Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Wrong Person

I have started collecting all the email that I have been receiving for another person of the same name. No, not spam. Real emails about business deals and her child's school. I wish I knew what her REAL email address is because then I could pass on all this misdirected mail I'm getting. My gmail account uses the form firstname.lastname@gmail.com and the email I get for the other person comes as firstnamelastname@gmail.com. But the Gmail help files insist that periods are ignored by their computer, so both forms are equal.

I also suspect, based on the contents of the emails, that this other person may have started with a Googlemail.com account and maybe she lived in England. But I"m not sure about that, and the Gmail Help files claim that shouldn't cause the problem either.

But I continue to get her mail. It is annoying, and it makes me wonder if she is getting MY mail.

7 comments:

Sparks of Ember said...

Hmm, maybe her email is firstname-lastname@gmail.com? or firstname_lastname@gmail.com?

Or even lastnamefirstname@gmail.com?

You could always try sending an email to those variations and see what happens?

Thainamu said...

Great idea. I've sent emails to the first two addresses you suggest, and so far, only one of them has bounced.

Thainamu said...

And now the second one bounced too. Oh, well, it was worth a try.

Sparks of Ember said...

They sure got our expectations up waiting so long for it to bounce!

Helen said...

I was wondering if you have ever figured out what to do. I have the same problem. I feel badly for this person who is missing quite a few emails and like you wonder if the same thing is happening to me.

Thainamu said...

No, Helen, I haven't figured out what to do, but I do continue to get non-spam, personal and business emails for the other person. I always hit reply, then explain it to the sender, and they often write me again apologizing and saying, no, the email was not intended for you but for someone else.

Anonymous said...

I have the same problem with tmy gmail account. Its high time google people look into this