Annoying Times Call For Annoying Measures
A couple of years ago, I received an email from the UK branch of an American travel agency, informing [Stranger] that her new account with them had been created successfully. I had received similar emails in the past, always addressed to [Stranger], and the last name was always different, so I suspect a bot was creating accounts in online services that don’t verify email addresses before activating accounts.
I sent [Travel Agency] an email informing them of the fact that I had not created the account and saying I would like them to remove my email address from their systems. No response, and I kept getting emails from them addressed to [Stranger], so I decided to call them.
After talking to a guy who promised to take care of the issue, nothing changed until, one day, I received a confirmation of a flight booking from, let’s say, Manchester to Amsterdam early in the morning on [date]. At least they had had the common sense to not include the entire credit card number used for the booking in the email, no doubt as a result of earlier blunder(s) featuring stolen credit card number(s) and irate customer(s).
That’s when I decided I’d had enough. I went to the site and used the “recover password” function to gain access to the account and deleted the account, after which I blocked the agency’s domain name from my email. The deletion of the account shouldn’t have affected the booking, and even if it did, it’s not my fault they didn’t take action when they had the chance, is it?
Besides, since my email address does not contain the name [Stranger] — or anything even close to it — there is no way that half a dozen [Stranger]s from the UK, all with different last names, have all accidentally entered my email in account registration forms instead of their own, so I doubt than any real [Stanger]s were harmed in the process.
I hope the aftermath caused them at least as bad a headache as their incompetence caused me.