On 19/10/2011 23:34, Martin Brown wrote:
On 19/10/2011 21:42, David in Normandy wrote:
On 19/10/2011 18:51, Janet wrote:
In , jahnin.91496b6
@gardenbanter.co.uk says...



Most published report about
victims of identity thieves are popular personality. I am just not sure
if it happens to ordinary citizens.

It does.

My guess is that it sometimes happens due to the incompetence of banks
and credit card companies. At our old address in England I received a
letter from a credit card company saying my application for a card had
been successful. I hadn't asked for a card from them! In the same
envelope was someone else's bank statement - apparently it had been
provided to the card company as proof of who they were and their
address. However the address on the statement wasn't the same as mine.

At that point I would turn the whole lot over to the police. YMMV

The card company had apparently run the persons address through some
computer and decided to change their postcode and another line in their
address... resulting in my address twenty miles away. The following day
I got their credit card in the post and a couple of days after that the
associated PIN number! I phoned the card company to tell them their
error but they refused to talk to me because I wasn't the card holder...

Then you ask to speak to a supervisor or their fraud section directly
and hard cancel the card (and for good measure point out that their
droids scripts are flawed). Follow up in writing to leave a paper trail
- they can conveniently lose those phone recordings when it suits them.

lol Lucky I'm honest. I just stuffed the lot back into a letterbox and
marked it nobody with that name at this address, return to sender. A
week later I got a baffled letter from them still badly addressed
puzzled why I'd returned everything. I stuffed that one back in the
postbox - return to sender too. Didn't hear from them after that.

That is a very bad idea for unsolicited and unsigned credit cards bound
to your name and address. If you send it back slice it in two first and
damage the signature area to show "VOID". Otherwise they are quite dumb
enough to send it on to the original criminal perpetrator at his address



The thing was that that neither the letter nor the credit card was in my
name anyway. The address on the letter was a hybrid between that of the
intended recipient (as shown on their bank statement) and my address. It
was somewhat surprising that the postman consistently delivered those
three letters to our address anyway since the address was quite mangled.
I'd decided I'd wasted enough time and the cost of a phone call phoning
the droids at the credit card company trying to sort out THEIR problem -
and being stuck in a queue for twenty minutes waiting to speak to
someone... "You call is important to us blah blah blah" ; but as they
didn't want to know when I finally got to speak to someone - stuff em.
I'd done my bit. It wasn't my problem either.

--
David in Normandy.
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