Comments on: Email confirmation for a car rental that I didn't book, how to handle.

Question: Email confirmation for a car rental that I didn't book, how to handle.

joseph conrad is fully awesome — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:03:49 -0800

I received an email confirming a rental car booking in another state that I haven't made; what actions should I be taking?

I've already contacted the rental company and explained the situation to them: that I live in another state and I've received an email confirmation for a booking I haven't made. There's no charge to the car rental company on my credit cards.

The booking is in three days' time in downtown Philadelphia. I'm in California. I lived in Philadelphia for about four years in the mid-nineties, so maybe someone got my name that way (on junk mail)? I have a sibling living in Philadelphia, but I don't think they would do this.

The car rental company (Enterprise) told me that they don't take credit card information over the phone or online, at any rate; you pay with your credit card when you show up to collect the car.

The car rental company told me they check the I.D. (a driver's license) as well as credit card, I assume this means the name on the I.D. must be the same as on the credit card but neglected to ask this.

They did suggest that someone with my same name made the booking and that the dot in my Gmail account was missing. The dot was missing from my email address, so this seems plausible, except I have a very unusual name.

(In the email, there is some text and a link next to my email address that says, "(Yes, this is you.) Learn more".

Have you had this happen to you? What actions should I be taking, if any, other than what I've done?

Any help is appreciated. I'm not sure if this is an honest mistake with the email address or something I need to be dealing with more seriously.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:09:00 -0800

This happens to me fairly frequently. Someone mistyped their email address and the reservation confirmation went to you and not to them. If it were me I'd make a small effort to contact the same-name-as-you person to let them know they'd filled out the form wrong, just to be polite, not because it's your responsibility in any way. I don't think there's any reason to assume someone is trying to forge your identity. While there is a tiny chance that is happening, there is a much larger chance that someone just fat fingered their own email address.

By: dfriedman

dfriedman — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:09:28 -0800

Call up your credit card companies and ask them to review any pending charges with on your accounts.

Or, call up your credit card companies and tell them you've lost your cards and ask them to send you new ones. New cards will have a different number embossed on them, eliminating the possibility that someone could use your old cards.

Etc.

By: ocherdraco

ocherdraco — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:09:52 -0800

It is most likely an honest mistake with the email address. If you had a more common name (as I do) it would be a regular occurrence.

By: jabberjaw

jabberjaw — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:11:41 -0800

One thing I've learned is that your name is never as unusual as you think.

Were you able to cancel the reservation? I mean, if it's under your name and sent to your email, then you should have the authority to just cancel it if you wanted, that might solve your immediate problem of potential identity theft in three days.

By: Grither

Grither — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:14:12 -0800

By: joseph conrad is fully awesome

joseph conrad is fully awesome — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:15:12 -0800

jabberjaw - They told me they couldn't cancel a booking over the telephone, once it's been made.

By: COD

COD — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:16:01 -0800

If there is nothing pending on your credit card I would just ignore it. It's just a mistyped email address. If there is no credit card charge you have not rented a car.

By: Nimmie Amee

Nimmie Amee — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:17:07 -0800

I have a name that I thought was unusual until about 4 years ago I got a slew of email notifications regarding chartered transportation and gala events and learned that I shared my name with the person in charge of transportation for a professional baseball team. I'd bet pretty good odds that the wrong email was entered and you got the confirmation by mistake.

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:25:25 -0800

(In the email, there is some text and a link next to my email address that says, "(Yes, this is you.) Learn more".

This is, I think, just Gmail telling you what Grither mentioned above.

By: Foci for Analysis

Foci for Analysis — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:27:37 -0800

Could totally be mistyped email address. I too have an unusual email address - it's a made-up word! - that suddenly started to get jealous boyfriend emails, ticket reservations, womens clothing offers, etc. It's been... interesting.

By: Tell Me No Lies

Tell Me No Lies — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:37:24 -0800

I would have them add a note to the reservation to double check the ID of whoever comes in to pick up the car.

Email: the situation you're describing happens to me once every couple of years. Most recently a person looking for employment in the northeast typed the wrong email address into every job site he visited.

By: valkyryn

valkyryn — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:40:38 -0800

Things which, according to my email inbox, I have done:

- Registered at a Bally's Total Fitness in Orlando, FL.
- Shopped for condos in Seattle.
- Signed up for graduate English classes at CUNY.
- Attended a fairly high-level business design meeting at Microsoft.
- Rented a tuxedo in Oklahoma.
- Leased an apartment in Texas.
- Signed up for a mobile device that sends email check-ins based on GPS coordinates.
- Reported for duty as a civilian contractor at a secured Navy facility.
- Enrolled my child in a fairly exclusive daycare center outside Philadelphia.

Etc.

I've mostly stopped even responding anymore. This is what I get for registering [firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com.

