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random musings of a crazy cat lady

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Mistaken Identity

I get a bit cranky when I get phone calls or emails trying to collect money from people who aren't me. I think you can probably relate to this. I've had more than usual this week.
The one that I don't know how to deal with is the debt collector phone calls for someone who is not named Old Biddy and lives at a different address. The canned message goes something like this. "This is a message for Alicia Maldonado who resides at Not-Old-Biddy's address. Please hang up if you are not Alicia Maldonado. By staying on the line you are confirming that you are Alicia Maldonado. Please call Sleazy Debt Collection Agency and reference # xyz." Uh, WTF, by staying on the line I am confirming that I have an answering machine, not that I am Alicia Maldonado. I am not sure if I should call them and tell them that I am Old Biddy, not Alicia Maldonado, or if that would just cause more problems.
Being an old biddy and a relatively early adopter, I have number of fairly prime email address of the firstnamelastname@address.com. All the other Old Biddies who have variations of this address don't always make this clear when they fill out forms, or it gets lost in transcription. For instance, there is also an Old C. Biddy who lives in Dubai and presumably has an email address similar to mine. I got an email about her electric bill. Uh, WTF, Dubai electric company? Send a real bill or do autopay, don't just send an email. I wrote back and said that I am Old M. Biddy of the US, not Old. C. Biddy of Dubai, but apparently this is not enough and I am supposed to send a copy of my passport. No fucking way.
On occasion people try to give me rebates. I could take advantage of this. I get emails about 'my' Harvard/MIT Coop rebate. I could feign ignorance and pretend that it is left over from 20 years ago and order myself a stylish sweatshirt or some beaver-logo undies (ok,I don't think they sell those, but they should) with it and no one would be the wiser. But since I am a nice person, I figured out who had mistakenly assumed that the alumni address biddy@alum.mit.edu would be theirs, simply because they were currently biddy@mit.edu, and emailed her to inform them that I was getting her emails. I don't know if she ever did anything about it.

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