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DAK best way to handle this issue

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Clariman
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DAK best way to handle this issue

#453659

Postby Clariman » October 27th, 2021, 5:31 pm

I have received a slew of emails to my gmail account from a US car company, its finance arm and a US dealer about what appears to be a new car purchase. It has the address of a person and it has a car VIN number. My gmail address isn't my main one.

Although they all looked genuine most were from no-reply email addresses. There was an option to click on links to say that this wasn't for me but I'm not going to click on links to an inbound email that was wrongly addressed to me, just in case.

So I used the US car company's website contact page to message them about it. I quoted the VIN to show I was being genuine. They have replied saying,

Based on the nature of your inquiry, we recommend calling our xxxxx Team at your earliest convenience so they may assist you with the account registered for the Hyundai vehicle stated under your email address.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and look forward to hearing from you so we may properly assist. When contacting us please reference case number xxxxx. Thank you for being a valued member of our [car brand] Family.


I have no desire to call a US freephone number because I guess it won't be free to me. I have raised the issue with them. I have sent an email from my gmail address, quoting the VIN number and the ZIP code that was used. I've made it clear that I live in the UK and don't own one of their vehicles.

What else can I do?

To be honest I think it is probably a genuine error where someone has a similar email address to me and mistyped it (my everyday email address has its own domain name but I use a gmail one for some websites and as a backup). If so, can't they just contact the dealership or the purchaser and get the correct email address? The fact they haven't done that alarms me a bit.

Any advice?

Thanks
C

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Re: DAK best way to handle this issue

#453665

Postby Lootman » October 27th, 2021, 5:40 pm

For a few years now I have been receiving emails (to my gmail account) for a chap who lives in Tasmania. He has the same first and last name as me and, presumably, a very similar email address involving that name, perhaps with just one character different.

And these were important looking emails, e.g. about impending jury duty, travel confirmations, work emails and at least one very embarrassing online purchase confirmation from Amazon.

I managed to track him down by searching on my name in Tasmania. It's a sufficiently unusual last name so the search was successful and did reveal other information about him, including the email address of his secretary. I then forwarded to her the emails I had received by mistake, for which he was very grateful. I didn't forward the embarrassing email.

You could just ignore this case. The problem in my situation was that there was a steady stream of semi-important emails, and I felt obligated to resolve things. To my knowledge he never received emails meant for me.

chas49
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Re: DAK best way to handle this issue

#453670

Postby chas49 » October 27th, 2021, 5:47 pm

You've probably done as much as is reasonable. However, if you wanted to try one more thing, you could perhaps forward the various emails to Hyundai UK - or phone them if you prefer. Hopefully you'll find they want to help rather than just say "oh, we're a separate company ...."

bungeejumper
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Re: DAK best way to handle this issue

#453783

Postby bungeejumper » October 28th, 2021, 9:05 am

I can't honestly think of any good reason why Clariman shouldn't just ignore these emails, and maybe set up a filter in his email browser that sends them all to junk. I suppose there's a far-out possibility that this US car buyer might have deliberately given a wrong email contact because he intended to default and disappear with the car :? ), but I hope and trust that the retailer's credit checks were better than that?

I occasionally get emails intended for an estate agent in Northern Ireland, whose domain name is identical to mine except that his has a hyphen in it. Not all of those emails are complimentary! :lol: I did once alert my namesake to the situation, but he doesn't appear to have done anything about it. Not my problem!

But it was my fax machine that really got the wrong person's messages, a few years back. A large industrial manufacturer in a nearby town had a number that was one digit different from mine. Which was how I came to receive a series of highly-sensitive faxes from Germany about a £75 million lawsuit, which had resulted from a hideous accident that had been caused (allegedy) by this company's faulty product. And yes, some fat-fingered legal secretary in Frankfurt had spilled all the confidential beans to me.

I reported the misdirected fax to the aforesaid company, but they didn't acknowledge. (Probably some minion smacked his forehead and hushed it up so that his superiors didn't find out?) Anyway, I never heard from them again. I don't suppose they'd have been reassured to know that my job at that time involved working closely with the news media? :|

BJ

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Re: DAK best way to handle this issue

#453820

Postby Sunnypad » October 28th, 2021, 11:05 am

I completely understand the alarm.

Similar has happened to me

I blocked the emails, then ditched the account as there was a flood of spam

I have since been told that my current main email has spammed people occasionally.

I hate it, but it seems nothing can be done so I just ignore it.

niord
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Re: DAK best way to handle this issue

#453824

Postby niord » October 28th, 2021, 11:16 am

This happens to me quite often, always from the US. I have even been invited to speak at the University of Arizona and have had quite a few what should be mails with personal details of the intended recipient. I have just usually responded telling them they have the email address incorrect and I usually get a nice response apologising. Although I did offer to speak at the University of Arizona, but they didn't take me up on it when I pointed out I needed business class flights from the UK and decent accommodation plus my usual fee

The biggest pain is someone has used my email for their car insurance in the US which they pay monthly, and I get a reminder every month to pay. The insurance company don't seem to be interested that they have the wrong person. The silly thing is that with that email, I can log into the guy's account and change his details, although I never have. Now the reminder just goes into the junk box. I do wonder if the intended recipient wonders why he never hears from them !

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Re: DAK best way to handle this issue

#453859

Postby UncleEbenezer » October 28th, 2021, 1:38 pm

bungeejumper wrote:I reported the misdirected fax to the aforesaid company, but they didn't acknowledge. (Probably some minion smacked his forehead and hushed it up so that his superiors didn't find out?) Anyway, I never heard from them again. I don't suppose they'd have been reassured to know that my job at that time involved working closely with the news media? :|

BJ


Which raises another legal issue: the wikileaks scenario.

Suppose you had published those faxes. Perhaps investigated further, working with your best investigative-journalist colleagues. How much trouble could you potentially have been in for sharing confidential documents?

bungeejumper
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Re: DAK best way to handle this issue

#453863

Postby bungeejumper » October 28th, 2021, 1:49 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:Which raises another legal issue: the wikileaks scenario.

Suppose you had published those faxes. Perhaps investigated further, working with your best investigative-journalist colleagues. How much trouble could you potentially have been in for sharing confidential documents?

LOL, Wikileaks could at least have raised the "public interest" defence. Whereas I'd probably have been flayed alive for attempted defamation, publishing price-sensitive information, and (for all I know?) potentially compromising a judicial process.

One thing they taught us was not to do those things. Unlike the amateurs who pull similarly damaging stunts on social media. Or try to..... :|

BJ

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Re: DAK best way to handle this issue

#453934

Postby AF62 » October 28th, 2021, 6:01 pm

I get this fairly frequently as I was quick off the mark and managed to get 'mylastname'@gmail.com without any initials or numbers.

If the misaddressed email is from an individual I let them know and am usually thanked.

If it is from a company I either use the unsubscribe if it is just a mailing list, but if it is an account that has been set up then I email customer services to let them know. However if there is no response then I use the 'forgotten password' facility to receive an email and then change the email and password - the email I change to the company's own customer service email address.

The only time I have had an issue that took some time to stop was when someone in Canada used my email address to register for their tax affairs. The only way I managed to get them to stop was emailing the finance minister directly (such people are always vain and dumb and thus have 'firstname.lastname' email addresses so they are easy to email) and told them if they didn't stop and remove my email address I would report them to the Information Commissioner as a breach of GDPR. That did provoke a 'how dare you' response from one of their minions, until I made clear I was serious.


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