Finance offer sent to my late mother.

My mother died over 3 years ago but I still head back west to visit other relatives living in the area. I visited my mother's house today to make sure that everything was OK with the house and I was amazed to find a letter addressed to her.

I opened it up and it was from Citi Financial offering her a loan of "up to €15000 to take care of your existing credit balances and lighten the load". The letter was signed by a Christina Monaghan - Branch Manager, 36a Merchants Road, Galway. I'm going to call Christina on Tuesday morning and give her a piece of my mind.

There are a couple of things that makes me mad about this. Firstly my mother died in 2002, so seeing letters addressed to her 3 years after her death is upsetting. Secondly, she was over 70 when she died, so why would a finance company offer an elderly person this sort of loan?

Is there any official "body" that I can complain to??

I'm sure it was quite upsetting for you. I'd guess that they are taking names from the electoral register. You might want to check with the local authority to get her name removed from the register to prevent any future issues.

THe 'official' body for direct marketeers are IDMA - I'm not sure if Citi Financial are members.

biggerry said:

There are a couple of things that makes me mad about this. Firstly my mother died in 2002, so seeing letters addressed to her 3 years after her death is upsetting. Secondly, she was over 70 when she died, so why would a finance company offer an elderly person this sort of loan?

Is there any official "body" that I can complain to??

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I'm sure it was upsetting to find a letter sent to you mother even though she has passed away. However, obviously the company didn't do this deliberatly to upset you.

I think it is fine that over 70's are offered loans. Many over 70's might not want to be discriminated on the basis of age by not getting offered loans.

I'm sorry about your loss.

We've been living in this house for over 10 years now, and they guy we bought it from died 7 years ago. We still get mail addressed to him that is clearly from financial companies offering loans. We just forward it on.

I guess it can just take a long while for some companies to get their records updated.

Don't be too hard on the person you speak to, she's probably just like you and will be very sympathetic and apologetic. Give her a chance to set things right before having a go.

All the best.

I'm getting at least one offer a month from this crowd. I think they are getting my name and address from the Electoral register and it appears to be an outdated one at that, as the letters are being sent to my parents address and I haven't lived there for 3 years.

They will be receiving a phonecall from me tomorrow letting them know that no I don't want a loan at an interest rate of 27% thanks all the same and requesting they remove my name from their mailing list.

Kiddo said:

I think they are getting my name and address from the Electoral register and it appears to be an outdated one at that, as the letters are being sent to my parents address and I haven't lived there for 3 years.

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Just curious (and slightly off-topic) - are you sure that you're not still on the register at that address? Some local authorities provide an online search facility to check the register.

My mother still receives mail addressed to my late father who died five years ago almost to the day.

My mother passed away in February and we got a phone call a few weeks after asking my ten year old son for her.. he put the call on to me - it was Dell wanting to ask how the new computer was going? I explained she had passed away and asked them to change the name to my dads for future correspondence. The poor guy on the phone was so apologetic and although it was upsetting he wasn't to know.
However Chorus rang me the week after the funeral asking for the 26.99 outstanding on my bill. I seen red as even after I explained why I had not paid she just snapped back well we're not aware of personal circumstances. I was so angry I gave out to her for ringing over such a small amount when I had never a late payment. I hung up on her! Felt bit bad afters but it was just her tone and nonchalant attitude. So maybe go a little easy on woman when you ring as I'm sure she will be apologetic.

RainyDay said:

Just curious (and slightly off-topic) - are you sure that you're not still on the register at that address? Some local authorities provide an online search facility to check the register.

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Hi I just double checked and no I'm no longer on the electoral register at my parents address

I lived for 2 years in Cork city in a flat in a house full of flats. I was the only person there with a job and the rest of the guys in the house were "professional social welfare recipients". They hadn't worked for years, yet almost every month there was loads of junk mail from MBNA offering them to apply for Gold cards! I fugured out that it must be the electoral register as I always select the "do not spam" option when filling out forms.

It seemed funny at the time, but it is really upsetting to get mail for somebody who is deceased, or offers to which are clearly not available to you. I used to get a lot of junk mail from AIB Direct (who I understand are some kind of CRM wing of AIB) waving the "we'd love to offer you more services" flag wildly. So a couple of days later I applied for a small loan. I heard nothing back within 2 days so phoned and was told I was turned down (note that I had to phone them to get this information). So I immediately closed all of my remaining accounts with AIB (which were costing me money anyway), since clearly their CRM can't be much good if it doesn't offer me services appropriate to my status as a customer. It had reminded me that I'd been meaning for some time to cut the umbillical cord with AIB.

The lesson here is that most of this mail is just mass junk mail, its wildcad advertising not intended to be taken seriously.

ClubMan said:

My mother still receives mail addressed to my late father who died five years ago almost to the day.

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If you think thats bad a cousin of my mother never changed the phone bill into her own name after he died - which is about 20 years ago. Until very recently they not only got all their bills in his name, but he even had an entry in the phone book - despite being deceased for nearly 20 years!

We all thought it was a fitting tribute to the man!