Rebecca got one of those calls from her mother that everybody dreads. “Is there anything you think you should tell me?” her mother wanted to know. Rebecca’s mom got a piece of junk mail with Rebecca’s first name and her boyfriend’s last name and was under the impression Rebecca had snuck off for a Vegas wedding. She hadn’t. After Rebecca calmed her mother down, she tried to figure out how Rite-Aid, where both had worked for a time, had merged her name and her boyfriend’s. When Rite-Aid gave her the run around, we advised Rebecca to try an EECB to get some answers. Read her email, inside.
To The Board of Directors:
Good Morning. I am sure you can help me with a little problem that I am having with your company.
Last Friday, my mother received a piece of mail from your company’s current promotion regarding the “gas giveaway” if I switched my prescriptions to you. Annoying as any other piece of junk mail is, this one was particularly disturbing. It was addressed as:
Rebecca J*****
[redacted]
[redacted] CTMy mother called me where I live, in Vermont, and told me of the mail that I had gotten. It turns out, my last name isn’t J*******, it’s F*******. My boyfriend’s last name is J*****, though. When she called me, she was extremely agitated and excited (and not in a good way), over the fact that I had gotten married behind their backs. My mother had just gotten out of the hospital with congestive heart failure and a massive infection, and the last thing that she needed was to be excited.
I spoke with one of your customer service representatives on Monday, and she assured me that I would get a call with someone from “corporate” yesterday. I waited all day without a call. She told me that the marketing comes from the pharmacy division. My boyfriend hasn’t had a prescription filled at a Rite-Aid in two and a half years, the time we’ve been together.
We both worked together at Rite-Aid, but never once marked myself as being “connected” to him, except by address.
I cannot figure out how my first name got linked with my boyfriend’s last name. Simply what I am asking for help with is to find out where this came from.
If you could help me, it would be greatly appreciated. I simply want to know where this name came from, so I can get it removed, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
And about the piece of mail? If your pharmacy can’t even get my name right, and is linking me to other people I’m not even related to (yet), how can I trust them to get my prescriptions right? More than likely, I will never do anything personally identifiable with Rite-Aid again. I was once a loyal shopper, but if this problem cannot be solved, I may never shop there again.
Thank you for your time, and for reading my email.
Looking forward to your response,
Rebecca
It’s one thing if a customer loyalty program gets confused about your name. Irritating, but unlikely to actually hurt you. It’s another thing completely if the pharmacy decides you’d be better off married and starts sending junk mail to your mother’s house in another state. If the pharmacy makes such an appalling, counter-intuitive mistake about what name to use on annoying junk mail, how badly are they going to screw up your prescription? If you’re having trouble with Rite-Aid, the link with tips for sleuthing corporate contact information is here.
(photo: Clean Wal-Mart)
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My doctor got a parking ticket for an expired meter. How can I trust him to take out my appendix if he doesn’t even know how to feed a meter?
@BrokenGlassHurts: Actually, most of the big chain pharmacies make their profits on other items. Why do you think they can afford to do ridiculously cheap generics? They make money cause that lady who comes in to buy ear infection meds for her kid walks out with formula (couple bucks profit) diapers (couple bucks profit) a candy bar and a bottle of soda (another buck).
@failurate: Fantastic!
Seriously though, if they live together, that’s probably how their names got linked.
If they lived together, I can’t imagine why the mail would be arriving at the mothers house? ::confused::
@BeThisWay: The problem is these things can take on a life of their own. Because in some data mining database, these people are married, even if they’re not. Let’s say things don’t work out, and they go their separate ways. I don’t think a debt collector would be shy about harassing somebody about their “ex-wife’s” debt. Hell, I got harassing phone calls about my “wife’s” debt just because I moved into the same town that somebody with my last name lived in.
Of course, that’s more a problem with vigorous debt collectors, but there should be some sort of public oversight and scrubbing of these databases.
@SkokieGuy: I agree, the letter was well-written, and I wonder what response she’ll get from corporate.
