![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So, the collection agency should leave me alone now. They called me up last Thursday looking to get $270 from me for an outstanding bill with a phone company in Maine. Apparently some sort of quilt-related establishment hasn't been paying their bill, and they came to me to resolve this. I was understandably baffled by this, since I own no such business, do not live in Maine, and have never had an account with any phone company. Turns out my social security number was on the account.
We've established since then that this is likely not a case of identify theft, but probably just a typo somewhere. I was a bit incredulous that they were going entirely by the number when trying to collect their money, though, and completely disregarding names or states of residence. Surely they should have realized this was a mistake long before contacting me.
Anyway, I've been in touch with the phone company, and this is all straightened out now. I don't know what it is that causes me to have these mistaken identity problems, but this isn't the first time this has happened. Several years ago I was mailed a parking ticket with late fees attached for having parked in the fire lane of a Walmart in Lunenburg. Since at the time I had never even been to a Walmart, never once driven my car into Lunenburg, and certainly never parked in a fire lane, I found this distressing. That turned out to be a similar mistake - the cop who issued the ticket wrote down the wrong license plate number or something. When researching the ticket I discovered that it was for an entirely different make of car. Whoever really got the ticket didn't pay it, and so it got sent to me with late fees attached.
Lunenburg made me drive all the way over there to contest the ticket, and seemed to not really believe my story. They said that they would "let it go this time." Damn good thing, too, since it wasn't my car they ticketed.
We've established since then that this is likely not a case of identify theft, but probably just a typo somewhere. I was a bit incredulous that they were going entirely by the number when trying to collect their money, though, and completely disregarding names or states of residence. Surely they should have realized this was a mistake long before contacting me.
Anyway, I've been in touch with the phone company, and this is all straightened out now. I don't know what it is that causes me to have these mistaken identity problems, but this isn't the first time this has happened. Several years ago I was mailed a parking ticket with late fees attached for having parked in the fire lane of a Walmart in Lunenburg. Since at the time I had never even been to a Walmart, never once driven my car into Lunenburg, and certainly never parked in a fire lane, I found this distressing. That turned out to be a similar mistake - the cop who issued the ticket wrote down the wrong license plate number or something. When researching the ticket I discovered that it was for an entirely different make of car. Whoever really got the ticket didn't pay it, and so it got sent to me with late fees attached.
Lunenburg made me drive all the way over there to contest the ticket, and seemed to not really believe my story. They said that they would "let it go this time." Damn good thing, too, since it wasn't my car they ticketed.
