
Ask HN: How does your app deal with the death of one of your users? - herodotus
My wife died recently. I had to close various accounts. From an IT perspective, the results were shameful. For example, I called her cell-phone provider and closed her account. The agent was very respectful. He offered condolences and closed the account, and said there would be a refund. The next day, there was an email, addressed to my wife, using her first name, asking her to rate her recent experience.<p>I had to use text messaging to close her NY Times subscription. I texted &quot;I need to cancel a subscription&quot; The bot asked me why<p>1. No time to read<p>2. Price concern<p>3. Service issue<p>And I was told I had to answer 1, 2, or 3! Really?<p>Then a human got involved, and he&#x2F;she was good, but obviously the bot still has some control because at the end I got this:<p>&quot;Thank for contacting the New York Times, I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.&quot;<p>Come on.....this is terrible. The human realized this and immediately added<p>&quot;And also before you go, I wanted to express my most sincere condolonces to you and your family&quot;<p>There is more, but this may be enough. My question for those of you working on apps that have registered users or subscribers: how do you deal with notification that one of your clients has died? Did you even give this use case some thought?
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jsqu99
Pro Tip: keep the deceased's phone active as long as possible so that, even if
you have all their passwords, you might still need it for 2FA.

My father was murdered last year, and his iPhone X will be kept forever in
evidence.

It has made dealing w/ all of his affairs very challenging as Verizon gave
away his number as soon as we informed them about the situation.

~~~
londons_explore
If the number was given to someone else, that's actually a pretty good
outcome. Just call the new number owner and ask them to forward you a few sms
tokens.

~~~
imhoguy
Hmm, isn't that how scamers operate?

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phillipseamore
Not exactly on topic but might be interesting: I recently did some consulting
work for a government agency in a small country with a national ID/certificate
scheme that is used both in GOV, NGO and COM. One of my suggestions was for a
webhook like scheme to notify sites/services that a person has been moved from
the national registry to the registry of deceased, specifically to trigger
automatic cancellations and the like. Their ID scheme also handles power of
attorney so the service could be notified about that also.

~~~
dugmartin
I suggest you watch the movie “Brazil”.

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geocrasher
I am very sorry to hear about the loss of your dear wife. this is something
that I am going to have to go through soon as well since my wife is terminally
ill. Thankfully it will be easier considering the she has already made
provisions for most things. But at the same time I have been thinking about
this and I realize that most places still don't have a good process for it.
I'll just pretend I'm her and close them as needed. for everything else I'll
just suffer through it I suppose. I'm not a developer in so I can't comment on
the rest. I work in web hosting and in our industry a death certificate is
typically required before an account could be handed over to someone else. In
those cases as well it's better to just pretend that you're the deceased and
transfer the account as needed. I wish you all the best! I'm sure this will be
just one small part of a very difficult process.

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kbos87
I went through this for a relative recently. It blew my mind that many very
large companies seemed surprised and unprepared when I called them to say my
relative was deceased and to close accounts, like this never happens and they
didn’t know what to do.

~~~
leetcrew
truly mind blowing. I guess most people wouldn't bother closing accounts for
free services, but I have to imagine anything involving a recurring fee would
be routinely closed as part of handling the estate. how do they not have a
process for handling a relatively frequent event?

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surround
Wikipedia is governed by it’s users, so this might not apply to other
businesses. However, I thought it would be worth mentioning that the community
has written guidelines for memorializing deceased Wikipedians and dealing with
their accounts.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deceased_Wikipedians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deceased_Wikipedians)

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zzo38computer
> And I was told I had to answer 1, 2, or 3! Really?

That just isn't very good. Of course, death is another reason, but there may
also be many other reasons they did not consider; they will need to add at
least two more options, one for "other reason not listed" and one for "refuse
to answer".

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
I see this a lot more now. I think it’s a misguided strategy around trying to
reduce the number of people choosing ‘other’ if it’s available because data
from is seen as not useful. They don’t seem to realize that by limiting
options in this way they will only pollute the results altogether with people
just picking anything to get to the next step.

