Today, I opened my mailbox to find a particularly unpleasant surprise. There was an invitation to an investment seminar with free food at a top tier restaurant. So what's wrong with that?
It was addressed to my husband's ex-wife. We are talking about mail addressed to someone who has been divorced from the resident for nearly twenty years. We are talking about mail addressed to someone who never lived in this house or the two prior houses owned by the resident. This is mail addressed to someone who has never lived within 2,000 miles of this house.
So, how does this happen? Some data vendors don't do a careful job of "cleaning" their data. When they were married, my husband and his then-wife were appropriately listed as sharing an address. When they separated, the data company continued to list them at the same address wherever either one of them moved. The data company never integrated and analyzed their data, in which case they would have seen that this woman still was obtaining credit at their old address. They never noticed that there are no records of her taking credit, registering a vehicle, or buying property at any of the addresses associated with her former husband. More importantly, they never noticed that he was establishing credit and registering assets as community property (meaning married or like married) with another woman (me).
While keeping this woman in the database might give the data company one more name to sell, it wasn't very effective for the customers down the chain. The local AIG representative paid for names of prospects, but it didn't get one in this case. Instead, it paid money to annoy a true prospect. Sorry guys....
It was addressed to my husband's ex-wife. We are talking about mail addressed to someone who has been divorced from the resident for nearly twenty years. We are talking about mail addressed to someone who never lived in this house or the two prior houses owned by the resident. This is mail addressed to someone who has never lived within 2,000 miles of this house.
So, how does this happen? Some data vendors don't do a careful job of "cleaning" their data. When they were married, my husband and his then-wife were appropriately listed as sharing an address. When they separated, the data company continued to list them at the same address wherever either one of them moved. The data company never integrated and analyzed their data, in which case they would have seen that this woman still was obtaining credit at their old address. They never noticed that there are no records of her taking credit, registering a vehicle, or buying property at any of the addresses associated with her former husband. More importantly, they never noticed that he was establishing credit and registering assets as community property (meaning married or like married) with another woman (me).
While keeping this woman in the database might give the data company one more name to sell, it wasn't very effective for the customers down the chain. The local AIG representative paid for names of prospects, but it didn't get one in this case. Instead, it paid money to annoy a true prospect. Sorry guys....