Barclays won't stop mailing man who doesn't exist

Tales of major brands sending direct mail to the dead are legendary, but Barclays appears to have gone one better by constantly mailing a man who has never been alive, despite numerous attempts to get the finance firm to stop.
According to an exasperated Daily Telegraph reader, the financial services company’s credit card division keeps sending offers to “Matthew Blake”, despite being repeatedly told by the householder that no one of that name has lived at the property for the past 30 years.
The reader wrote: “I have spoken to Barclaycard but it refuses to take my address off its mailing list. I’m concerned as it feels like it is not taking ID fraud seriously. The letters it keeps sending offer a credit card to people with ‘little or no credit history’ with a limit of £1,200. What’s to stop someone taking one out? How can I stop it from bombarding me with junk?”
According to a group of ex-offenders interviewed by data specialists Wilmington Millennium, the most common methods used by ID thieves are studying obituaries columns and graveyards or looking out for credit card application mailings for their next big payday.
Four in five ex-offenders (79%) believed ID fraud was one of the easiest ways to obtain cash, over and above other crimes such as benefit fraud and burglary.
Barclaycard failed to respond when contacted by the newspaper. Its direct marketing agencies include Big Dog, Iris, Dare, and the BBH venture with Warren Moore and Simon Hall’s consultancy Seven Seconds. However, it is not the first and certainly will not be the last brand to fall foul of data protection regulations when it comes to direct mail data.
In 2013, Tesco was forced to apologise to a Hertfordshire widow whose dead husband had been receiving letters from the retailer’s home phone service for over four years, chasing up payment.
In the same year, Virgin Media had to grovel after a broadband bill sent to a deceased man – including a £10 fine for late payment – went viral on Facebook, being shared by tens of thousands of people.
Meanwhile bosses at Aviva Insurance were left red-faced after sending a direct mail campaign offering health insurance to a woman who had died a decade before, even though it admitted it knew she was dead.

TOPICS:Barclaycard Barclays financial services