Got a message from Hawaiian airlines this morning thanking me for making a reservation with them and inviting me make an online account with them. This was obviously surprising to me, since I have never had any interaction with Hawaiian Airlines ever in my life. Curious, I made an account under my email address, and lo-and-behold there is a puddle-hopper flight between two islands scheduled for mid-January for me.
But wait, that’s not my name. That’s <my first name> <middle name starting with the first letter of my last name> <Last name identical to mine without the first letter>. My email address is <first><last>@gmail.com, and that dude no doubt had to put in an email address in a field and then just put <first><middle initial><last>@gmail.com without actually possessing that email address.
Long story short, I now get this guy’s emails about his Hawaiian travels, and I have the power to wreak havoc on his reservations, (which I would do if I was a douchebag, but I’m not, so I won’t).
I contacted Hawaiian airlines about the problem. The conversation can be summarized by one quote from one of their reps: “We do apologize but we cannot remove your e-mail from his flight for security purposes. Is it possible that you have the same e-mail address?”
This happens to me all the time. I’ve gotten people’s personal information (driver’s license!) scanned and e-mailed to me by accident. I keep getting someone’s satellite bills, appointment reminders, and so on. I’ve called the satellite company and said, please stop sending me this person’s information, remove my e-mail address, etc., and it never works. I’ve received term papers for people trying to send them into their professor. I’ve received job refusals when the person applying didn’t put the right address down (that was embarrassing for him, I’m sure).
Most annoying are online gambling sites – if someone from the UK, for example, signs up for an account, I can’t even get my address removed because when I try to visit the remove-me site, the gambling site won’t let US users in.
As long as you think that everything is kosher and he just used your email address by accident (as opposed to some kind of scam going on) AND you don’t want to mess with him, I would just log on and change his email address, just pick something random and move on. For good measure you could even then go and hit the ‘reset password’ button so you won’t even be able to log back in if you wanted to.
At least then you won’t get all of his emails and if he wants to get into the system he’ll have to change the email to something he actually has access to.
I had a mortgage company sending me all kinds of documents related to some other guy’s mortgage. If I had any desire to be an identity thief, they handed it to me on a silver platter.
I replied each time saying “You’ve got the wrong guy.” No response.
So then, using the power of the internet, I figured out who the right guy was, and forwarded the info to him. I also mentioned that although I was not planning on using any of the info to steal his identity, he might want to raise the issue with the company.
A few years ago when I leased a car I got the title in the mail. I thought that was odd, but didn’t think too much of it. A few weeks later, another title. Then I looked at the first one and realized it wasn’t for my car, neither was this one. Over the next few weeks, I got a few more of them. At the dealership someone managed to save the address in their computer that they use for “Honda Lease Trust” (the owner of all the cars they lease) and change it to my address. I called them and they said “The DMV makes the titles” to which I responded “yeah, but who gave the DMV the address?” That shut her up. I brought her the titles back, but over the next few months I probably got 20 more of them.
It was pretty funny until I started getting parking tickets in the mail.
Then I started getting letters saying ‘my car’ was going to get towed.
This was several years ago and I still get letters about it.
For most of the tickets and letters and threats I can just call the police station (that the ticket is from) and explain what happened. I just say something like 'I’m just letting you know you sent it to the wrong person, look at where you sent it, if do a street view of that address you’ll see it’s just a house, not Honda Lease…no I won’t give you my name". That’s usually enough to do it…unless it’s from Chicago. By the time the ticket is out long enough that they’re sending it to the lein holder, it’s in collections, so when I call to explain what’s going on, even if it’s just to say ‘hey it’s the wrong address’ the fist thing they say is ‘What’s your name’ or ‘what’s your license plate number’. I’ll usually answer with ‘my information has nothing to do with this I’m just calling to let you know what’s going on’. But they can’t help me with that and if I’m not making a payment, they really don’t want to hear from me.
Anyways, now all I do is bring all these letters to the dealership once in a while and say ‘here’s some more, you need to make these go away and please don’t use my name or any of my information when you do it kthxbai’.
One of my worries is that at some point a repo guy is going to show up and take one of my Honda’s. I know they’re supposed to check the VIN, but do they? Do they do it every single time?
Here’s when it started
Dang. Track down some of these cars, and use your possession of the title as proof of ownership, and get them towed back to your place. Start collecting “your” cars, and I bet you’ll get someone’s attention pretty quickly.
The problem is, my name doesn’t actually appear on the titles the owner is/was listed as:
HONDA LEASE TRUST
[my address]
So it’s not that I can just go and take ‘my car’ back. Which is good, I’m not actually legally responsible for what happens to all these cars and it’s very obviously just a clerical error since my address isn’t the right one for Honda.
