olena
07-25-2002, 10:32 AM
CLOVIS, New Mexico (Reuters) - A letter from a bank informing Gloria Wicker that she was dead and that her assets were frozen sent the woman to the hospital with chest pains as she tried for hours to get through an aggravating series of automated phone messages to prove she was alive.
Wicker, 71, a city commissioner for the eastern New Mexico town of Clovis, suffered chest pains on Tuesday and was rushed to a hospital in the nearby town of Lubbock, Texas, after receiving the letter from the Bank of America informing her that she had died about a month earlier.
"I got the letter from the bank saying I was deceased, and I thought, what the Sam Hill is going on here?" Wicker told Reuters in a telephone interview from her hospital bed on Wednesday.
Wicker said an apparent error at an office that processes her federal railroad pension seems to have caused the mistake that led Bank of America to send her the letter on Monday. It said: "We regret to learn that Gloria Wicker has passed away. Law requires us to return all government benefits paid after the date of death."
Wicker then took to the phones to convince Bank of America that she was alive. She said her greatest aggravation was trying to get through automated phone systems and find a human being to speak to at the main bank office.
"There was no message that said 'Press one if you have been declared deceased and your assets frozen',' she said.
She said the effort to convince bank and railroad pension officials she was alive likely brought on the chest pains.
Wicker said the bank had corrected the problem and recognizes that she is alive.
How awful! And getting swamped in the autmated phone menus would give me chest apins, too. I HATE those things.
Wicker, 71, a city commissioner for the eastern New Mexico town of Clovis, suffered chest pains on Tuesday and was rushed to a hospital in the nearby town of Lubbock, Texas, after receiving the letter from the Bank of America informing her that she had died about a month earlier.
"I got the letter from the bank saying I was deceased, and I thought, what the Sam Hill is going on here?" Wicker told Reuters in a telephone interview from her hospital bed on Wednesday.
Wicker said an apparent error at an office that processes her federal railroad pension seems to have caused the mistake that led Bank of America to send her the letter on Monday. It said: "We regret to learn that Gloria Wicker has passed away. Law requires us to return all government benefits paid after the date of death."
Wicker then took to the phones to convince Bank of America that she was alive. She said her greatest aggravation was trying to get through automated phone systems and find a human being to speak to at the main bank office.
"There was no message that said 'Press one if you have been declared deceased and your assets frozen',' she said.
She said the effort to convince bank and railroad pension officials she was alive likely brought on the chest pains.
Wicker said the bank had corrected the problem and recognizes that she is alive.
How awful! And getting swamped in the autmated phone menus would give me chest apins, too. I HATE those things.