A small biz owner that I used to contract with was having a disagreement with American Airlines over the phone because when he was asked to provide his email, he gave an obviously adversarial email taking advantage of his catch-all. I couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but it was obvious they did not believe that the email was legit. I don't remember the exact address provided, but something along the lines of '[email protected]'. The conversation went on for over 10 minutes just over the legitimacy of the email address nevermind the actual issue the necessitated an actual phone call in the first place.

He's the type that also will string along the spam callers until they hang up on him, so he enjoys these conversations.

buy him a beer for me next time you see him. he has gained an acolyte.

I once had a irate business owner call me after I placed an order, demanding to know why their business name was in my e-mail address. After I explained it: "That's pretty clever."

When I was studying abroad, I lived in a temporary student dorm that was placed in an industrial district with a special permit from the government.

I tried to order a textbook online and my transaction got flagged as suspicious, so I had to call a support person, and he wasn't having it. - foreign credit card - address marked as non-residential area - sketchy email-address using their company name

Had to take the bus to a bookstore.

I also use my catch all to create unique "business" email addresses. The best encounter I had was giving my email address to retail person at a store and having them mistake me for an employee and give me the corporate discount. They asked me why I hadn't mentioned I worked for bigcompany@mydomain.

HAHAHA Same but it was in the store of Sixt (a european car renting firm)

This has happened to me too, though not at Sixt. "Do you work for our company?"

Its to the point now that unless the email address is @hotmail or @yahoo, almost everybody assumes that there is some company named domain.com that that said owner of the email works for that company.

I gave my email to a gym once to go in as a guest with a friend/coworker. I fully regret it because every time I get spam, it's from blink@[mydomain].