It’s one thing to be annoyed by telemarketers who just don’t know when to quit. But it’s a hassle that shouldn’t follow you (or your loved ones) into the afterlife. The longtime partner of a man who died of lung cancer in 2010 says though his loved one was cremated and interred at a local cemetery, workers from that same cemetery keep calling the house and asking for the dead man by name.
The 51-year-old man had asked that he be laid to rest at cemetery memorial park, after driving past it every day on his job as a mail carrier, reports WKMG 6.
“I like the openness back here. And the quietness back here,” his partner says of the spot he frequently visits at the cemetery. “It’s calm here. Sad, but calm.”
Then two years ago, while he was at the home the couple used to share, the phone rang, with the Caller ID showing it was coming from the cemetery. He says he answered the phone and the worker asked to speak with the dead man by name.
“And at first it was just jarring,” his partner says. “The very place he’s at is calling to ask for him? I thought it was some kind of joke.”
He explained that the requested man wasn’t alive anymore, and in fact, was interred at the same cemetery the worker was calling from. As a reasonable person would do, he assumed his partner’s name was taken off the sales call list at that point.
Cut to six months later, when someone else from the cemetery called and asked to speak, once again, with the deceased.
“He’s there in your gardens,” his partner says he told the caller. “She said, ‘Oh my gosh!'”
A third call came six months ago, and again, he told the cemetery worker the man was dead, and a sales supervisor said his name would finally be removed from the list, he says.
But then on March 3? Another phone call from the same place. Six days after that? A fifth call.
“I don’t think I’m asking too much, I really don’t,” the deceased man’s partner says. He believes the company is trying to sell his late loved one upgraded funeral arrangements. Too late.
Because he and his partner had done business in the past with the cemetery, the company can call despite the fact that the number is on the Do Not Call list. But if someone asks a business to stop calling, it should do so.
“According to the rules of the Do Not Call program, a business should stop calling an individual when that individual asks the business to do so,” said a spokesman for Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That agency hasn’t received any telemarketing complaints about the cemetery in question.
A spokeswoman for the cemetery’s parent company says it’s policy to remove customer’s from the list if asked.
“When we receive a request to remove a name from our call list, we make a notation in our database not to contact the individual. This removes the name from all call lists,” the spokeswoman said. “Occasionally, mistakes happen. In these circumstances we work to ensure our list is up-to-date.”
Seems like the company needs to work a bit harder on that up-to-date list.
“The credit card company stopped calling. Everyone else did. Nobody calls for him. But the place he’s buried can’t get it,” his partner says.
Cemetery repeatedly calls dead man [WKMG]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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