Capital One grovels over dead mailer

Capital One has been forced to issue a snivelling apology after sending a direct mailpack promoting its Classic Card – designed to repair people’s credit rating – to a man who died in 2003.
The letter, addressed to Frederick Wildgust in Arnold, Notts, was opened by the deceased man’s son, who lives at his parent’s home.
According to Simon Wildgust, his father had never owned a credit card. This would have given him a high score on the prospect database for a Classic Card – if he had not died 11 years ago.
Wildgust told the Nottingham Post: “My dad would have nothing to do with credit cards; he had bank accounts to put in his wages and that was it.
“The thing that shocks me is that it’s Capital One – it’s the fact that the name is on a database and they’re supposed to be credit checkers. Eleven years on, his name is on some database just swimming around. I get upset talking about it.”
A spokesman for the company said: “Capital One apologises sincerely for any distress caused. We will delete the late Mr Wildgust’s details from our marketing database to prevent this happening again.
“We obtain marketing data through a reputable and, usually, reliable third party and take care to ensure that information is accurate. We are investigating how this happened.”
According to Bereavement Register estimates, 64 million pieces of direct mail are sent to dead people every year – with individuals likely to receive over 100 items of direct mail during the first 12 months following their death.
But to still have someone on a database who died 11 years ago shows scant regard of industry best practice. It is not known which firm supplied the data to Capital One.
Last year, Aviva Insurance was also forced to apologise after sending a direct mail campaign offering health insurance to a woman who died a decade earlier, even though it knew she was dead.
To make matters worse, the two mailshots from Aviva were both addressed to June Davies “deseased” (sic). Her husband John, from Torquay, complained about the first letter, but a few months later Aviva sent a second.
Meanwhile, Tesco raised more than a few eyebrows by mailing a dead man for four years, demanding payment for a phone bill.

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