‘I felt like a criminal’: woman’s ordeal closing late husband’s accounts

theguardian.com:

Lindsay Wright’s husband, Stuart, died suddenly at the beginning of the year, aged 46. Alongside the grief of losing her partner, and the father of their daughter Lily, 10, Wright had to deal with endless admin and a long list of companies, many of which she found unsympathetic.

She realised her Virgin Money credit card had been blocked when she tried to pay for some shopping. Her solicitor had informed the bank about her husband’s death but a miscommunication meant she was not told the account would be closed.

He was the main account holder, but Wright had her own card. The couple had been saving their Virgin Points to upgrade to first class flights and go on holiday for their 10th wedding anniversary in 2021.

“There was no communication, there was no email, no letter, to say ‘we are stopping your card’,” she recalls. “When I rang them they were unbelievably unsympathetic.”

Wright had similar difficulties with British Gas when she tried to get the account for their solar panels transferred to her name, to allow her to claim the money paid out as part of a feed-in tariff for generating energy.

The supplier had no problem changing the name on their dual fuel account, but the solar panels issue took seven months to fix, Wright says, and she has yet to receive the money.

“Different departments don’t speak to each other. You have to explain what’s happened to you again and again and again. It is emotional and painful, and horrible.”

She eventually had to send a death certificate, driving licence, passport, wedding certificate, the invoice for the solar panels, which had been bought eight years previously, and her husband’s will.

“I felt like a criminal – I felt like they were accusing me of trying to claim something that wasn’t