By: sbutler

sbutler — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:49:55 -0800

A very unusual name is not the same thing as unique. In fact, I doubt that any name in the world is unique. Unless your parents name you something like A5CD1FBC-4725-40D2-AB1C-331B522BDE9B.

By: VTX

VTX — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:56:31 -0800

nth-ing the e-mail thing. I have a similar list to valkyryn's of things I've gotten e-mail confirmation's for.

In general, you don't have to (and probably shouldn't) do anything until charges show up on your credit card. Once you notice at charge on your account that you didn't authorize, call the credit card company within 2-days of your statement date. The onus is on the merchant (not you, not your credit card company/bank) to prove that you really did authorize those charges. Otherwise, you'll get your money back within 45-days at a minimum, usually sooner for smaller amounts.

According to the law, you are liable for the first $50 if reported with the 2-day window (again, from the statement date, not the date of the transaction) and the first $500 if reported within 3-59 days of the statement. In practice, your liability is $0 if you report within 60-days of the statement date.

By: NotMyselfRightNow

NotMyselfRightNow — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:57:05 -0800

They told me they couldn't cancel a booking over the telephone, once it's been made.

I wouldn't sweat it. There's no charge for not picking up a rental car from Enterprise, and the credit card charged is the one you present when you pick up the car, even if you put one into the booking system online. If all this is is someone fat fingering an email address in the system, it's no harm to you, and cancelling the reservation could really screw them over.

By: MCMikeNamara

MCMikeNamara — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:02:06 -0800

I'm sure everyone else's advice is right but just to put your mind at ease that somehow you will end up being charged for this, you will not -- or at least not based on this email. Enterprise's online reservation system is almost wholly separate from the one actually to rent the car, which is actually pretty good from a security standpoint -- you can't just get online and pay for renting a car (they were telling the truth - you can't enter your CC info; all you can do is tell them what kind of card you are planning on using) without doing in person the steps they have already described to you -- but a pain in the ass when something gets screwed up and they don't have the deal you were given online in their system. (Yes, obviously, I'm speaking from personal experience.)

I'd still keep an eye on your credit cards and maybe even give them a call in a few days if you're still worried. But in order for this to happen, the person would have to be using an ID with your name, a credit card with that name, AND your email address. And if that level of identity theft is involved (and I don't at all think it is), I doubt they'd be messing around with renting a car.

By: xedrik

xedrik — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:03:43 -0800

If all this is is someone fat fingering an email address in the system, it's no harm to you, and cancelling the reservation could really screw them over.

This. I get mistake email all the time.

By: Roommate

Roommate — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:05:48 -0800

I have a fairly common name, my email is first.last@gmail, and this happens to me all the time lately. Mostly I let it go, unless it's obvious I'm now on a list or my email is associated with an actual account; in those instances I will contact the company and explain the situation. Barring that, I'm not above going to the page in question, clicking "forgot my password", entering my email, and doing what I can to get the account deactivated from the inside.

The most recent "order confirmation" incident confuses me, as my name (and thus email) was nothing close to the name in the confirmation, so was obviously not just a mistype. I've considered sending Christmas cards to these people who so freely give me their names and addresses, but I haven't, yet.

By: EmpressCallipygos

EmpressCallipygos — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:06:32 -0800

Fun Fact: sending an e-mail to yourname.lastname@gmail.com will also go to the same inbox as sending one to y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e.l.a.s.t.n.a.m.e@gmail.com (or any placement of dots in there). So it's not that, at least.

Seconding this -- gmail started just ignoring the dots and dashes and underscores that 99.9% of the people in the world use to differentiate their email address from other people who have the same name's email address. So most likely what happened is that there's another Joseph Conrad in Philadelphia who signed up for a gmail address, saw that there already was a joseph.conrad in Cali, said "Okay, I'll make myself "josephconrad" and signed up for Gmail. But since you already had the joseph conrad email, Gmail forwarded it to you. It's PROFOUNDLY stupid on gmail's part, and it's why I don't have a gmail account. (I used to, until they made this switchover and I started getting all these emails for a wedding planner in Washington. I cancelled my own gmail account when I started receiving racy emails from that other E.C.'s new boyfriend.)

Unless your card is charged, I wouldn't worry.

By: Eyebrows McGee

Eyebrows McGee — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:19:54 -0800

I have myname@gmail.com and @yahoo.com ... I with some frequency get e-mail from myname@aol.com, which is owned by a nice woman in her late 60s who has never actually mistyped her e-mail herself ... it's when her kids are making travel bookings for her or buying her things online that they automatically type @gmail instead of @aol (because really, who uses aol anymore?). She and I have corresponded several times over this. (Her son got married a weekend before I did! She had lots of travel bookings that summer, lol.)

Anyway, I'd check with your credit card (and/or debit card) companies first, and if there's no shenanigans, assume it's a mistype. It would be kind of you to try to suss out the error, but not required.

