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Dom Littlewood met widow Christine Briars, a university professor at her home in Trowbridge in Wiltshire. Her husband Alan died of stomach and oesophagus cancer in December 2007. He owed £27 on his Capital One credit card when he passed away.
Christine paid off this debt, informed them of her husband's death and sent in a copy of his death certificate. But the company continued to call and write letters to Alan, chasing the interest and a further charge on his debt (totalling £25).
Dom's top tip: With credit card companies you really need to check whether they'll accept a photocopy of the death certificate.
The copy you receive from a registrar is an original, certified copy and the recommended price is £7. It will be printed on watermarked paper. The registrar can run off as many copies as you need, but they will cost you for each one.
You can photocopy a death certificate but in order for it to be considered certified again, it would be need to be signed by a professional such as an accountant, doctor, lawyer etc. Or the bank can do it for free by stamping photocopies for you.
Capital One have now apologised for the distress they've caused Christine and promised to review their procedures.
More information: Age Concern, Cruse Bereavement Care and from the government.
Have you had a similar experience after the death of a loved one? What should be done?
Comments
My mum passed away last year andwhen I contacted Virgin Media they were excellent they even sent condolsences and agreed to write off mums debt and agreed to keep the phone line on
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My dad died suddenly in July 04. Trying to cancel an ntl internet / tv subscription was nigh on impossible. Eventually I was told that the easiest way to circumvent the red tape and procedures was to put the account in my name and then cancel it. After I did this I was told that as I was a new customer I'd automatically signed up for 12 months! I wasn't happy! Coping with this on top of the death of my father was just too much.
I appreciate that large companies need to follow procedures and policies however do feel that they should be more accessible and more customer friendly.
Allie, Lichfield
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When my brother died at the age of 40, we got six copies of his death certificate as most companies require an original. We wrote to Barclaycard informing them of his death, they wrote back requesting an original death certificate, which I then sent. As his credit card was covered by insurance his debt was written off. We never had any trouble with any of the banks or credit card companies.
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I had the ultimate nightmare trying to cancel my husband's Sky subscription after he died. The imbecile on the other end of the phone kept asking for his password, which I had no way of knowing, and whenever I tried to explain, she kept saying "password please.." "I can only deal with the account holder"...and in the end I screamed "he is dead" , in floods of tears, which upset the entire family, and she did absolutely nothing. I don't think it is on their "flipchart".
You have no idea what a nightmare it was, including many abusive calls, after I had made many polite ones of my own to tell them I was cancelling the direct debit, when I had done so etc, and then the head of collections called, asked to speak to my husband, as he "had not paid his subscriptions" and I told him to look at the computer and check what the details said. He was appallingly rude. I wrote to the head office, and had a cursory reply, but it was a NIGHTMARE. This was 2 years ago.
I could go on - add to this the fact that my husband's inquest took 15 months therefore no full death certificate...... I could tell you a great deal about nightmares with officialdom.
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I was appalled by this story, but not surprised. Earlier this year I started to get phone calls from Capital One, asking for someone I'd never heard of. (It eventually transpired that it was the person who had previously had my phone number, before it was reallocated to me.) They rang me every day for a fortnight (except Sundays - how kind!), despite being told every time that I was not the person they were chasing, and in the end they only stopped when I wrote to them. They don't care what distress they are causing to people, and their licence to operate should be revoked by the OFT.
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Sorry - Linds, Northampton
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I have recently been pestered by capital one for a dept my son owes,he was £11-00 over his limit,he does not live here anymore,he lives with his wife and 2 children.he gave capital one our phone number and address when he took out the card as well as his address and phone number.he has paid the dept off plus another £30-00,but they hussle us and him about 2 to 3 times a day,more often than not they put the phone down on you when you try to explain anything to them.he has stopped the direct debit to them and is now paying them by paying in slip.he recieved a letter from them confiming this as okay.but they still try to collect the direct debit from the bank.we are getting fed up with this as i am disabled and my wife has a broken leg, so we are stuck in at the moment and can't get away from the phone,you have to answer it in case it's something important or you are waiting for a call.HOW DO WE STOP THESE PEOPLE FROM MAKING OUR LIFE A MISERY.