I wonder too about the ratio of men to women who think this is a “non-issue.” If someone linked my name to that of my male roommates, I’d feel insulted that they assumed I was married just because we share an same address. I think it’s a good idea too to know what these companies are doing with your personal information and how they’re using it. It might just be “marketing” data to them, but it’s my identity and credit they’re potentially messing with.
Who cares… save the EECB for something important!
I would just like to know how, at 36, I keep getting junk mail from the AARP.
@AngrySicilian:
Who has so little going on in their life that they need to care about a POST about a piece of junk mail, let alone get “stressed out” about it?
if her mom reacted the way my mom would, this is definitely an issue. she mentioned her mother just had heart failure–getting that upset could cause even more damage to it! it would be a funny laugh it off thing if there hadn’t been the potential to kill her.
rite-aid could just apologize and get it over with, instead of being asses. then, there wouldn’t have been a consumerist article about it…?
The “non-issue” comments are, I think, directed at the editorial decision to make a post out of this. I enjoy Consumerist a lot, but I do believe that, probably for whatever “more posts/more eyeballs” reason, things that don’t merit posts are becoming posts more frequently, and that dilutes the value of the site. The signal-to-noise ratio is important, and this post is emphatically noise. That’s how it can be a non-issue and yet worth commenting on.
As for the post itself, I mostly think it’s kind of sad and funny. Indeed, if Mom’s first response to this is to leap to the conclusion that you’ve eloped, and you’re keeping it from her but freely giving your married name out to Rite-Aid, then Rite-Aid is not the problem. I’m sorry to hear Mom is ill and I wish her the best, but Mom’s inability to handle ordinary situations isn’t going to be solved by keeping ordinary situations from confronting her. Mom’s issue needs to be addressed separately. It’s not about blaming the OP, because who doesn’t leap to defend her mom? it’s just about recognizing that the bigger problem that needs addressing lies with Mom’s outsized response.
@GameVoid: and what does your comment about my comment say? What does my commenting about your comment say? Buzz off, we all evidently have too much time on our hands.
@SkokieGuy: I guess us in Rodgers Park have a different point of view about this than you Skokie folks…
Doesn’t this kind of alarmist reaction sort of dilute effectiveness of the EECB?
@mlliu: “I’d feel insulted”
Really, you’d be insulted that an information storage software program lumped you into a category to which you didn’t belong. That’s weird.
Living with male roommates? Do you have to pretend they’re gay so that your landlord doesn’t get suspicious?
My wife kept her surname when we married. We regularly get mail addressed to my forename and her surname and her forename and my surname.
The marketing companies make assumptions and run with them.
@Fostina1:
The credit check suggestion is a good one, actually. I worked at Rite Aid a few years back, and all employees are identified on paperwork by Social Security number. If someone didn’t have their employee discount card to scan, they could give their SS# to the cashier (I even knew a couple of fellow employees’ numbers by heart). Basically, employee SS#’s float around Rite Aids like dandelion seeds, so it’s not farfetched that an unscrupulous person might decide to use that information.
I can’t believe people are going nuts about this issue. Weave is right – the marketing people make assumptions. When I was married I changed my name to First Maiden Married – and my credit report showed First Middle Married instead… I never used that combination of names, anywhere in my life. It is really not a panic EECB type of problem.
…and if your Mom is in a panic about this, I’m sorry but she needs to relax.
I lived at the same address as my partner for 10 years. I ALWAYS got mail with his last name, because these sexist companies always assume that if you’re male/female and live together then 1) you MUST be married and 2) the woman ALWAYS takes the male’s last name. It also happened with I lived with a male roomate for less than a year, so time doesn’t seem to matter.
I sent them all back, as there was no recepient of that name at that home.
WTF ever.
@The_IT_Crone: Sigh. Life is HARD.
What a silly article.
What mom would enter a rage at junk mail having the wrong name on it.
I’ve had my last name misspelled, my first name in the middle with my middle name first, no last name, just a last name, and so much other crap. Hell, I once somehow got my CATS name with my last name (I signed up some PetCo mailer using her name as a laugh and I guess they tacked on my last name through some database whatevering). Good thing my parents didn’t think I married my CAT.
