Jonathan received a letter from Chase thanking him for being a customers, and asking him to send it back in order to opt out of receiving promotional mailings. Which is interesting, because Jonathan not only isn’t a Chase customer, he doesn’t live at that particular address full-time or normally receive mail there. Concerned about identity theft, he learned that he wasn’t the only non-customer being thanked for patronizing Chase. But they won’t let him get off their mailing list, either.

I got this (attached) “Thank you for being a Chase customer” letter from Chase. On the face of it, it’s pretty weird. It’s saying: You’re a customer, you don’t get junk mail from us, but if you don’t send us this form back, we are totally going to send you junk mail.

But it’s odder for me because (1) I’m not a Chase customer, and (2) the address they sent it to isn’t my mailing address. (It’s an address where I sometimes reside but never have received any mail at.) Since I’ve been a victim of identity theft in the past, I’m concerned about those last two points. Did someone open a Chase account/credit card in my name?

There was no contact number for the Chase EVP (Deb Walden) who sent me this letter, but I found a number for her online and called it. I was transferred to [redacted].

The first thing Ms. [redacted] told me was that there probably wasn’t a Chase account under my name with the address the Chase letter had been sent to. “But the first sentence of the letter reads ‘Thank you for being a Chase customer,’ I told her.” “It’s just a form letter,” she replied. She told me that Chase has a list of names and addresses (purchased from some direct marketing company I guess) and that it’s “sent out to everyone” whether they’re customers or not.

So Chase is sending out thousands (millions?) of letters to people who aren’t customers saying “Thank you for being a Chase customer.”

And then requiring you to confirm your info (even if it’s incorrect in my case) in order to *not* receive more junk mail.

In my case, Ms. [redacted] said she could not unlink my name from the incorrect address in Chase’s system. Apparently, my only alternatives are

(1) don’t send back the form (so that I’m not confirming that I get mail at this address) …but then starting December 15th, Chase will send even *more* mail for me to this wrong address

or

(2) send back this form so Chase won’t send other mail in my name to the wrong address (but by sending it back I’ll be confirming in Chase’s system this erroneous link between my name and the wrong address).

I’d complain about the bad customer service, but I’m not a customer… or am I?

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.