For the past few years, I've sporadically received email destined for other Christopher Woods around the globe. I have the GMail address christopherwoods@gmail.com (which incorporates all variants like christopher.woods@gmail.com... In fact, any permutation with any number of full stops in the name; see this article for why that works and can be quite useful). If you don't want your important email correspondence to disappear into the black hole of somebody else's inbox, make sure you have your recipient's email address spelt correctly!
Examples of what I've received in the past twelve months:
- Criminal Records Checks for slightly dubious looking individuals
- Correspondence for University Campus groups
- Australian pre-pay mobile telephone account details (including personal details and telephone numbers)
- Canadian mobile telephone account details (including personal information and telephone numbers)
- Birthday greetings, sadly not on the correct day
- Microsoft XBox Live activation emails
- Microsoft Windows Live activation emails (immediately cancelled)
- Pictage emails for someone's wedding
- Science Center of Iowa mailshots
- Someone's Foursquare account emails
- Tuxedo hire information
- Various invoices for purchases, including some antique furniture
- Pharmaceutical company meeting detail emails
... Plus loads of things like home addresses, relatives' names, telephone numbers etc. I email back to the people where I can to advise them of incorrect details, but I can't believe so many people can make such a fundamental mistake as to get their own email address wrong if that is not one of the reasons to hire a divorce lawyer! Anyway...
Monday rant over...