This is a call placed to a CitiBank agent. People can be so stupid!

Family Member:"I am calling to tell you that she died in January."

Bank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."

Family Member:"Maybe, you should turn it over to collections."

Bank: "Since it is two months past due, it already has been."

Family Member:So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?"

Bank: "Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to the credit bureau, maybe both!"

Family Member:"Do you think God will be mad at her?"

Bank: "Excuse me?"

Family Member:"Did you just get what I was telling you - the part about her being dead?"

Bank: "Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor."
Supervisor gets on the phone:

Family Member:"I'm calling to tell you, she died in January."

Bank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply."

Family Member:"You mean you want to collect from her estate?"

Bank: (Stammer) "Are you her lawyer?"

Family Member:"No, I'm her great nephew." (Lawyer info given)

Bank: "Could you fax us a certificate of death?"

Family Member:"Sure." (fax number is given)
After they get the fax:

Bank: "Our system just isn't set-up for death. I don't know what more I can do to help."

Family Member:"Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep billing her. I don't think she will care."

Bank: "Well, the late fees and charges do still apply."

Family Member:"Would you like her new billing address?"

Bank: "That might help."

Family Member: " Odessa Memorial Cemetery , Highway 129, Plot Number 69."

Bank: "Sir, that's a cemetery!"

Family Member:"What do you do with dead people on your planet?"

Did you get that on an email?

i've gotten that email a bunch of times.

Urban legend or not, I was in the bank a while ago and overheard an elderly man telling the bank man his wife had just died but some credit thing was still getting money out of her account and could he please close it. The bank man said no because he WANTED PROOF OF HER DEATH and this old man was about to cry I felt so horrible. I know it might be what has to happen but my god was he a bastard about it.

^yeah i don't know if you followed the link or not, but it may or may not be true, the site just explains what the normal procedure is for when someone who owes money dies.

as for your story, that fucking sucks that the guy was a dick about it. i mean i don't blame the bank for needing proof but i'm sure there are plenty of compassionate, professional ways to tell that to a person. i hate people who suck in those situations. i mean really hate.

Yeah it's so rude isn't it, horrid!

My housemate told me that her great aunt died and her husband tried to close her Debenhams loyalty card, and the dickhead on the phone to him said he had to speak to the account holder in order to close the card after he was told she was dead. He lost his job but what a fucking prick.

I've had that email before and it's clearly not something that really happened, although it's not outwith the realms of possibility that something like that could happen.

While I'm sure banks are set up to accommodate the death of their customers, other companies aren't so much, or at least don't train their staff on the procedure. My mother had one hell of a time trying to get a simple account name-change done on her satellite TV account when my dad passed away. She called god knows how many times, and the fuckers she kept getting on the phone had no clue. One of them even asked for a death certificate, which just seems outrageous, to prove that my father had really died, since they apparently couldn't believe her word in case she was lying just to take over control of the account. In the end, they cancelled the existing account, despite their protestations that my mother didn't have the authority to request this, but it had already been paid in advance to a point later than the cancellation date. And they set up a new account in her name effective immediately, so she ended up paying them twice for a period of about a month.

And then she spoke to two friends, both of whom had worked the customer services phones for that company in their time, who both told her that this was a tremendous cock up, and the computer jockeys just needed to type a new name into the account. No death certificate, no cancelling and setting up new accounts, no hour-long phone calls of being on hold.

The idiocy just astounded me, and all of this was being dealt with by my grieving mother.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

When someone dies you need like 10 copies of the death certificate for all of your various bank accounts, insurance and what not. It sucks.

It must be horrible to even receive junk mail letters delivered to someone close to you who has died, I cannot imagine how horrible that must have been, arguing with someone over whether or not your husband was dead.

Yep. and round my way you pay something crazy like £15 a go for each extra copy. As if death wasn't already costly enough.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

yeah unfortunatly the shit thing is if you didn't need proof people would take advantage of it. that's pretty much why the world is such a cock place. like stress time off, set up so people don't drive themselves crazy and mental problems are catered for openly rather than hidden away, what do people do? use them as a 6 months holiday.

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If you ever feel useless and depressed, remember: one day you were the fastest spermatozoon of all.

Yep. Probate, executors accounts and all that need much more proof than your average financial transaction. You're doing transactions to the value of whatever the person had in their life - property, debts, pension, insurance etc., it's no wonder they're strict.

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His last request was a bulletproof vest or a god

I don't really see any way around needing official proof of death for things like bank accounts - otherwise, some people would claim to be dead just to skip out on bills. I realize it sounds horrible to suggest fraud to people who are grieving, but we all go through lots of proceedures on a regular basis which are in place to keep people from doing things we would never consider doing ourselves. The best that I think can be done is that customer service people who may come across this situation in the course of their job should be trained to handle it sensitively - to offer sympathies, and treat the need for the certificate as the mere, regrettably necessary formality that it is. And I guess the certificates should be free, if you actually need to have a bunch of them to wrap up someone's affairs - I never thought about having to pay for them before because I've never needed one, but I did have to pay for a certified copy of my birth certificate, so I'd imagine that you probably only get one free.

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We are sorry, the mind you have reached is not a working mind.
Please hang up and die again.
Please hang up,
And die again.

I found they're generally very polite and patient but a bit hopeless, probably because they don't deal with it regularly. Plus, there's no point hassling you because it's all frozen until everything has come through, in the UK at least.

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His last request was a bulletproof vest or a god

Yeah. Paying for birth certificate copies, I understand, b/c generally you only need to provide that a few times over the course of your life - setting up bank account, getting passport, getting driving licence, registering for doctor/dentist - and you don't need to do all of these things at once. And if you've lost your birth certificate, you're just a bit of a numpty (or your parents are).

When you die, everything has to be dealt with at once. You'd think they'd just give you, say, three copies as standard. The annoying thing is, a lot of the companies/bodies that need to see a death certificate don't actually need to keep it on file, and send it back to you. So, for example, my mother now has a stack of death certificates for my dad, that she no longer needs, but probably paid out in the region of £150 to obtain.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

Speaking of losing birth certificates, I have no earthly idea where my passport is just now, and that's a damn sight more expensive to replace.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

I work in the financial services at the moment and GOD it's depressing dealing with death in a horrid bureaucratic way. But you have to.

A man wrote to me today to say that he wanted to know what would happen to his investment if he died as he had no family. he said his doctor had told him he was "on borrowed time" and also that he had to take 21 pills a day to "keep going". I laughed a bit at the tragedy of it, and then I felt sad. I toyed with the idea of writing to him and saying "You could leave it to me" but had to write back and say "Maybe you should see a lawyer to help you write a will so that you could leave your money to a friend or a charity? It's also really easy to withdraw your money and you can do it whenever you like..."
It sort of made me sad not to be allowed to say "Man, what are you saving for? If nobody is dependent on you, why not just take your money and have a good time on it for a while?"

Sorry, that was really not very relevant.

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