Steve Tuck, writing over at SmartDataCollective, shares a tale of an embarassing IQTrainwreck involving his brother. The root cause of Steve’s tale is ‘false positives’ in matching, but it goes to show how simple assumptions or errors in the management of the quality of information can lead to unforeseen and undesired consequences.

Steve’s brother had checked into a hotel for a trade conference. He went and had a shower and was quite surprised to come out of the bathroom to find another man standing in his room. It turned out that they both had the same name and were both attending the same event and the hotel had (despite all the other evidence to the contrary, like different companies and different credit card details) decided to merge the two reservations so two people wound up being booked into the same room.

The second Mr Tuck had to take his bags and go to a different hotel in the end, causing unnecessary aggravation for him (it is always nice to be staying in the hotel a conference is on in… the more relaxed pace over breakfast can help ease you into the day). Steve’s brother had the embarassment of being caught in little more than a towel.

For the embarassment factor and customer service impacts, this meets the criteria for an IQ Trainwreck. 

Thanks Steve.

This isn’t the first time we’ve covered this type of false positive IQ Trainwreck though. A scan of our archives brings up this story from 2007.