I just got several letters in the mail that were very troubling. My 3-year old just got an offer to purchase a timeshare through Marriot and my 6-year old just got an offer for a credit card through and Chase. This is highly offensive to me as a parent, even though as a professional I can understand why it might happen.

My guess is that these letters are a result of:

1. Bad householding processes.
2. Poor information quality.
3. Sloppy decision making.

However, all of this could have been prevented with some minor filtering. Marriot and Chase got the address information through United Airlines frequent flyer miles program data.  This data includes an age, so clearly these offers should not be sent out to anyone under the age of 18.  I would think that anyone under the age of 18 would automatically have an opt-out for marketing, but clearly this isn’t the case.
This will probably have the net effect of making me sever my business relationship with United, as they are clearly not a company that I trust with my families personal data. I also am building up a great distaste for Marriot and Chase, as they are not managing their businesses well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Databases, Systems Integration, Information Quality, Case Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.