It’s the nightmare of every employee who feels undervalued and isolated at work: you could die at your desk and no one would ever notice. This actually happened to a 51-year-old employee of Los Angeles County: she passed away at her desk sometime on Friday, and wasn’t discovered until a security guard found her on Saturday. She had last been seen alive at 9 AM on Friday. [More]
death
Dead Woman's Parents Told To Repay Her Wells Fargo Student Loan
By 2.10.11
Many young adults complain that they will be trapped in student loan debt for the rest of their lives. It could be worse: yes, really, worse. A young woman in Kansas died of cancer shortly after graduating from college, and the lenders of her $45,000 in student loans decided to come after the balance from her estate: in her case, her parents. Because every grieving family needs to fight banks. [More]
Facebook Will Be Plagued By 50 Million Zombie Accounts By 2015
By 11.19.10
Facebook is so relatively new that deaths of users are somewhat of an anomaly, but a mathematical model reveals that the amount of undead accounts will rise to 50 million within five years. [More]
How 5 Different Companies Treated Us After My Father's Death
By 9.10.10
Everyone deals with death at some point, and everyone grieves differently. The major corporations our lives are intertwined with often don’t want to let us go–or create unneeded problems for our survivors. Dan’s father recently died, and he wrote up a comparison of his family’s experiences with a variety of large companies. Out of Bank of America, American Express, Fidelity, AT&T Wireless, and Comcast, which companies do you think were the easiest to deal with under the circumstances? [More]
Bank Of America Is Having A Hard Time Accepting This Whole Death Thing
By 8.18.10
Dave can’t get Bank of America to accept that his parents are gone, even after sending over the death certificates. He keeps telling the bank to take the house, because nobody in his family wants it and the mortgage is underwater. Bank of America keeps threatening his parents with letters about how behind they are on payments. Oh sure, everything about this story is funny on the surface, but not when Bank of America tries to extract money from a closed account you once shared with your dad, forcing it to re-open and siphon funds from your real accounts. [More]
Seven Puppies Die After American Airlines Flight
By 8.4.10
Chicago’s CBS2 reports that fifteen puppies were loaded on a Chicago-bound American Airlines flight in Tulsa. A few hours later, five of the puppies were dead when they arrived at O’Hare airport. Two more died in the care of a veterinarian. [More]
Prepaid Funeral Trust Money Used For Conventions And Lobbying, Say Auditors
By 7.12.10
We’ve said repeatedly that prepaid funeral plans are bunk–the industry is too unregulated to be trustworthy, and it’s far too easy to lose money when you could just as easily set up a savings plan for a funeral on your own. Now there’s news from California that the state’s second-largest prepaid funeral trust was spending money “improperly” on everything from political lobbying to conventions, blowing $12.6 million from the $70 million paid in advance by customers. [More]
Petsmart: Bad News Is Your Guinea Pig's Dead, Good News Is We're Taking It Seriously
By 7.2.10
Katie bought a pair of guinea pigs from a Bay Area Petsmart and noticed one was having sneezing fits. She took the furballs into a vet, who recommended taking them back to the store, which could get them treatment for upper respiratory system treatment. The company refunded her money and told her it would keep her posted on how the pets were doing. [More]
Funeral Home Director Accused Of Partying Pretty Hard
By 6.16.10
The Ohio state board that licenses funeral homes has shut down a business in the town of Findlay while it investigates a list of allegations against the funeral director who owns the business. It’s a long list, too, including being naked or half-clothed during business hours, putting on the jacket of a deceased man in front of the man’s family, threatening employees, and being drunk. [More]
Sorry, We Already Buried A Lady Next To Your Husband
By 6.7.10
The last place you want to find The Other Woman is on her back next to your husband. Especially when he’s dead. A woman named Lillas Hawkins in California found just that when she went to visit her husband’s grave two weeks ago. When she pointed out the error to a cemetery worker, she says he responded, “We are in terrible trouble.” The cemetery is owned by a company named Dignity. [More]
Dying Won't Get You Out Of Your Dish Network Contract
By 6.2.10
Dish Network has extremely loyal to Elizabeth Cordry of Forth Worth, Texas. So loyal that they would let nothing remove her from the ranks of their customers. Including her death. When she died in January at age 85, her son tried to end service, but the company insisted that she had a contract that could only be canceled if her family produced a death certificate. Since she was no longer under a contract, her son refused to produce the certificate. [More]
Once Facebook Thinks You're Dead, You're Dead Forever
By 5.27.10
We saw this coming as soon as Facebook introduced the memorial status for the Facebook accounts of dead people. It was bound to happen at some point. Facebook has begun declaring people dead. Well, specifically, people are having their friends and loved ones declared dead as a prank, but it’s nearly impossible to rise from the Facebook dead. That’s what happened to Ryan, who has been dead for over a month now. [More]
Continental's Bereavement Fares Showed Us No Sympathy
By 5.7.10
Andy’s sister and her family suffered a relative’s death while traveling and had to stay for the funeral. Continental offered her a costly bereavement fare, telling her to take it or leave it, then hiked the price by $200 when she decided to check around and then buy the tickets. [More]
Bodies Found Stacked Like Firewood In Garage Of Maryland Funeral Home
By 5.5.10
Apparently the Chambers Funeral Home & Crematorium in Riverdale, Maryland had more bodies for its crematorium than it could handle, so it stored them in the garage–stacked in piles, with fluids leaking out. A state investigator discovered the stash during an inspection, although to be fair he was warned by an employee, “Don’t get upset about all the bodies in there.” [More]
FTC Catches 30% Of Funeral Homes Violating Consumer Laws
By 3.25.10
Thanks to the Federal Trade Commission, consumers have certain rights when it comes to funerals. Consumers have the right to purchase only the products or services they need, to use the services of a funeral home while declining embalming, to see written price lists before they begin to make decisions, and the right to purchase a casket or urn elsewhere. An undercover FTC investigation, however, discovered that in 30% of the funeral homes they visited, at least one part of the Funeral Rule of 1984 was violated. [More]
Man Dies In Freak Gas Pump Fire Caused By Static Electricity
By 3.10.10
A Pennsylvania man died last Friday in a freak fire at a gas station. Authorities say that the fire was sparked by static electricity on the man’s body, and he died of inhalation of superheated gases. While this type of fire is very rare and fatalities even rarer, they do happen. To prevent them, you should do something terribly mundane: do not ever get back in your car while fueling, and make sure to touch a metal surface before fueling. [More]
Your Dying Words Better Be Your PIN, Or Verizon Will Bill Your Corpse
By 3.5.10
Don’t become too preoccupied with raging against the dying of the light — you have to remember to tell your PIN to someone before you die or Verizon will never stop billing your corpse. [More]
