 and his divorce was finalized in 1987. We began living together in 1989 and we have since married. We’ve lived at two addresses in the time we’ve been co-habitating, and we continue to get mail at our address for his ex-wife. Who has never lived at either of our addresses. Her name is not the same as anyone else in our household nor is it even similar.
My wife-in-law (hey, it’s a friendly situation) has lived at three different addresses in the 20 years this has been going on, and she always fills out change of address forms when she moves, and she gets most of her mail at her real address. But every once in a while, someone sends her something to our address.
I know, data mining. But I would think that any mined data that links her name and my husband’s would a.) be pretty bleeping old, as in Out. of. Date. and therefore patently unreliable, and b.) clearly obvious that they are no longer married or living together.
I guess this is a good example of the difference between “data” and “information”.
I bought my house in 1993. I got lots of mail for the former owners for several years before it finally died down. Then, sometime early this year, they must have turned 65 because I have been bombarded with junk mail for them having to do with Medicare and such.
Yup, the collection agencies after my ex-husband have sent threatening letters to me (duh), my parents (not cool), and my sister (WTF?). Once upon a time, I was associated with my parent’s current address (although I never lived there), so I can see how they’d get that address. However, neither I or the ex ever even visited my sister in the city she currently lives in, and she’s moved twice since I got divorced - how the hell did they get her address? Our last name is fairly common, so it’s not like they can track us that way.
What was even weirder was about five years ago, when my sister was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and the damn school kept mailing out vital and time-sensitive documents: not to her address in England, not to her parents address in Maine (which was listed as her “emergency contact” address), but to my address in New York (which she swears she never gave them). I mean it’s lovely for me to know who’s going to be her guide for orientation and how to submit her tuition payments, but to get the information to anyone who can use it I have to ship it back across the god-damn Atlantic Ocean in under three days.
:eek:
(Chimera drops to his knees and thanks all supernatural entities and deities that he has not had this problem with his psycho, debt ridden ex-spouse!)
It’s possible that it’s connected to rather poor use of NCOA (National Change of Address) processing, based on your son’s name and initial.
It also might be that your ex is fucking with you somehow.
One suggestion: Sign onto www.annualcreditreport.com and get the Federally Mandated free annual credit report for your son. See if, by chance, his father is mis-using his SSN and identity.
Would you mind explaining, then, to whom I owe the honor of my sudden inexplicable subscriptions to Seventeen, CosmoGirl and Country Weekly?
I now get Rolling Stone magazine though no one in my household has ever even considered the possibility of reading it, let alone subscribing.
Applause!!!
You can stop these calls.
The next time they call get a company name and address. The caller won’t be eager to give this information to you. You will have to firm, persistent and not allow them to change the subject.
Now write them a letter using the following form:
[Today’s date]
[Your name]
[Your address]
[Company name]
[Company address]
Re: Notice to Cease Contact Regarding Debt for [Name of person who is not you]
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL
I am notifying you in writing that your agency has repeatedly contacted me at phone number [your phone number] regarding a debt for [name of person who is not you]. This letter is formal and official notification that [name of person who is not you] is at not available at my address or phone number.
Therefore, I am requesting that you cease all communication to my phone number regarding this person’s debt. If you persist in believing that [name of person who is not you] is somehow connected with my address and/or phone number, please provide proof of your claim.
You should direct all future correspondence in writing as outlined in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and cease all communication with me via telephone.
Lastly, I would like to receive confirmation in writing that you have received this letter and will no longer be contacting me about this other person’s debt, or I will be forced to seek further legal action.
I look forward to your acknowledgement that you have received this notice by [date two weeks from now].
Sincerely,
[sign here]
[Your name]
Print and sign the letter. Then send it Certified Mail with a return receipt request to the company’s address. I’ve been told that if they continue to call you after they have received the letter, you can bill them for $1000.
I know it’s not. I got Wired or some such for some unknown reason (I have never ordered it and never read it, even with its free music CDs). I got it for 2 years. I never received a bill for it. As suddenly as it started, it stopped. No clue. 
We lived her for 7 years and got mail for the man who had committed suicide in the garage 5 years prior to that. We also used to get calls for a Mrs Foley (on the phone). All the callers were very elderly sounding. I think we got Mrs Foley’s phone number when she died…
We also get Working Mother mag addressed to a complete stranger at our address. This immediately made us suspicious, but our credit cards are ok, as is our credit rating. Oddly enough, my husband was at a corporate event and came across a woman with this name. Very odd.
Hey, wring, you know anything about that 50 bucks he owes me?
you loaned him money??? BWHAHAHA 
It’s certainly possible he owes $$, I doubt he’d give my office number, though.