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My experience of Capital One Bank:-
1) I had an incorrect charge of circs £135.00
2) I wrote them a polite letter explaining the charge was incorrect;
3) I then received months of almost abusive phone calls;
4) I made a strategy;
5) I paid off the incorrect account, but paid 1p too much;
6) For nearly three years I received account statement plus interest based upon the 1p credit;
7) after about three years they finally realised they had paid several hundreds of internal costs servicin the "1p" account and i received in the post a cheque for the disputed amount. (No letter or applogy of course!)
Best regards
Chris
Author of !The Masada Franchise"
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I am not surprised by Capital One's treatment of Christine. I have been trying to close my own Capital One credit card account for some time now and I have got absolutely nowhere with them.
I wrote 4 years ago to close the account as my card had expired and I never received a new one. The wrote back telling me to ring. I rang they said as I didn't have a card to give them the expiry date I would have to write. I wrote again, they wrote back saying I would have to ring??
I have tried again in the last two months. They wrote back first time telling me they have cancelled my payment protection as requested, I never signed up for it in the first place and the second time saying they were stopping all junk mail at my request, I didn't.
All I want to do is close my account!
It seems once Capital One have you as a customer they won't let you leave and totally disregard you.
Nikki
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What a coincidence! Capital One up to their normal tricks! I had a problem with switching my Bank Account Direct debits, i had 9 that needed switching to my new bank and guess what 8 switched ok and the 9th ignored contact from my new bank and refused to switch over. I was pestered and tormented from Capital One and threatened with 21 calls and text messages per day I tried in vain to get them to listen but it was like talking to the wall! Eventually the case some 12 months later was taken up with the Ombudsman, and Capital One have miraculously found correspondence that they said they never had! but it was to late to act on it when it was received, This Company has no ears to listen to you, they eventually defaulted my account and sold it to a recovery agency!
I'm Still Fighting all i wanted to do was for them to take some Money from my new Account! They are not nice people to deal with! And they have the audacity to say they could of handled the situation better!
Eric...
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I too am having problems with Capital One. I have been sent a letter and on calling and asking to speak to the person who wrote I was informed that "we cannot transfer you this is a large building" and on asking if I could speak to someone in the UK I was given another number which again put me back to the foreign call centre. They do not understand, do not care, and quite frankly don't give a damn about us. The worst company I have ever had dealings with. And do not under any circumstances use the card to obtain cash, they charge you interest every month until the whole balance of the card is clear instead of allocating a percentage of the payment against the cash. So far I have paid £90 interest on £200 cash, so heaven knows how much I will have paid in the end.
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I was going to say that it was good to see balance in the blog.....the along came all of those comments about Capitol One.
Kevin
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Dealing with many service providers is a nightmare after a death. The 'standard ' letter that is often sent out is frquently inappropriate and distressing. My broadband internet connection that was in my husbands name was cut after he died leaving me without internet access. After I managed to get the connection for myself a few weeks later one of the first emails that I had was from my husbands prevoius provider, it said 'Sorry you have gone, but if you want to come back just get in touch with us.' !! Unfortunately they were unable to fulfil that miracle offer.
Pat, Leicestershire
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After my father died, my husband phoned NTL to cancel the contract, because my mother was moving in with us, and had no end of trouble explaining the facts. In the end, he gave them the plot number of my father's grave and told them to go and collect future subscriptions from there!
Incidentally, having phoned them several times previously and knowing that he'd get 15 mins of advertising then 15 mins of musak, he put a call through, leaving the phone off the hook, and went shopping. When he returned, he was still in time to take the call, but hadn't wasted his time and was far less frustrated!
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If anyone would like an executive response to their problem directly from Capital One, the chap below is your man
James Bell
Head of Executive Response Centre
Capital One
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I can echo the problem with broadband providers. My husband died 15 months qgo and did everything on the computer including internet banking. He paid for our broadband connection via direct debit but obviously this ceased when his bank account was closed down. I misguidedly thought I could transfer the account to my name and take over the monthly payments but what the broadband provider failed to tell me was that the connection had to be closed down!! What a nightmare and tangle I got myself into at a particularly vulnerable time - I do feel big organisations need to rethink and deal with bereaved spouses in a more sensitive way!! Training is requiredand very clear communication is required at this particulary sensitive time.