@backbroken: I once got mail with my wife’s last name, since neither of us took the others.
So I lit it on fire in protest.
We didn’t need that stimulus check anyway.
The thing that bothers me most about this post is the Consumerist’s suggestion of using an EECB for such a minor issue. There’s no incentive to correct junk mail information because there’s such a low probability of response that getting a few names wrong isn’t going to change that.
I publish papers in academic journals and as such I’m constantly getting mail for Dr. … or Professor …, I guess that means I should drop out of grad school; apparently I already got my PhD and no one told me about it. I just have a laugh and throw it out, no reason to get bent out of shape.
@backbroken: It’s not that this makes life “hard.” It’s that it’s INSULTING. There’s a difference.
@The_IT_Crone: I understand your point, and would even agree if I thought it was a conscious decision being made by some human being somewhere. But you’re taking offense at something being done by an inanimate and probably poorly-written piece of software. There are times where it’s just not worth worrying about something, and this is one of them, in my opinion.
@testsicles: I’d feel insulted that the information storage software program automatically makes the woman take the man’s last name. As a matter of fact, my male roommates are a gay couple. My landlord doesn’t care either way, and it’s none of her business anyhow.
@The_IT_Crone: Agreed. I wonder if it’s one of those things that you just can’t understand until it happens to you … your whole life. That’s fodder for another forum.
As anyone with a remotely ethnic name will know, even getting gender right on pieces of junk mail is rare, as is spelling.
I can’t imagine ever bothering to try and correct this. Unless we’re talking about actual account information, then it is practically irrelevant.
@Cavendish: It has nothing to do with gender, those are characteristics you impose out of your own insecurities. I get mail under the female version of my name as mistakes but I don’t assume the sender believes I’ve had a sex change. Jeebus.
Also, I was referencing Three’s Company, and I bet they’re just pretending to be gay so Mr. Furley doesn’t get upset that two guys are living with a woman.
On another note, I told a female college roommate I was gay so I could get the apartment. I’m not.
As a guy who this has happened to, I can say this is an issue, albeit a small one. Periodically, I get calls from collection agencies asking for my first name and my wife’s maiden name. They won’t give me any information as to who is supposedly owed, but it really annoys me that SOMEONE has apparantly stolen some identity.
When I get phone calls, I like to pretend that they are calling my retarded brother-in-law.
No it’s not a big deal, but it IS annoying. For years, we’ve been receiving marketing material at our house addressed to my husband’s old ex-girlfriend – with his last name (they were never married)! Most of it comes from Lenscrafters, which is funny because he hasn’t worn glasses since he had Lasik back in 2000, but we get the occasional catalog (teaching supplies – what the hell?) too. Maybe next time one comes I’ll bother to write an email to an executive and see what happens.
It’s amazing how many people pay attention to the junk mail they get. It’s junk. Don’t look at it. I don’t. It goes directly in the trash.
Next complain will be for mail addressed at “resident”. OMG, how do they know people live at my house? Run for the hills.
The mailing list is constructed from information giving by pharmacy patients. So she must have gotten a prescription filled at ANY Rite Aid with her first name and her boyfriend’s last name on it.
Case Closed.
LAME. I got as much out of this article as I would reading directions on “how to wipe front to back.”
@SkokieGuy: +5 for being the first one to not blame the OP (… i assume it means “Other Person”)
Again +5 here for making a coherent and sensible point without calling names.
PS: Do you edit Wikipedia? You should.
Okay guys, lets think. Let’s be in her shoes for a moment.
“Should I be worried that I’m receiving mail stating that I have been married and have taken my boyfriends last name?”
Um, yes. This mistake could catch the eye of the IRS or social security, or any other government affiliate. More than likely they will realize it is a error, but there have been actually cases of mistakes in the system causing people to become married without their knowledge.
The simple way to make sure you’re fine would to check and see if the government still has you selected as single (You are single if you’re not married).