By: inigo2

inigo2 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:28:07 -0800

gmail started just ignoring the dots and dashes and underscores that 99.9% of the people in the world use to differentiate their email address from other people who have the same name's email address. So most likely what happened is that there's another Joseph Conrad in Philadelphia who signed up for a gmail address, saw that there already was a joseph.conrad in Cali, said "Okay, I'll make myself "josephconrad" and signed up for Gmail.

Gmail has always ignored periods in email addresses and treated them as described above. It was never possible for two people to register the same email address (one with periods and one without). Gmail counts the underscore as a valid (and distinctive) character in email addresses, and does not treat it the same as the period.

By: MCMikeNamara

MCMikeNamara — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:28:34 -0800

EmpressCallipygos: " Seconding this -- gmail started just ignoring the dots and dashes and underscores that 99.9% of the people in the world use to differentiate their email address from other people who have the same name's email address. So most likely what happened is that there's another Joseph Conrad in Philadelphia who signed up for a gmail address, saw that there already was a joseph.conrad in Cali, said "Okay, I'll make myself "josephconrad" and signed up for Gmail. But since you already had the joseph conrad email, Gmail forwarded it to you. It's PROFOUNDLY stupid on gmail's part, and it's why I don't have a gmail account. (I used to, until they made this switchover and I started getting all these emails for a wedding planner in Washington. I cancelled my own gmail account when I started receiving racy emails from that other E.C.'s new boyfriend.)"

Not to derail or be all "somebody's wrong on the Internet! I've got to respond!", but somebody's wrong on the Internet and I'm going to respond (because I've seen this repeated elsewhere). Though there may have relatively recently been a change that ignore sthe dots in the log-in, Gmail has always ignored the dots in the addresses.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:29:11 -0800

there's another Joseph Conrad in Philadelphia who signed up for a gmail address, saw that there already was a joseph.conrad in Cali, said "Okay, I'll make myself "josephconrad" and signed up for Gmail.

This is not possible. Gmail would show this username as taken and not let you sign up for it. Someone might still think that's the email address they signed up for, but gmail would not.

By: Lyn Never

Lyn Never — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:30:17 -0800

There is no scam here. Even if someone were actively trying to scam you, it wouldn't work. Putting someone's email address on something does not connect it to that person's credit card. Credit cards aren't attached to email addresses, either, so if someone were stealing your card they'd use their own email address. But you don't give car rental companies your CC# to hold a car, so there's not credit card number involved.

Some idiot who thinks they are you or is booking a trip for someone else screwed up the email address. You got the confirmation. They will get a car and rent it on the credit card they hand to the desk clerk. You will get ads and spam from Enterprise for the rest of your life. Not a totally happy ending, but aside from unsubscribing there's nothing else for you to do here.

By: EmpressCallipygos

EmpressCallipygos — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:39:32 -0800

Mike and Jessamyn: I see where the confusion is -- it is that way now (where gmail just won't let there be two joseph conrads), but it used to not be (you used to be able to differentiate), and I was one of a number of people who was inconvenienced when they made the switchover.

However, you're right in that it wouldn't affect the way things go now, and only affected the people who already had existing addresses when the switchover happened a few years ago. So I'm an idiot and I'll just say "yeah, probably just a mistyped email address and still nothing to worry about."

By: brainmouse

brainmouse — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:58:49 -0800

it is that way now (where gmail just won't let there be two joseph conrads), but it used to not be (you used to be able to differentiate)

Again, this is false -- here is a link from 2005 talking about gmail ignoring dots, which is the earliest I can find, but that's only 10 months after its private launch so hopefully it's early enough (oh! Found one from July 2004 - 3 months after launch). What they did change was that you can now login with however many dots you want -- you used to only be able to log in with the dot arrangement you signed up with.

By: Roommate

Roommate — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:01:42 -0800

Mike and Jessamyn: I see where the confusion is -- it is that way now (where gmail just won't let there be two joseph conrads), but it used to not be (you used to be able to differentiate), and I was one of a number of people who was inconvenienced when they made the switchover.

Google swears this isn't the case, and that people would never have been able to register emails similar in every way except periods; but I have my suspicions, as it was pretty much overnight (several years ago) when I started getting emails to my-address-sans-periods that were obviously not intended for me.

Still, I never saw a sign of outcry from the people who presumably lost access to their email overnight if this actually happened, so I took them at their word.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:13:18 -0800

[Folks, maybe a good time to take this Gmail sidebar to MeTa, which is totally fine, but maybe needs to wrap up here, thanks.]

By: theora55

theora55 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:47:17 -0800

It's very likely to be phishing or other crapmail. Look at the email headers if you can. Is it from enterprise.com or from enterprise.com.bs? In any case, you have not made a reservation, and you have politely let the company know this.