What is it with this admin? The banks are worse than useless. They are positively obstructive, even their Bereavement Departments. Is it just me? Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. I seem to be in a Catch 22 situation. Is this just me? I spent hours on the phone yesterday trying to sort just one thing and I am no further forward. My brain just won’t take any more.
Does everyone else find all the official stuff mind- blowingly complicated, or am I particularly stupid?
No you’re definitely not stupid @Willow112
I have had the same issues for the past 3 months. Banks, his work, insurance companies, the nhs ( district nurse turned up at the door to take his bloods 3 weeks after he’d died ), energy companies, even the registrar got our address wrong for the notification of death so the Tell us Once service then didn’t work.
As you say even the bereavement services can’t get it right.
I stopped changing things over to my name at one point as I was so stressed about what would go wrong.
I’m still trying to find out information from HMRC who were hopeless, and his pension company who don’t seem to understand what I am asking for ( which is the basic information ).
It is so exhausting when you are already at your lowest.
I try to do one thing at a time now - am getting there slowly but still trying to sort everything out and it really stresses me out.
Hope you can get it all sorted eventually xxx
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No you are not alone.
I am just about to make another phone call to a company that assured me everything was being sorted out. It hasn’t.
I have had other problems with services, companies and organisations.
The level of competence from so called bereavement departments is abysmally low, in some cases non existent!
It’s them not you.
Big hug,
Rose xx
Things haven’t improved. When my first husband died I decided to have the sports channels turned off because I didn’t watch them. They said they would need to speak to the account holder. I explained that he had died but they said they would still need his permission to do this! I asked if they had a Medium on their team because I would quite like to speak to him myself. That one fell on stony ground. This went on for a couple of weeks. Nobody could help me. Eventually my son phoned them, said he was the account holder and they turned off the channels.
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Sorry but I had to laugh at your reply to them.
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Willow it’s not just you.
I am usually quite organised and competent but have struggled with the admin. Mainly due to the ineptitude of the organisations. Every contact with anyone just creates another load of forms and goodness knows how people manage who are not online. I also now don’t trust people to get it right, so end up double checking their responses.
I decided to only tackle one organisation per day. It’s as much as I could cope with.
However I have to acknowledge BT and Jet2 who were wonderful, but maybe I was lucky enough to get the right person.
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@Willow112
When it becomes overwhelming, put it to one side.
None of it is going anywhere, deal with it a small chunks when you feel you can manage it.
Yesterday I received Nigel’s pension update. He’s been gone six months and they are well aware of that, as all his funds have been transferred to me. I have become an expert at the ‘angry email’ asking people why the business they work for is so incompetent at dealing with bereavement and following their own processes.
Three times, with three different companies, my complaints have been upheld.
I confess it’s exhausting but
I live in hope they review their processes to make sure it doesn’t happen to others…
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I totally agree @S_Diva
My phone was always Rogers contact number. Yesterday I received a text for him saying theyd made an eye appointment for him on 15th July, hed been told in November they were making him one!
I was shocked and really upset. When I eventually calmed down I phoned them. The young lady was very apologetic and said she’d make a note of it so it won’t happen again.
Then this morning, you’ve guessed it. I had another text from the same department. This time my upset turned to anger.
I haven’t phoned the.m yet. I’m frightened of what I might say!
X x
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@Liro
There’s absolutely no excuse for this type of thing, especially when they’re aware.
I usually write down what I want to say, so I have a script if I get too upset.
I’ll start with something like "I’d like to raise a complaint about how you deal with people after a bereavement… "
I have found that an email is often easier though, it’s less confrontational and once you’ve sent it you can walk away until you’re ready to read the response.
Take a deep breath…
Hugs
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I phoned the bank again today because I need access to my account. I actually got someone who knew how to help me and it was sorted in 10 minutes. If only that person had answered my call yesterday. He wasn’t even part of the Bereavement Team, he just knew how to do his job. I did say thank you and told him about yesterday’s inefficiency.
I am going to seal up my letter box with superglue.
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I must have been lucky. Had almost no problems getting things in my name. We were joint account holders on just about everything and my financial advisor dealt with the pension companies. I even got a bouquet of flowers from my bank after I contacted them to make it in my name only. Wish I could connect with people not yet bereaved to tell them put things in joint names. Worse was hospital he died in. Took three attempts to get sleep clinic to take his name off all databases.
It was a joint account, the problem was that the app was his details, not mine, and the downloaded app would not let me change the password to mine. It just kept freezing.
I tried deleting the app and re-installing but the password page was greyed out with no reset password option. So I was stuck.
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I see. I had my own copy of the app on my device so no problem. We both managed the account. Biggest problem I had was I lost the ability to send e mail which is embarrassing as I worked in IT for 35 years. Brain fog hits everyone. A lovely lady from tech support at BT helped me sort it out. We also both knew each others passwords for everything.
To my shame, I sat back and let my husband sort finances. He was an IT instructor at a college, loved computers, spreadsheets and numbers. I am a bit of a Luddite, also a full time carer for my daughter, so it suited me. In retrospect it was a big mistake, because now I am all at sea. So, I urge everyone I know to familiarise themselves with everything they might need to know, whether it’s admin, how to use the washing machine, or plait a little girl’s hair. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
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Good morning @S_Diva
I have taken your advice and sent an email. I suppose I’ll get the normal placating rubbish back. But I’ve got it off my chest 
Big hugs x
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@Liro … from the emails I’ve had back, I felt I’d received a genuine apology
and an acknowledgement of the distress they’ve caused.
Whilst it can’t be put right for me, I hope it doesn’t happen to the next person…
I’m glad you found the strength to follow up because it would be easy to let it go.
Xx
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Yes thats why I did it, to maybe save someone else the pain.
Thankyou x
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I think large companies have to employ a certain percentage of minority groups. If they are large enough or it is particularly relevant enough, like a pensions or insurance company for instance, they should be required to have widowed people in their Bereavement Team. At the very least they should recruit volunteers to actually fill in their forms in order to see where the difficulties lie.
As it is they expect recently bereaved people to be familiar with their gobbledegook terminology. We are suddenly expected to be experts in law, finances and technology when we are actually stumbling around in the dark and stunned into stupor trying to remember why we are still breathing.
Rant over😖xx
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That pretty much sums it up!
I sorted, I hope, something yesterday.
Guess what?
Yep, there’s something else cropped up today 
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