Ummm...Oops??

Published Jul 18, 2002

71 Posts

Dear Mrs. Deceased...

Wed Jul 17, 8:33 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A British bank said on Tuesday it had apologized to a man after sending a letter to his dead wife that began "Dear Mrs. Deceased."

A spokesman for Egg, a bank which operates on the Internet, said one of its employees had mistakenly entered "Deceased" on a form letter in place of the woman's name.

"What happened was, due to a clerical error -- that's just a manual input error -- the wrong details were entered on a piece of correspondence," said spokesman Mark Maguire.

"We were sending a piece of correspondence to her husband about wrapping up her accounts...There was a mistake on the form, which referred to her as Mrs. Deceased."

"Obviously it's a very unfortunate, isolated error and we've apologized to the customer," he said. "It's something which we obviously regret."