They would call me about my student loan. “You have the wrong person.” Ok we’ll fix it. Six months later we’d go through it all over. I finally filed a complaint with a government protection agency. The calls have stopped but since they tied her to my phone number and my address, the person is now getting credit card offers at my address. Maybe she paid off her loan.
How do I detach her name from my address?
Reminds me of an old joke. Punchline:* “Does she have a sister?”*
You can’t unless you move and even that may not work 100%.
The calls were coming from inside your house.
In all seriousness, there is no central database of such things. There are countless ones that get replicated all over the place and there is no way to remove someone that isn’t you from all of them. I would consider credit card offers pretty harmless anyway. Almost everyone gets tons of those including lots of other junk mail and just throws them away.
I would be much more concerned with your credit score and identity theft. Have you tried www.annualcreditreport.com and www.creditkarma.com. Both are free and reputable. That is a quick and fairly easy way to make sure your identities didn’t get co-mingled in a way that actually matters. If they did, it is easy to dispute it with the credit reporting agencies online (also free). They are required by law to fix it very quickly if that is the case.
I once worked for a publishing company with about 80 employees. Like most companies we received mail addressed to employees no longer with the outfit or who no longer had responsibility for the incoming mail inquiry/invoice/etc. Part of my assigned duties was to take this mail, contact the sender, and attempt to have their records changed so their incoming mail would reach the correct party.
I will echo what Shagnasty said; it’s hard to change mailing list data because the whole idea with them is to propagate the data for $$$.
Nevertheless, it can be successful. It usually took four to six months of repeating letters. I found the most effective way to do it was to inform the sender that Mr./Ms. X was deceased and future material should be submitted to Mr./Ms. Y. That’s not an effective solution for the OP’s problem but I thought it worth throwing out.
I went through this for a while as well.
Unfortunately, collection agencies are extremely reluctant to delete any obsolete data. The name, previous addresses, phone #s, etc. of the debtor are on kept on file forever. Every 3-6 months their system will spit that file out again to a new agent, who will go through all the contact info. trying to track that person down.
As far as the mailing lists go, that’s tough. Problem is, you may get her name off the mailing list for your address at the expense of your own.
Changing your number?
Maybe …but the problem is that it’s easy for a vigilant collection agent to use a reverse directory to link the address to a new phone number.
I went through this with my brother. After he died I had his mail forwarded to my address. I got phone calls from collection agencies for at least 2 years. I still get credit card offers, and now Medicare supplemental insurance offers, through the mail. I just throw them away.
I still get mass mail addressed to my mother who died 6 years ago…
We’ve lived in our house for 17 years. Before we lived there, it was vacant for 4-5 years. It was vacant because the previous resident tried to burn it down (but luckily didn’t get very far). This previous resident apparently had some mental health issues; these mental health issues were exacerbated by the death of his grandmother some years before. The grandmother also lived in the house (before she died, obviously).
We still, pretty regularly, receive mail addressed to the grandmother.
Good luck!
I lived at my last address for 12 years and was sill getting mail for the previous resident. AARP, hospital billing, what appeared to be collection agencies and attorneys were some of the return addresses. I did the return to sender thing for the first year and after that, just threw them in the trash.
As far as the phone calls go, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m still getting voicemails for OTR driving jobs and I haven’t had a CDL for years, even then, never one for big trucks, only delivery.
I think you win. My stepfather died in 2005. My mother died in 2012, and I had her mail forwarded. My stepfather is getting a hunting magazine at my address now. There were more things, earlier on; that’s just the one that stuck.
When it comes to physical mail, you have a couple of good options that are detailed in this article. First step, though, should always be to talk to the postal carrier if it’s possible, either at your house or at the post office.
Personally, I’m especially fond of the letter to the DMA; it does actually work.
Ha! Why should the postal carrier care? They just deliver what’s in their truck, they don’t take the time to actually vet it.
That hasn’t been my experience. It’s not as though they don’t have leeway or cognition; like anyone else they want to do their job and not make people’s lives harder.
I’ve lived here for six and half years and every now and then get (junk) mail for Hallgirl2. She’s never lived here and hasn’t used her maiden name in nearly 10 years.
About 15 years ago, my cousin asked if he could use me for a reference. Since then I’ve gotten hundreds of calls looking for him. The calls have slowed to maybe two per year, but I still get them. Cousin said he’d deal with it, but the calls still come. I’ve pleaded and screamed at the callers, to no avail.
From now on, I’m going to use ASGuy’s method and tell the callers that Cousin is deceased.
Instead of saying deceased and raising trouble later, say, “I’m sorry to tell you, but Cousin is no longer with us.” Said in the right tone, they will immediately apologize (often express their regrets) and tell you they are removing Cousin from their database. It works spectacularly and not a lie!
We still occasionally get mail addressed to one of the previous owners of our house. We have lived here for 20 years.
Just before I moved to Japan again in 1990 I went on a vacation and came back to an answering machine full of messages looking some some deadbeat with the same first name and fairly rare second name.
Mine was the only one in the phone book. (Remember those things?)
I thought I’d do my civic duty and let them know they needed to chase someone else but not surprisingly, most of them wouldn’t buy it.
They were unhappy to learn I was leaving the county, though.
I’m still getting calls, 14 years later, from some law firm, trying to collect something that never was my debt. Even if it was, it would be uncollectable by now, so I just tell them to fuck off and hang up. It doesn’t happen often enough to be a problem.