A GRIEVING widower has blasted his bank for continuing to send correspondence to his wife months after her death even addressing a request for proof of death documents to the recently deceased woman.
In November, Susan Swindells, of Wombwell, died aged 79.
Her family, including husband Ralph, have been doing their best to deal with the grief.
However Ralph has been facing additional problems as he’s been flooded with insensitive correspondence from different companies like Tesco and Lloyds, the latter of which has continued to send out emails and letters addressed to the departed grandmother despite complaints.
Following a complaint process, executives at Tesco apologised and said they were working on altering their systems, though Lloyds have been less forthcoming, sending Ralph in circles as he deals with automated calls that can see him wait on hold for up to 50 minutes.
In one of the most shocking incidents, the grieving 83-year-old saw an email from the bank asking his late wife to ‘complete your bereavement application online’ and send in documents proving her own death.
He told the Chronicle: “I went into Lloyds and said that this is still happening.
“Even after I received the really offensive one, they’re still sending letters.
“They must have contacted the bereavement team because afterwards I got a message saying they were looking into my complaint.
“It said that if I need to speak to them I can call this number I tried a couple of times and once I was on hold for 50 minutes and the other time 40 and I put the phone down in the end.
“They won’t phone me, they’ve never phoned me they contact through texts and I don’t do texts.”
Ralph doesn’t blame the bank staff that he’s spoken to, who he says have been apologetic and accommodating, but rather with the wider system that is trying to do everything in ‘the cheapest’ way possible.
“I got a bit irate when I went into the local branch,” he added.
“But I mean the bank staff themselves are sympathetic, everyone I talk to is basically horrified that I got an email like that.
“So my thoughts are that you’ve got to make a fuss for anything to change.
“They’re slow to act and difficult to communicate with - nobody’s ever phoned me, they just won’t do it.
“They want to do it in the cheapest and most efficient way they can, which is for me to phone and for them to text or email me.”
A Lloyds spokesperson said: “We know that losing a loved one is extremely upsetting and carefully supporting the bereaved families of our customers is very important to us.
“We recognise our service fell below what Mr Swindells expected of us at such a difficult time, for which we are very sorry.
“We’ve listened closely to what he’s told us about the experience, and we’ll be sending a hamper and a payment in recognition of the distress caused.”
