PayPal Apologizes For Saying Woman Who Died Of Cancer Breached Its Rules

PayPal apologized to a widower after it sent a deceased woman a letter explaining that her death is a breach of contract and she must pay up immediately. The E-payments company has acknowledged the letter was insensitive and has begun inquiry into how the notice came to be sent.

Lindsay Durdle, a 37-year-old U.K. woman, died of breast cancer on May 31. Her husband Howard Durdle provided PayPal with all the required documentation including her death certificate, her will and his ID.

In response, the company sent a letter addressed to Lindsay with the headline "Important: You should read this notice carefully." The letter stated Lindsay owed the company around $4,240.

"You are in breach of condition 15.4(c) of your agreement with PayPal Credit as we have received notice that you are deceased... this breach is not capable of remedy,” the letter said.

"We apologize to Mr Durdle for the distress this letter has caused. We are urgently looking into this matter, and are in direct contact with Mr Durdle to support him,” A spokesperson for PayPal said, Tweak Town reported.

“We apologize unreservedly to Mr Durdle for the understandable distress this letter has caused. As soon as we became aware of this mistake, we contacted Mr Durdle directly to offer our support, cleared the outstanding debt and closed down his wife’s account as he requested. We are urgently reviewing our internal processes to ensure this does not happen again,” PayPal said in a statement.

"I'm in a reasonable place at the moment — I've got quite a level head on my shoulders — and am quite capable of dealing with paperwork like this,” Howard said.

“But I'm a member of the charity Widowed and Young, and I've seen first-hand in there how a letter like this or something like it can completely derail somebody,” he added.

“If I'm going to make any fuss about this at all, it's to make sure that PayPal — or any other organization that might do this kind of insensitive thing — recognizes the damage they can cause the recently bereaved,” he said, BBC reported.

Howard said that when he contacted the company, they gave him three possible explanations for the error, those being a bug, a bad letter template or a human error.

In 2015, Irish Water, a water service company, apologized for sending a letter to a deceased man. The widow received two bills addressed to her husband with RIP written beside his name.

“We totally understand and apologize for upset caused by incorrect customer information and our contact center staff are ready to accept customer registrations or to correct any data inaccuracies quickly so that information is correct for future billing cycles,” the company said in a statement.

“It’s a significant task and we expect to face challenges where we have incomplete customer information, where customers have not yet registered or where customer information needs to be updated,” the statement said, The Journal reported.