"Virgin bills dead people"

[papasmurf]

Personally, I've never had any major issues with comtel/NTL/Virgin, but I've just seen Watchdog on the Beeb, and, to be perfectly honest, I thought it was very funny. (All going on the back of that guy who had his guitar broken by United Airlines of course, but funny none the less).

If this isn't in the right place, then please move, but the linky is here :-

Virgin bills dead people

[Tony.]

PMSL thanks

[*sloman*]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph8HmOJWWfY

i saw it too, if i was one of the people i would find it very offensive to my dead relative. TBH all companies make mistakes. i work for a large American bank and have heard of these things to but due to Data Protection Act these things can go wrong and take time to sort.

[papasmurf]

Sloman, I think, to be honest, it is all meant to be a bit of "Gallows humour". If you saw the programe, all the people who were involved / complaining, gave it the go-ahead. In these times of "the nanny state" and the "blame" culture, I personally find it quite refreshing

[*sloman*]

I like watchdog but i thought they could of got Neil on the show, going after Branson is a waste of time as i'm sure i've heard on CF that he is not part of Virgin Media just a share holder and they pay him dividends for using his brand.

Yeah funny-ish video but could be worst what about sending a £25k loan bill to someone's relative as the person did not take life insurance!

[SMG]

I thought it was very funny, & put the message out quite clearly. VM got it wrong, no excuses, it didnt even try to put things right, either by apologising, or even changing the name on the billing address. VM billed dead people, & continued despite being informed. Case proved.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by SMG

I thought it was very funny, & put the message out quite clearly. VM got it wrong, no excuses, it didnt even try to put things right, either by apologising, or even changing the name on the billing address. VM billed dead people, & continued despite being informed. Case proved.

It doesn't excuse Virgin, but they are far from the only organisation to do this.

In my own experience, Thames Water still carried on sending water bills addressed to my dad four years after he died. It only took four recorded delivery letters and multiple phone calls to get the name corrected.

The Inland Revenue went one better. They did update their records to reflect the fact he was dead. Unfortunately, they added "(deceased)" to his surname, so we received letters addressed to his name, but with "(deceased)" after it.

[scrotnig]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

It doesn't excuse Virgin, but they are far from the only organisation to do this.

In my own experience, Thames Water still carried on sending water bills addressed to by dad four years after he died. It only took four recorded delivery letters and multiple phone calls to get the name corrected.

The Inland Revenue went one better. They did update their records to reflect the fact he was dead. Unfortunately, they added "(deceased)" to his surname, so we received letters addressed to his name, but with "(deceased)" after it.

I read once of a council that did this, and started sending council tax warning letters that started "Dear Mrs Deceased".

What makes it so abhorrent is not that they do it - mistakes happen - but that they stubbornly refuse to do anything about it when repeatedly told. Heartless, evil bureaucratic pigs.

Data protection my backside..My father died in July 1966.The utility companies were still sending the bills to him 5 years after his death despite all my mothers attempts to get them to address them to her.They never gave us any reason either.

Now they have the Data Protection Act to hide behind.

It's just bad management.

[Ravenheart]

I had to laugh at the Virgin response. "for customer privacy and data protection laws"

That's never stopped them before.

[Angua]

After all that NTL were brilliant after my mum died (the day before she was due to have Broadband installed). Bills stopped immediately they were informed and closed completely following receipt of the death certificate.

Very funny Vid though.

[SlackDad]

I agree that any company acting like this after a customer has died is unacceptable but that feature on Watchdog seemed disproportionate and gave the impression that only VM has ever behaved this way...

[Toto]

Perhaps VM's new logo should read

"We bill dead people"

No offence intended.

[Hom3r]

22 year ago harlow Council were demanding rent from my Grandad despite the fact that a) he was servral months ahead in payment and b) they had been informed by phone and hand delievered letter that he has passed away several weeks earlier.

but still they sent letters, so my enraged Uncle put on the letter "NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS, PLEASE FORWARD TO HARLOW CEMETERY PLOT NO. XYZ."

After this they got a write apology and the letters stopped.

[tweetiepooh]

When I worked at a hospital there was a charity linked to us that collected monies for us to help get expensive new equipment and run things not always covered by the NHS coffers.

When a patient was discharged their postal details were passed to the charity so they could mail the patient (unless requested otherwise) explaining who they were and asking for money. Actually it probably was more like a remember us in you will type of thing.

Nothing wrong with this, many do it. Trouble was that the system didn't check the reason for discharge so sent mail to people who had died in the hospital. One of my jobs was to modify the process so people who had this code in the discharge reason did not have their details forwarded.

Hey if we could do this in 1990 it should be easy in today's systems excepting they don't write their own systems anymore, they buy them in and the vendor then wants huge amounts to change the system and really long lead times.