(Newswire.net— July 12, 2018) — British man received a notice from PayPal addressed to his late wife that says being dead is a breach of contract.
The grieving man first thought it was a mistake but found out that PayPal means business and debt is debt. The US company for online banking is deadly serious.
Apparently the 37-year-old Lindsay Durdle who died from breast cancer, has breached a contract for being deceased, which is preventing her from paying her dues. So, the company sent a notice to her husband but addressed to his late wife.
“You are in breach of condition 15.4(c) of your agreement with PayPal Credit as we have received notice that you are deceased,” the PayPal notice reads, demanding full payment of £3,200 that she owed.
The global online payment system further threatened that if the notice is ignored PayPal will take action after July 20 to collect the full payment for the outstanding balance.
“Excuse the language but this is beyond the f**king pale. PayPal – who were informed of Lindsay’s death three weeks ago – have written her a letter threatening action due to her breach of contract for being deceased,” Mr Durdle wrote in a Facebook post. He also posted a photo of the notice from the company. “What the actual f**k. What empathy-lacking machine sent this? Jesus,” he adds.
The post drew outrage from the social network community and brought tons of bad publicity to PayPal, which resulted in the company’s public apology.
“We apologize to Mr Durdle for the distress this letter has caused,” PayPal’s spokesman told the news outlet. “We are urgently looking into this matter and are in direct contact with Mr Durdle to support him.”
It is not clear if the notice to late Mrs Durdle was a human error or if it was compiled by software that uses template forms and autofill text. The notice text certainly looks like it was written by a robot that doesn’t understand the concept of death but registers it as the reason for contract breach. The technology does exist but it is not confirmed that PayPal uses this autofill software to compile letters.
PayPal’s representative told the BBC news service that the company cleared the British woman’s debt and launched a probe to make sure this mishap wouldn’t happen again.