Unsolicited Mail

Paul_Varjak

Even in 'normal' cicumtances, unsolicited mail is bad enough.

Getting unsolicited mail for a deceased relative is somewhat worse.

Getting unsolicited mail for a deceased relative from a company months after you have told them of the death is even worse.

My mother died in November, 2004. I immediately cancelled her SAGA life membership and her monthly SAGA magazine did stop. But, last month, SAGE decided to send my mum a 'complimentary' copy!

Today, my mother got ('as an Age Concern customer' the letter says) the offer of a pre-paid Funeral Plan. My mother was a customer but I wrote to the company on 09/12/04 cancelling her insurance. They wrote back on 08/01/05 cancelling insurance and, on 10/01/05 they returned the death certificate I had sent them! Clearly, they failed to tell their computer that my mother had died!

mrcow

I'm sorry to hear about your Mum.

It must be really upsetting, and I would say to contact them, even if it's just to let them know what they've done, but by the sounds of it, it doesn't look as if their databases are "talking" to each other, so there's no guarantee that this wouldn't happen again?

trace-j

It is a nightmare when this happens. My partners dad died last year and his mum found out shortly afterwards he had an outstanding credit card debt.

To cut a long story short, despite being told his dad had died, the bank carried on sending letters to his deceased dad instead of his mum! The final staw came when the 7th letter arrived on the day of the funeral, addressed to the poor sole who was being buried. Needless to say they got another earful.

IvanOpinion

Paul

It is frustrating when this happens. Unfortunately throughout our lives we get on that many mailing lists and other lists that this sort of thing is inevitable. It is best just to ignore it. My father died more than 10 years ago and occasionally my mum would still receive the odd piece of mail addressed to him.

The strangest one was that my father passed his advanced driving test 2 weeks before he died. However about a month after his death my mum received his certificate saying he was an 'Advanced Motorist' which was dated 3 days after his death.

The bottom line is that it is not deliberate, it is not personal so, no matter how hard or annoying it may be, give them a quick call and ask for your mums name to be removed from their lists and then treat the document like any other junk mail. I have a friend who, after many years still gets mail for their partner ... she is quite happy to get mail with his name on it and refuses to have his name removed from various lists ... because she feels that would be like killing off his memory. I suppose every person has a different way of dealing with their loss.

Ivan