When you lease a car the DMV sends the title to the lien holder. But the person at the dealership somehow put my address in for Honda’s in their computer one day. Like I said, it was funny at first…it was less funny when all the tickets and repo warnings and collections letters started showing up. Truthfully, I probably could have just thrown them all (titles, tickets, everything) in the garbage and I doubt I ever would have heard a thing about it. But I wanted to be pro-active so if anything ever did come back to me I could show that I did as much as I could to do something about it. I wrote "addressee not at address return to sender on tons of the letters, I went to the DMV, I called the state DOT, I went to the dealership, I called the number on every single ticket and letter I got.
But now it’s so many years out I just get one thing in the mail here and there, usually just a boot or repo warning and if it’s convenient I take it up to the dealership and make them handle it, if it’s not I toss it in the garbage and move on with my life.
About 10 years ago, someone had a Vista Print account registered with my cell phone number. I kept getting recorded calls telling me about bills that were due. I’d call back and tell them that I didn’t have an account with them. I had to escalate to several levels of management until I reached someone who was willing to remove my phone number. Everyone else said that since I claimed it wasn’t my account, I couldn’t authorize any changes. :smack:
Does the Hawaiian Airlines account you got access to have any contact information for this guy other than the e-mail address? You might be able to get in touch with him and let him know about the problem.
You could also call the airline again and ask them to contact the customer using some method other than e-mail. If the guy bought his ticket on-line using a credit card, he must have given a billing address. They might also have a phone number. You could point out to the airline folks that their customer could miss critical information about his flight (e.g. schedule changes).
For some reason I kept getting emails for someone at my gmail account, it was the same name but spelled a bit different. I got them for 2-3 different places, one travel company who sent me all of his itinerary, on second thought maybe I should have just gone on the trip. Another one was for some appliance deliveries, could have used them too. I think the last one was a bank or something and a refi, they at least got the idea real quick.
I’ve been at my house for 9 years now, the IRS still sends stuff to the last guy who lived here, I keep having to send them back. What really gets me now though is I get mail, mostly junk mail, for my ex wife’s new husband. He’s never lived here, or even close to here. I’ve even gotten phone calls for him. Funny how I never get stuff for her.
I used to have a phone number that was one digit off from a nearby hotel. At first we would nicely explain that we were not them, but it got old and enough callers were jerks that my wife and I resorted to pretend desk clerks, and would go through the motions of taking a reservation. I’ve always wondered how many showed up with the place booked solid thinking they had a room.
When we moved, we made sure our phone number changed.
Happens to me a lot too. Both because of a couple dumbasses with my same last name and same first initial on my “real name” email account, and also because of a couple actual reverends named Tim for my ‘revtim’ account.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe that any solution to the problem that involves any member of the staff of Hawaiian Airlines being even the slightest bit helpful in any way.
At this point, I am looking into taking Joey P’s initial suggestion and just logging into the account, removing any of my info, and making the problem not mine. I can’t be any kinder to any of Hawaiian Airline’s clients than Hawaiian Airlines is.
Our old phone number was close to the complaint line for the local newspaper’s subscription office. So at 5:30am some crotchety asshole would be calling to say they didn’t get their Sunday paper.
Like you, we started nice and then started to have fun with it if they were belligerent. “Oh you didn’t get your paper, let em check, hmm yeah, your paperboy reported that you waved your penis at him last week and he’s uncomfortable approaching your house. Good day!”
For years the Navy had a recruitment number that was 1-800-327-NAVY(6289). My home phone number growing up was 327-6289. Whenever we’d see a recruitment tv spot or hear a radio ad, we’d know that we’d have to tell people “No, you have to dial 1-800 first.”
On the other hand, whoever has the bob@aol.com email address? I’m very sorry. I’ve been using your address as a spamhole for decades, including some sites I frankly would be embarassed to have emails come to me from.
I once read that if you’re a jerk to the front desk guy at a hotel in New York they’ll stick you in room 212. 212 is the area code for Manhattan. All the people that are trying to call (long distance) to Manhattan and forget to dial a 1 first will get your room and you’ll get calls and day/night.
Back in the 80s we used to have an 800 number going in to my wife’s law firm. 888-our-last-7-digits was a Gulf Coast casino catering to the retired crowd. Many of whom had never heard of 888 numbers and “knew” 800-xxx-xxxx was what you *always *dialed for toll-free calls.
We were nice if they were nice; we explained the 888 vs. 800 thing slowly & carefully; most old folks got it, apologized profusely, & didn’t bother us again. Old folks can be so sweet & … civilized.
But 10-15% of the old coots wouldn’t take “wrong number” for an answer. So after a while we were giving them the special “Presidential Weekend Retreat” deal with free golf passes *and *$500 of free casino play *and *priority seating at the buffet. Just check with the VIP host desk when you arrive, Mr. JustWontListen.