Google your real name. If your name is on a business directory and that is on the internet anywhere then collectors will find it.
I get my second exs electric bill he never paid. He was living in an apartment when he went to jail for six months. He never had the electricity turned off so whoever moved in racked up the bill until they shut it off.
Out of know where the bills started coming to my address that we never shared. Then when I moved they started coming to this address. I have not gotten one in a while but every so often some type of ad comes with his name on it.
What pissed me off was when I moved here I put in three change of address cards. One for me, my son and my daughter. When the cards came from the post office indicating they received my adddress change my sons had his first and last name and my daughters her first and last name but my card indicated something like “Resident SOMEUSERNAME” and indicated any mail with that last name would be sent.
It does not really bother me that much anymore. I just pitch the stuff. I wish we got some free magazines.
Yeah, I get trial issues for magazines pretty frequently. Usually there’s some attached letter mentioning how this is their current issue and wouldn’t I just love to subscribe?
My husband and I have the problem of a sister-in-law (his sister) who doesn’t pay debts. She also used to live upstairs from us - and for all we know, she probably did list us as a credit reference/alternate contact/whatever. Thus we get a double hit from those databases. As much as we’d love to get paid back the few thousand bucks that she owes us (she used to be considered trustworthy), at this point we’d much rather get these creditors to stop calling us. So lately I’ve been giving them her cell phone number and her home address. I worry that they may not go away since we’ve shown some knowledge of her whereabouts and if she keeps ignoring them they might keep bugging us, but it’s not like they went away when I didn’t have that info.
A slightly different situation, but about three years ago I got a letter from the Child Support Agency (who administer support payments for custodial parents from the non-one) informing me that they had tried and tried to get payments from my ex but to no avail, and asking me whether I wanted them to continue the pursuit.
I rang the office and informed them that my ex-husband had died four years before that, and that his estate left nothing (apart from debts) so their search and rescue mission was pretty much in vain, wot.
They thanked me for the information. 
I wonder what year marks the limit of old data. My husband was divorced in July of 1983 by the state of Michigan. He and I met and married in Florida later that year. We’ve never gotten any mail or phone calls regarding his ex. Of course, she also remarried, and as far as I know, she’s not gotten into any trouble financially, so maybe that’s the ticket.
My sister had a brief, very bad marriage and she has been contacted a few times regarding her ex. I’d love to hear those conversations, just for the entertainment value. My sister can be brutally, I mean BRUTALLY, honest regarding her opinions…
One day an issue of Lucky - “The Magazine About Shopping!” (as if they aren’t ALL about shopping) appeared in my mailbox. THe label indicated that the subscription would last 2 years.
I called the number inside for subscriptions, said there must be some mistake. NO, the magazine was a gift from a catolog website that I had purchased from. There’s a miniscule checkbox that appears briefly during the checkout process. You either have to check it or uncheck it to prevent random magazines from showing up at your address. I never even saw it and missed the opportunity to not get a magazine.
The woman on the phone was bewildered that I wanted to cancel. “But it’s free…you won’t be billed for it.” While I appreciate that I will also never read it, never buy this months hottest new accessory, and will bitterly resent having to dispose of it each month, so lets just save everyone the trouble.
What they’ll do is sell the debt, and you’ll be stuck paying for Certified Mail to notify a different agency about the same thing. It’s a nice idea, but there has got to be a better system put in place that doesn’t require random people who aren’t in debt to pay large certified mail bills to deal with all of these collectors.
Sorry. I thought that you wanted them. . .
My ex is stalking me again. This is the same sociopath who didn’t bother to show up any divorce hearings. He lives with a girlfriend (one of a cast of thousands) about a half-mile away. Some of his skanky 'net honeys are still calling my house, 10 years after we’ve been divorced.
But hey, this is the same putz who blithely informed me he’d just get whatever he wanted from the house, if/when he wanted it later. So nice. I was supposed to be his free, long-term storage facility. So he demands things–most thrown away long ago–that I should deliver to him, mind, then promises to see me in prison for ‘stealing’ his property.
He knows better. He’s still a drunk, and a mean one, but what he enjoys most in life is harassment. Nothing nastier than a thwarted, ineffectual control freak.
Of course this is the same asshole who put in a change of address for all my IRS and social security information to be sent to his girl friend’s house. And the feds, predictably, did absolutely nothing.
I don’t fee well and I’m just so tired of it. Have an appt next week with a lawyer to explore options, but none of 'em will be very useful, I fear.
Why the hell don’t exes ever just go the fuck away?!