Card delivered but has not been applied for?

[luminarphrases]

Hi, am posting this on behalf of my mum. She received a card today and pin by separate envelope but it has not been requested. When she phoned up they asked her for her mother's maiden name etc. which she was not willing to give. She is now very worried about how this has happened. Has this happened to anyone else? and what's best to do. I have suggested she ask them for a copy of the application?

Its a fairly well-known card company btw...

Find the company's website and use the contact info on there.

they would ask for the mothers maiden name as its to prtect you.... its a word that only you are likely to know, so that they know they are talking to the real you and not someone pretending to be you.

yes, but the trouble is, how would they know her mother's maiden name- she never applied for it? so they presumably either have no record, or a record that's wrong (especially as my mum doesn't give her mother's maiden name, but her dad's mothers maiden name). she tried getting through to the fraud dept last night but they were closed. also have just got her to get her credit report just to check if any other searches have been made

Is it Barclaycard? I got sent one without having applied for it about a month ago. When I rang them, it turned out that Barclaycard had recently taken over Morgan Stanley - with whom I did have a credit card several years previously. They had got my details from MS and believed I still had a valid account with them. It was easy enough to cancel, but a bit alarming at the time, as I thought someone had applied for a cc in my name and was running up huge debts.