How Did the Pizza Know My Old Name?

September 6, 2023 1:12 PM

How did a local chain restaurant end up with my former last name — one that I legally changed 20 years ago — in their customer data system? I called the restaurant and was told that they pull names from phone records... but I got this phone number at least a decade after the name change. Back when I had that last name I traveled to this city exactly once, but did not eat at this restaurant... because it didn't exist.

I found out what system the restaurant uses for their customer data and contacted that company's tech support. I asked if they sold any datasets with the system, and they said no, the customer information would have been put in by the restaurant.

So how did that name get in there??
It has to be something to do with public records, right? Maybe phone number tied to name tied to a string of addresses tied to former name...
...but WHENCE?

(In case it's relevant, the data management system is Granbury SalesBuilder, sold by Granbury Solutions.)

posted by D.Billy to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Best answer: Data Aggregators glue information like this together from many many many sources. They do little if any human curation of the data. So it is really easy to end up tying an old name with a new number, glued together by and intermediary bit of metadata- e.g. an address.
posted by rockindata at 1:46 PM on September 6, 2023 [19 favorites]

What information had you given them before they used your old name?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:56 PM on September 6, 2023

The restaurant may have bought data from an old pizza company.
posted by shockpoppet at 1:56 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I get mail at my parents address. A place I’ve never lived. Agreed that this data is very imperfect and is likely listed under your info as a possible name.
posted by Crystalinne at 2:52 PM on September 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

A while back I received to pieces of mail at my address, but in the name of someone who has never lived here. After a little research, I found that during the last US Census, this person's name was included as living at my address. Subsequently, this person and my address appeared in a couple of other "people lookup" databases, some looking back decades. It's possible that somewhere there's an AKA record with your old name in it.
posted by SPrintF at 3:57 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

N^thing that sometimes the data aggregators' lists are very old, and with weird errors. For a while, everyone in my building was getting junk mail for people who used to live in the building, but in different units.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 6:32 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Tell Me No Lies - I gave them only my (current) name and phone number.
posted by D.Billy at 6:43 PM on September 6, 2023

Best answer: This is in the UK but the mechanics are the same I suspect: 18 years ago my wife's title was accidentally labelled as "Dr" by a well-known bricks and motor retailer when she signed up for a loyalty card. She got an email to "Dr [surname]" the same day, and called them up - again, the same day - to ask them to change it, which they did.

From then on all correspondence from that retailer has referred to her as "Ms" as she asked. So, for less than 1 day 18 years ago she was referred to as "Dr" by one retailer.

Since then she's been referred to as "Dr" by other retailers, credit card companies, junk mailers, and even once her own bank about 5 years later who - and this is frankly scary - changed her title to Dr without being asked to, seemingly out of the blue (they got a quite irate phone call).

No matter what she does "Dr" keeps popping up every now and then, and probably will for the rest of her life because it was on a single list once which somehow got propagated. She's given up trying to change it now unless it's an official situation where it might matter. I've mentioned doing a PhD so the problem solves itself but apparently that's not a helpful suggestion.

This whole situation is just another reason why GDPR legislation is a good thing, as this is less likely to happen with a reputable retailer nowadays, one hopes.

In your case, the only thing you can do is continue to hunt down and scrub out any mention of your previous name if it matters to you to do so. Sadly it is likely to be a life long battle unless you can somehow find the original list(s) it's on and get it removed from there. Good luck, I hope you're successful.
posted by underclocked at 11:32 PM on September 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

Was your interaction with the restaurant initially in person (like giving a name and phone number for a reservation in-person at the host stand) or over the phone (like calling to order take-out?) or some other interaction (online web order, mobile app order etc.). That part wasn't clear to me, but wondering if it may be helpful to know. And if ordering over the phone, was the phone you called from yours or someone else (or a work phone etc.)

Would you be comfortable naming the chain (not the location)? That may be useful.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:44 AM on September 7, 2023

This is just pure speculation, but years of reading customer service blogs have taught me that pizza places have to ban a small fraction of customers with some regularity. Of course, all the pizza place really has to go on is your phone number and possibly delivery address to tell them if a given order is from a banned person. And Caller ID for cell phones is really hit and miss these days. So it wouldn't surprise me that they have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in place to augment the Caller ID info.
posted by wnissen at 9:23 AM on September 7, 2023