My son's girlfriend works for a bank and asks people to do just that when she needs to call them about problems. You'd be surprised at the number of people who ask her for the number and then get annoyed when she won't give them her number and explains that they have to use the number on the back of their card.
My Aunt used a call charge reducing service which involved dialing a number prior to the (full) phone number. She paid a few pounds a month for this. I think it started life as Vartec. That's irrelevant. What is relevant is that by the time of her death it had been absorbed by TalkTalk. There's was the first 'missed payment' letter, albeit sensitively phrased. The Grant of Probate took about a year to obtain and when I had it I started to settle the estate debts. Because TalkTalk had sent such a nice letter I sent my first cheque to them. It came back about 2 months later with a request for the account number. As I had copied everything off the demand letter I was somewhat underwhelmed and wrote to TalkTalk explaining this. No answer. No answer to my follow-up letter pointing out that they were now the last debtor and were preventing finalisation of the estate. No answer. I tried phoning and got nowhere. In a fit of stupidity I filled out the complaint form on the TT website. Swift response requesting, amongst other things, the account holders password! I replied that as I was unable to communicate with the dead I couldn't help them with her password. The reply? Word for word repeat of the first reply. In the end my wife got through to a human at TT who thought that my aunt's outstanding balance had been written off when they changed accounting procedures mid-way through the Probate period. He assured her that if the amount was still owing that a debt collection agency would have been instructed - all for =A313.88
Richard
My mother-in-law was an avid football fan and subscribed to cable TV for the sports channels. When she died, we contacted the company and they marked her file as "deceased" and promised to issue a final bill. So far so good. Unfortunately their system did not have a proper way of marking a customer's death and so their method was to change the customer's name by adding "(deceased)" to their name on the database. Issuing of the final bill however caused the customer services department to swing into action this one slipped past them, so they addressed a letter to "Mrs. M.McGuinness (deceased)" telling her that they were "sorry that you have left" and inviting her back; advising her that "coming back is easier than ever" and "we now have a department dedicated to helping you return." There was much more in this vein!
Luckily my wife was amused by it or she could have been seriously upset.
SteveW
Similar experience with the BT-part of my Aunt's telephone system. BT has a 'deceased customer' number (which is answered in India - you can see where this is going). Hello, Miss X has died. Put my name on the account as executor. I know that there is an outstanding bill. I will pay it when probate is granted. I then began to receive threatening letters with interest charged on the bill. Took ages and a lot of angry calls and emails to BT UK before they stopped and it was accepted that only the original bill was due and that it could not be paid until the grant of probate was made.
And, yes, they did send a 'sorry you're leaving, we'd love to keep your business' letter.
Seems best that before said relative shakes of the said mortal coil that they jack in their BT, Talk Squawk, Virgin phone whatever .. get a simple not recorded anywhere Pay as you yap mobile and that way it could save your executors a lot of bother when they don't need it;)....
Different to when I cancelled my parents phone.. As the rental is paid in advance they just wanted to know where to send the refund to. All over in about two minutes.
In article , tony sayer writes
Should we all make a new years resolution to do that ? After all, you never know when you're going.
Adrian
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