Why would it matter? If there has been a error and you’re considered married by the government, and then do your taxes as single, the government will think you just performed tax fraud. If you get social security, they will think you’re a fraud.
So seeing a piece of mail stating I’m married when I’m not would definitely worry me, since I’m on social security, and it still would even if I wasn’t.
@AngrySicilian: From the article:
“My mother had just gotten out of the hospital with congestive heart failure and a massive infection, and the last thing that she needed was to be excited.”
and
“If your pharmacy can’t even get my name right, and is linking me to other people I’m not even related to (yet), how can I trust them to get my prescriptions right?”
This is why it is relevant.
@Juggernaut: you’re friggin’ hilarious.
@ThyGuy: You are the one that sets your withholding, not the government, and not the junk mail that you receive.
@The Consumerist – please tell me that you guys are kidding with this story. I love your site but I have to believe that you posted this story for the sheer pleasure of watching what would happen in the comments. I’ve had dingle-berries that were more newsworthy.
Okay, has the EECB really been reduced to this? Complaining about junk mail – not even that it was received, but that it was mislabelled? Someday someone is going to have a major grievance that goes ignored because of overuse of high-level emails for trite crap like this.
And really, if the OP’s mother was so ready to believe that she had gotten married because of the addressing, did she not take a second to notice that the mail was sent to her house? Was she mad that they got married or that they apparently moved in without asking her?
@ThyGuy: LOL, a stupid piece of junk mail has nothing to do with whether the IRS thinks you are married. In fact, name changes have nothing to do with whether the IRS thinks you are married either. Your name doesn’t change automatically because you get married, and you can change your name whenever you want.
This is a pretty stupid story. but along the hating riteaid track, they havescrewed me twice.
Once, i was hovering near the prescrip. desk waiting for a refill, and the pharmacist leaned over and (not the pharm tech – the pharmacist!) yelled, “Maam, your -insertpersonalprescriptioninfohere- is ready!”
WTF?? there was like ten people milling around.
Then, another time, they refused to sell Plan B. to my boyfriend, who was picking it up for me. They said they can’t sell to TO MEN?? wtf, again.
someone I know had a phone contract with Bell. Her monthly bills would come addressed to “Arifalbg.” Her name was Aisling. I always thought that was hilarious.
Hi, it’s Rebecca here. I did get an email from someone at Rite-Aid, and they want to get to the bottom of this.
And it isn’t so much the fact that it was junk mail and my mom got upset, as so many people are quick to assume. It was the fact that it “came from the pharmacy” as was told to me by a customer service representative. And during the time that we worked together, we had the same address, but not even in that state… It’s all a mess…
I got an email from Rite-Aid, and we’re working on a solution.
And the reason that my mother thought that we had got married was because we are actually getting to that point. It wasn’t like we had just met. She just wants him to ask first.
@The_IT_Crone: It’s not insulting. My wife didn’t take my name. I get mail (and phone calls) all the time with her last name. Should I be insulted?
If you happen to get mail with your spouses last name, it’s not some paternalistic conspiracy. It’s all computer generated. My wife’s name is on most of the bills in the house. I figure that’s why her name gets used more prominently in the mailing lists. It’s just happenstance.
@Cavendish: Been happening to me for 5 years. I am a guy. Mail comes with my wife’s last name. So I do understand that if it is insulting to you, then you are an easy nut to crack.
@rjgnyc: Good one.
The OP is an *ss whining about one letter and threatening to never shop at the store, just because of one letter?
Get over it.
…or maybe she doesn’t want her mother know that she is living with her boyfriend. I still don’t understand why this letter is in this site.
6/24/2008 – the day Consumerist officially jumped the shark.
A complaint about junk mail having the wrong name on it? Seriously?
“Dear Consumerist,
I keep getting mail that keeps misspelling my name as “Resident” and “Boxholder”.”
To this day, I cannot get American Express to stop calling me Mr. GothamGal and Mr. GothamGal kept his last name, so we are confused who they think they are mailing to.