Let me know if you ever manage to collect. · 7:02pm Dec 19th, 2017
There's a joke to be made here about customer disservice, but... I already made it over a much, much lesser offense. I can't seem to find anything funny about this. Anything at all.
Dead bodies seldom get much deader. He's still dead. But select portions of the bureaucratic band continue to play on.
Back when I told everyone here about his death, I mentioned that he was horrible with change-of-address forms, and that was for both postal and online. (Based on the most recent evidence, I suspect he didn't update his driver's license either.) That long after he'd moved away, there would still be packages for him on the stairs. Other envelopes showed up once in a while, and I suppose his sibling took custody. I'd see the less bulky mail on occasion: as things are sometimes less than ideally sorted, some of his pieces would wind up in my residence mailbox. It's one of the reasons I personally maintain a different address for anything I want to arrive.
He's been dead for a while now, and the mail is still coming in. That's to be expected. He was horrible with telling anyone about address changes, and I don't know if anyone has his passwords to do it now. The man dies, but the spam is forever.
This missorted mail wasn't spam. It was a group of bills, all of which shared a theme.
Here's the one from pathology.
This one may be from an ambulance service.
I can't be sure without opening it, but... I think this is the Payment Due for the autopsy.
Legally, I don't think I can do anything more than slip the envelopes into the proper mailbox. I would never open them. I can't hand them to his parents, in part because doing so would mean traveling across several states, and the emotional impact of getting something which I'd forwarded... Eventually, his sibling will see where I put it all, and likely ignore them.
But I want to pull out a pen. Scrawl one word across the paper: To. And just... throw the envelopes up in the air. Let the wind catch them. They'll travel wherever they wish, and any place they arrive is as likely to contain someone willing to settle up as the original address. Maybe they'll even reach the intended recipient, and he'll have a laugh.
Or there's the simpler route.
Return to sender
Address unknown
No such person
No such zone
But even then, there would be more such envelopes. Demands for money, sent to a dead man, ordering the corpse to pay for everything between demise and burial. Or there will be Consequences. I'm sure they can completely trash his credit rating. He'll never apply for a card in this town again!
Really. He won't.
:(
Collection companies are the worst.
IDK, have a friend go into the post office & fill out a change of address? Been 20+ years since I did but I don't remember them asking for ID. If they do, well I'm sure that this happens often enough that there is a form to fill out. How can ANYONE possibly need more help than that?
If you save up for funeral costs etc before hand, you obviously are rich, and must be taxed accordingly.
Yeah, my grandmother got some card application forms after her demise too.
BUREAUCRACY!
this reminded me of a story i read on the 'net, i think it was on "notalwaysright.com". i couldn't find the exact story...
someone keeps getting phone calls from someone trying to contact his dead mother. he tells them many times, in many ways, that she's dead, and they just don't get it! he even tells them that her forwarding address is a CEMETERY, and they still don't get it!
I just can't wrap my head around the fact that in your country you have to pay for the ambulance and autopsy. Not only is it free in Norway, but there was a case where a funeral home tried to charge customers for transport to autopsy and the national doctors assosiation was in an uproar about it calling it immoral.
Getting a dead man's mail is dark. Even the most mundane things gain an unpleasant sheen knowing who they're meant for. Might be even worse since you kinda knew the guy and it's not some neighbor you never interacted with.
And billing the corpse for the damn autopsy is just plain foul. Since when is that something that requires payment?
Knock on wood, but I guess I'm just not familiar with how things go after someone dies.
4753310
At least locally, ambulance service can be free (or rather, covered out of local taxes). The issue is that that service only stays free if you're being taken to the most local hospitals available: cross the border -- township, borough, county, what-have-you -- and the bill will arrive. As a number of people don't trust the closest facility, billing isn't uncommon.
(Actually, he was in a coma when they removed him from his apartment. So someone must have told the ambulance crew where to take him.)
4753313
I have no idea how autopsy billing works, in terms of whether you get one or how much it costs. (I am not taking episodes of Rosewood as precedent.) I do know his family asked for one. And if I had to guess at what happened, someone at the hospital may have put the information on his unchanged driver's licenses into the system, and now that's echoing out to everyone who's decided to try and extract money from a corpse.
ETA: I just did some quick research.
My paternal grandfather was the kindest man I've ever known, and gave to quite a few charities.
It's been five years since his death, and we still get about a three inch stack of screeving letters a week no matter how many times we call to stop.
Depressing.
Well, you could take it to the post office and drop it into the Misboxed Mail slot -- I assume your local one has one of those based on the fact that mine does -- but it's not more convenient for anyone involved. At best, it temporarily reminds the sorters to pay better attention. At worst -- okay, there's lots worse that can happen -- it just gets delivered to the wrong person again, possibly you. Which means you wasted a trip.
Or you could take the shorter trip and do what you've been doing.
It's kind of amusing getting mail with my late father's name on it. (Though I suppose it'd be less so if it were stuff like that.) I can just say, "No, he doesn't need a hearing aid... or life insurance..." and so on, and throw it away.
4753310
Dying in America is expensive. I handled the arrangements for my Dad, and the simplest possible means cost us almost $5K. For a cardboard coffin required by the department of health and direct cremation. No viewing, no funeral, no making an empty shell presentable for friends and family.
We threw him a wake instead, as he preferred. Got everyone together over pizza and cokes to tell stories. I hope for the same myself someday.
4753231
my grandfather has been dead for six years. he's still getting credit offers.
My body is set to be donated to organ harvest/science when I go to defer funeral costs. All I’ll have to buy before I go is a plot of land and a tombstone.