How can I make a company stop writing to someone who is dead?

[isabellerossignol]

A business won't stop sending marketing material to my father, who is dead. They have been informed numerous times, and had actually been asked to stop contacting him at least a year before he died as he had no need of their services and never would need them again. I have had personal assurances three times now that it will never happen again. He was a customer when he was alive, so there was a 'relationship' there and at one stage he had agreed to marketing material.

I understand that when someone is deceased, GDPR doesn't apply any more, so I can't even demand that they sort it out and quote GDPR.

It's pretty upsetting for my mum to continue to get letters for my dad from a company who know that he is dead.

Any suggestions as to how I can deal with this?

Write not known at this address and send back? I worked for a horrible company that never cleaned up their database and whenever I got one of these back I'd just take them off the mailing lists because we had to if we received the post back.

We weren't allowed to remove people without seeing the original death certificate. The shame I felt having to say that on the phone when people tried to sort out their deceased relatives affairs It was a truly awful organisation.

Can you tweet them?
Go through their complaints procedure?
Is there an ombudsman?

Negative publicly for the company like a letter to the local paper about them causing upset or a post on a company FB page? It sounds like you have done everything you would think you needed to already and it hasn't worked.

I can't find them on Twitter. I can find the brand but not the particular business.

Have rung them, again, to be assured that they're very sorry, but it's hollow words at this stage.

tweet the brand saying which company it is and hope they get in touch to stop it reflecting on the brand.

I'm having the same issue,TEN fucking years I've been sending post back for a previous house owner I can't contact them because it's from a French bank. I send the envelope back with return to sender/ no longer at this address and they take no notice. I might just start binning them.

Try and find their CEO or Managing Director's name, or at least the highest up person in the company that you can find. It might take a bit of googling or looking on Companies House. If you don't know the exact name of the company, Google the address and see what comes up.

Then write a letter to the CEO, outlining what's been going on. Mark the letter private and confidential so it definitely reaches that person.

I've had to do this a couple of times in the past when customer services wouldn't listen, and ended up receiving an apology. Depending on how incompetent these people have been, a letter can be more effective than an email as it really makes them take note.

Ignore them and either return to sender or bin. For phone calls "your recent (non existent) accident" I say, "yes, it was fatal, I died, what do you want?" They end the call.

Ignoring doesn't solve the problem which is that it's pretty upsetting for a bereaved person to continually get post for someone who is dead, and who the company know is dead.

It is awful trying to make companies sort things out once someone has died. I suggest trying what Summerbreezes said above, or pepper social media with complaints. I'm sure the powers that be with the main brand would not be happy at finding out that basically one of their representatives was causing someone the upset your mum is feeling.

My MIL died a year and a half ago, because she knew she was dying everything was set up ready to change as easily as possible after her death so FIL had as little hassle as possible. He rang her bank and told them and arranged to go in to sign final papers, they said MIL had to go in to sign papers too! He repeated that she had died, so they said he needed to go in with the death certificate, understandable.

When he turned up at the bank, death certificate in hand, he was told that MIL had to go in to sign the papers! He was not happy but did manage to get someone who knew what they were doing to sort it out. The illness she had died of had taken away her ability to grip a pen and write so she wouldn't even have been able to sign something if she was still alive anyway. I think that at one point FIL did suggest he could wait until after her cremation and take the urn with her ashes in into the bank to try and get her to sign things, the bank didn't appreciate that.

I'm a sarcastic cow so I'd probably print out a ouija board and planchette and send it to the CEO with a note saying if you want to contact Mr X of Y address you might need this.

This is where social media is really useful.

Check to see if they have a Facebook page or a LinkedIn page. And then post to both, saying how their refusal to remove the name of a deceased relative is causing on-going distress.

Or take an ad in their local paper. Or send a solicitor’s letter asking for damages for the on-going distress.

Or look up their Chief Exec on the Companies House website and write to him personally - and repeatedly if necessary.

Do they belong to a professional association - FENSA or BALI or a master guild. Write to the professional organisation complaining about their very unprofessional behaviour.
Or if that fails, tell us who they are, and we’ll all write to them.

As a pp said have you tried sending the stuff back saying 'not at this address'?

I second the ouija board

When my father died my brother was notifying various companies of his death. This included online stuff, including Amazon. He e mailed them to say that Mr John Jones was now deceased. When he next checked the e mails, they were still contacting him, but now referred to him as Mr John Deceased.
Companies are hopeless, and banks, despite having dedicated bereavement departments, can be the worst. Op, I would just chuck them in the bin.

madsweeney I kept getting letters from the bank addressed to DH after I had informed them of his death. One letter was telling him that his wife had closed his ISA and transferred all the savings to another account. I went into the branch with all the letters and told them that unless they were Doris Stokes, they were wasting their own time and money sending them out. I got an apology but I felt really shit. I did hate taking his name off stuff though, it felt like I'm erasing him.

I'm old enough to remember That's Life! Esther Rantzen wasn't everyone's cup of tea but they would have had some choice words for this kind of insensitive sloppiness. They probably would have presented the offending company with MadSweeney's ouija board, or sent a medium, or something. I shouldn't laugh, but what else can you do sometimes?

It's awful isn't it ,so upsetting
I still get them for my DD,and the bloody cold calls asking for her ,I don't know why it's so hard for them to take someone off of their database.

I find the best way to stop it is to open the letters, write or print a template of a letter stating that you have requested that they stop contacting your dead relative many times and that any further correspondence will be considered harassment.

Put it in the envelope with the original letter, ensuring that you strike through the address. Then write their return address on the envelope. Where the stamp goes write 'postage to be paid by recipient'.

Do not put a stamp on, and ensure that there is no pre-paid postage on it, then put it in the post.

It has worked every time for me. Sometimes takes 2 or 3 goes but it stops.

we are still getting cold calls for the lady you used to live her she was 97 when she died in 2007 it doesn't upset me as never knew her

but I did once tell some persistent caller that insisted on speaking to her after informing them of her death so I just said i believed she was in plot 73c of XYZ cemetery I was told not to be sarcastic but I said which bit of "she's dead" did you not understand before
I would not be a bit surprised if there wasn't a letter circulating for Mrs Deceased Smith
Plot 73c
XYZ cemetery
QUE Town
QU12 3ab

I sent post back "retune to sender- this person is dead you insensitive arsehole"
It worked for me!

I'm really sorry to hear this

it happens to mum still and as far as I can see, most companies, especially large ones, have several databases that don't connect in any way

tbh some of it, I have honestly wondered if they are thinking that they had details for dad and they think they might sell services to mum.

i don't know what you can do about it apart from fill this - mum said there was a marked reduction after this

www.thebereavementregister.org.uk/

the pp who said a caller didn't believe the lady was dead - we had that with dad as well. Sadly it was quite persistent in the months after he died. Luckily one day I answered the phone, also used the words "what part of DEAD do you not understand" and the calls stopped after that.