Same name, same city, same birthday and the same hair: Two Sydney women by the name of Jessica Ishak are finding themselves the centre of a mix-up where both women are accidentally paying each other’s bills.
The 24-year-olds, who were both born on April 11 1993, have appeared on A Current Affair to detail the difficulties that come from such an unusual coincidence.
The first Jessica, a digital designer, told the program on Tuesday night that although many can see the humour in the situation, it’s actually provided her with a wealth of problems when it comes to her mail, her bills and even her medical records.
“I feel like my identity has been taken away from me, in a way,” she told A Current Affair. “It’s like one-in-a-million chance, it’s insane.”
The designer says most recently, she has found herself receiving many-a-Foxtel bill after the other Jessica ordered and had the TV software installed, and even found herself accidentally receiving the other Jessica’s pathology results after both women coincidentally received blood tests at the same time.
For the second Jessica, who works as a make-up artist, she admits the most frustrating thing is that their explanations often fall on deaf ears.
“When you try and explain that we are two different girls, they just won’t listen,” the second Jessica told the program.
For her, the anomaly only became a problem when she moved to Australia from Lebanon five years ago and, after passing her Learner's driving test, they refused to issue her a license.
Despite this, both women believe it's the first Jessica who is at more of a disadvantage because of the mix-up, with the digital designer receiving, and therefore expected, to pay the other woman's bills. It's a situation she says is growing so time-consuming and stressful that she is considering changing her name.
When the two came together for the very first time on the program, however, there appeared no love lost, with both women coming to the conclusion their mothers may have chosen the name from exactly the same place: a Lebanese beauty pageant winner who was making headlines at the time of the births.
Top Comments
Having seen them on TV I feel that surely they are related. They had quite a similar look. They also looked like they had similar taste with similar clothes and identical hair styles. They both work in creative fields, though perhaps digital design could be classified as techie as opposed to make up artist.
They seemed to gel as well when they met.
I'm looking forward to the follow up story when they discover they are cousins or something.