Over the last couple of weeks, I've gotten a couple of "thank you for your purchase" emails from a couple of different companies on the west coast. I got one today for a HVAC repair, so I immediately began wondering if my identity has been stolen and somebody was getting new appliances and their AC repaired, but I pulled my credit reports just now and nothing is showing up out of the ordinary.

Could this be a case of somebody not knowing their email address or should I pull the reports again in a few weeks?

nothing will show up on a credit report until the creditor has exhausted his efforts to collect. By the time a bogus account hits your credit report you are in big trouble. Best nip it in the bud and call the companies sending you the emails.

I called both companies that I received emails from (one in Seattle and another in San Jose), and the HVAC company looks to have dyslexia, which explains the email I got from them. Waiting to hear back from the appliance store. Just strange that I'd get 2 incorrect emails like that in a short amount of time.

As far as it not showing up on the credit report, an inquiry would show, wouldn't it? It may not show up in my score, but it should show that XYZ Company inquired on a certain day, right? Everything looks good so far and all recent payments for October are showing, including my mortgage payment this month.

You'd also have to know what credit bureau the appliance store uses to extend credit if you just wanted to check on an inquiry. This is another example of why credit monitoring is just a placebo: credit extended in your name may take weeks to pop up once the account is established and payments are being reported to the credit bureaus. I've seen this a few times myself after getting a car loan or a credit card while just having credit monitoring.

i seem to have had an uptick in strange emails as well recently, but it seems to be more related to gmail sending variations of my email (which is firstnamelastname) to my address.

It could be a phishing scheme. Did you provide any personal info to the company you contacted? Can you verify that this is a legitimate company?

I get spam emails all the time, on the surface appear to be from amazon. A confirmation email of an order. But the email is gibberish and not from amazon.

Why would an identity thief give someone your real email.

Thieves are not exactly the smartest bunch, so you never know. The thing that made me wonder was not getting anything like this before, and then getting 2 from 2 legit companies in different states in a short amount of time. It made me wonder if it was just a coincidence.

I got another one from the appliance company yesterday confirming I'd be home for the delivery appointment. It had a name and address, and the guy looks to be a legit person and the address was recently on redfin/zillow/etc and sold, so it looks to just be a mistake with the email address.