Junk mail that's Progressive-ly bad

I'd previously written about efforts to get my name off an insurance company's mailing list. Further information reveals I shouldn't have trusted this company, Progressive Insurance.

As you may know, every time I give out my name/address to a business, I specify that my information is not to be used for marketing or shared with anyone. That is a habit I've had for two decades and, for the most part, companies comply. I did this when I became a Progressive customer last year.

But when I contacted Progressive about this matter yesterday, I was told it would take six weeks for my request to be honored. Why would it take six more weeks to honor a request made in 2007? And why, when I was a Progressive customer, didn't I get junk mail?
It's clear that Progressive had my request but stopped honoring it when I stopped being a customer.

A Progressive customer service rep told me "we get the names for our mailing lists from a national database compiled by Epsilon". And how did Epsilon know I was a former Progressive customer? Progressive told them. Yup. Progressive shared my information with a mailing list company after all.

I want to point out that the junk mail I got yesterday had an incorrect apartment number. So if it weren't for a vigilant letter carrier, a neighbor (whom I don't know) would be getting my mail. And this illustrates that, between Progressive and Epsilon, someone got my address wrong. And not just a typo. Two complete randomly-wrong digits. So Progressive is either furnishing incorrect information and/or buying incorrect information. And who knows what other companies Epsilon shares its data with.

I asked the Progressive rep to just go through the database and remove any listing of my name at this street address, so a third neighbor doesn't start getting my mail. I was told that can't be done.

If this was mail from Publisher's Clearing House I would be annoyed. But I would expect an insurance company to be a little better about not sharing the personal information of its customers. I plan to file a complaint with the State Insurance Commissioner's Office. I have never had this problem with State Farm.
This episode makes me glad I didn't have an insurance claim. It also makes me glad that I'm a former Progressive customer.