We are not sure which is harder…trying to get yourself declared not dead when an organization thinks you are, or trying to convince an organization that your loved one has died and thus will not need them anymore…
- Sprint refuses to cancel the account of a man’s brother, who died suddenly in December. After over forty minutes, the best he could get was a $5.95 a month vacation hold. He had all the information and passwords, but no death certificate for eight to ten weeks, since he passed in his sleep with no apparent cause of death. There is no indication they even informed him they would do so when such a document was available.
- Verizon has done just the opposite, declaring Catherine McCall, a Verizon retiree, deceased, even though she is not. In August, she lost her husband, and in early November, notified the company to stop sending a stipend to pay her husband’s medical costs. Not long after, a letter arrived addressed to her estate, demanding the return of the September through November pension checks, and a letter to her husband, advising that since his wife was dead, he was no longer eligible for the stipend. Despite vows to repair the problem, she did not receive a December or January pension check…as this Philadelphia Inquirer suggested, perhaps the slogan, “We Never Stop Working for You,” is inaccurate.