Mail Order company harrassment

[MTbowels]

My mother-in-law died tragically of cancer earlier this year. She had an account with a well-known mail order gift company. There were no outstanding debts due to the company on her death.

My father-in-law has received a number of promotional catalogues from the company since her death. These catalogues have continued to cause him great distress and he has asked that I contact the company to put a stop to the mailings. I've been in contact with them a number of times and asked for the mailings to be stopped. They have told me that they can only do so upon receipt of my mother-in-law's Death Certificate.

This seems to me to be a very extreme way of establishing the bona-fides of a person's death and I'm reluctant to go to these lengths to confirm the death. They have stipulated that only an original Death Certificate will do.

I take the view that this has now turned into a form of harassment as it's causing distress to my father-in-law. Two Christmas catalogues have been delivered since the beginning of December alone. Is there some law I can quote to them that would put a stop to this matter? Could anyone provide something along the lines of a template that I could use?

Thank you

[boxtops]

Joko has a point - one letter from a solicitor, asking them to stop this harassment or face the consequences, might do the trick.

[jackthehat]

Write to them, stating:
" I have already contacted your company by telephone regarding the matter of (M-i-Ls name) on (date) and spoke to (the representative) and I politely explained that this person is deceased and that your continuing to send correspondence to her is causing her husband great distress. Despite my best efforts, you persist in sending these letters to this address. I now inform you that each communication I receive from your company after (give a date of, say, 7 days from the date you are writing) will incur a £50 administration charge to cover my time and trouble in dealing with the matter. I shall send you an invoice on the last working day of each month which I expect to be settled 7 days from that date. Failure to pay will attract a penalty levied at the Bank of England base rate plus 2% until such time as your debt to me is discharged."

Now, don't go getting excited about all the money you'll be receiving.............they usually stop sending the letters, instead :o(

[factor-fiction]

I am surprised that the company are being so unhelpful regarding a simple request for removal from a mailing list but maybe as the MIL had a financial account they feel that for reasons of customer confidentiality they cannot simply accept someone else's word for it that the account needs to be closed, and in this case a death certificate would achieve this. It may seem over the top but maybe they feel they would get criticised if they acted without proper authority on someone's account.

[bednobs]

boxtops, are you serious? DC+envelope+stamp = about £7.50
solicitor's letter+envelope+stamp = £100!
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face

[Gilly]

I am going through the same thing, my mum died last week and I am in the process of closing accounts and so forth, my mum being housebound shopped through quite a few mail order catalogues and every other has handled this with compassion and no fuss, but Studio were quite abrupt on the phone and made me feel awful, "we cannot discuss this account with anybody until we see a death certificate" they said.All we wanted to know is if she owed any money ( we know she didnt but just wanted to make sure ) as she had purchased some goods a few weeks before and we had found a stub with the full amount paid in her chequebook but didnt know if it had been cashed and her bank account has now been frozen so basically helping them.So I emailled them and got the same answer,I dont feel inclined to purchase another death certificate plus send it registered post just to get the answer I already know so I have asked them if I can email it to them....wonder what the answer will be