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If you have had problems with Capital One, by all means contact their head man, but I would urge you also to write to the Office of Fair Trading (FREEPOST, Fleetbank House, 2-6 Salisbury Square, London EC4Y 8JX). The OFT cannot investigate individual complaints, but it issues consumer credit licences to credit companies, and if a pattern of unfair business practices emerges it can take regulatory action. ("Unfair" also includes "deceitful", "oppressive" or "improper".) If enough of us complain, perhaps some action will be taken.
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i wish to inform every one about what i feel are underhand tactics employed by a book club called books direct. i was a member for many years, i cancelled this in 2006, i was then contacted in 2007 and asked to renew this, i explained to the member of staff that i did not wish to do this as i did not want to have to dael with cancelling the editors choice each month, i was told that as i had been a member i would be given a free membership. sure enough month after month i recieved statements showing a nil balance, imagine my surprise when in august 2008 i recieved a letter from this company demanding forty pounds as i had not met my committment. when i phoned their call center i was told this money was owed and no one was interested in what i had to say. this has now been paid as i was sent a letter from a debt collection agency and i felt that i had no choice to avoid a poor credit rating, i am currently waiting for a reply to a letter sent via the books direct website.
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I am having problems with Tiscali. My aunt died in february and when tiscali wrote saying what was owing. I sent them a cheque straight away, which they cashed 8 weeks later, then debt collectors letters started arriving addressed to my aunt at her address. I have phoned Tiscali twice who have said the account is cleared, but I have now had a letter from a solicitor acting for the debt collector. I've written to the debt collector, the solicitor and have now complained to tiscali, and I'm not sure what else I can do.
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Many African countries have this problem. Look at Zaire, the World Bank and IMF loaned him $4billion (and this was after the IMF's own observer recommended not to loan Zaire any money as the Government was desparately corrupt, and the money was unlikely to be repaid. But although this was an odious loan, it suited our politicians so they took reckless lending to a new height.
The IMF man was right, and the parts of the fortune that didn't get spent by Mobutu got paid into his Swiss Bank accounts. Mobutu dies, but does the reckless and odious debt get cancelled (like these credit cards) well, no! The desparately poor people of Zaire (now Congo) don't have enough to spend on healthcare and education for their people, but have to service debts after death. Shouldn't these debts be cancelled too?
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My father died in April 08, he had sorted out all the finances so my Mum wouldn't have to worry about anything, all the money went into one place the Nationwide as we've all been customers of theirs for years.
We sent all the right letters off with proper death certificates and I also made extra phone calls to cancel the internet with Virgin Media.
Both the Nationwide & Virgin Media have done nothing but make my Mum's life even more of a misery and she is now on medication for severe depression.
Nationwide made the mistake of inputting that it was my MUM that died, froze all the accounts which stopped all the direct debits and left her with nothing. We are still waiting for the outcome of this matter as it is now in the hands of solicitors.
As for Virgin Media well Dad didn't want to be their customer but, due to their extremely fine print, they forced him into being their customer for a further 12 months because they moved house 1 month before their original contract was up.
The 8GB broadband service he was forced to pay for was atrotious he was lucky if he got 356KBPS and yes that is KILOBYTES.
When I phoned and confirmed that the account was to be closed due to him dying it was a nil amount and yes that is fine and we're very sorry for your loss........... they are so sorry they have sent a debt of £45 to a debt collection agency which we are avidly disputing - they don't say what the debt actually is just threaten to take a dead man to court cause Yes, they do address letters to my Dad - bless him he'd have loved this fight.
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My mum died in June 2005. She lived in Sunderland, I live in Bristol.
NPower sent the final gas & electricity bill to me in August 2005. I phoned to say I was waiting for probate before paying anymore bills out of my pocket.
I had two threats of Baliffs/County Court action, and at one point a threat to break in and turn off the gas. At this point I wrote back pointing out, if they checked their records the gas was turned off on 1st July 2005, and if they broke in I wanted a new door.
I made sure I made copies of all letters I sent back to them, and once probate came through paid in full in Sept 2005.
One year later I sent all the correspondence I had to the Ofgas Ombudsman and received a gruding apology from NPower.
Problem with these companies is they cannot or will not accept the fact people die.
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