------
chris1993
I'm very sorry for your loss. The audience for my gardening reminders email
subscription includes a lot of older people. I have received a number of
requests to end subscriptions on the death of a spouse. I handle as I hope
they wish - immediately and with a brief note of acknowledgement.

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danso
My condolences for your loss.

For the two specific cases you experienced, it seems like the auto-
miscommunication could’ve been prevented if the customer service person had an
option to disable auto-follow-up messages. Which is a feature you think they’d
have for a much more common situation: angry customers.

~~~
soneil
We're theoretically not able to prevent follow-ups for this exact reason. If
I've just failed a customer, I just tick the box to say no follow up? Angry
customers are why the feedback loop exists.

(We're technically able. We can change their contact details before the case
is closed. It's a dirty little secret.)

But this is the problem. The feedback loop is usually intended to evaluate the
rep. The rep should not be in charge of this. This would be an edge-case
within an edge-case. If I had to suggest a solution, I'd suggest the only way
to break this loop is for the rep to forward the 'case', recording and all, to
their manager. But then we have to trust the manager doesn't want to fluff
results either.

~~~
jakear
Isn’t this what audit logs are for? You make disabling a follow up require a
written statement & sign off from direct manager. Automated systems detect
abnormalities for middle management to look in to.

------
znhll
Sorry for your loss. I know it's hard, and the cold computer-automated world
of today will mindlessly still remind you of your loved one in a million
different ways. You just gotta be patient, take a break, or perhaps delegate
some of those tasks to friends or family.

Many companies don't know how or haven't thought about how to deal with the
death of a user or subscriber. As an estate admin, I've had trouble dealing
even with established banking institutions who may or may not train all their
employees on what to do or who to contact when a customer has passed away.

One thing, I discovered was Hereditas ([https://withblue.ink/2019/03/18/what-
happens-to-your-digital...](https://withblue.ink/2019/03/18/what-happens-to-
your-digital-life-after-youre-gone-introducing-hereditas.html)), a project
that's sort of like a "deadman's switch" which may help the survivors deal
with all the digital loose-ends that one's death might leave behind. This,
combined with proper estate planning might hopefully make things easier for
those we leave behind.

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egfx
This is an interesting question that came to my attention when my service
[https://2fb.me](https://2fb.me) was used to send notifications on Twitter
about the death of their loved one. I was heartbroken when my app failed to
share the tweets to Facebook in the early test phases. I turned from treating
my users as free qa testers into realizing they installed my application for a
very important purpose (broadcasting important messages to the largest
audience possible). They assumed because it was public it would work for their
needs. Instead of solving the problem it added to her grief and this really
upset me. My support system was lagging behind because I was still developing
the app and furthermore her support messages where therefore ignored for some
time. This was a watershed moment for me as a product developer.

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maps7
Sorry for your loss. Those interactions and outrageous and nearly comical.

I will try take this into account for my future projects or my teams projects.

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cpfohl
I'm so sorry for your loss.

I don't think we have a system in place at my work, and I don't remember a
system for any previous jobs either.

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rndcmnt
My condolences. It must be difficult to deal with these day to day things in
such a trying time.

I had been planning to cancel my own Netflix subscription for a while, when my
father passed away. For some reason I felt compelled to do it on that day. I
don't understand what drove me to, but I vividly remember how petty it felt
along with all other practical responsibilities while I was grieving.

I recommend that you take your time and mourn before worrying about these
matters. It may have been a form of keeping occupied in my case.

~~~
smabie
Shouldn't you just cancel his cards and solve all the problems at once? What's
the point of calling Netflix?

~~~
leetcrew
IANAL, but unfortunately I believe this results in outstanding charges against
the estate. closing a payment account is usually not considered a valid way of
terminating a subscription. I would hope the "creditors" would have the
decency not to go after the estate in this situation, but you can never be too
careful.

~~~
smabie
I would imagine Netflix just cancels your subscription if the charge fails.
It's not like if the charge fails you still get to watch stuff and then
Netflix calls you on the phone later asking for money, right?

~~~
2rsf
AFAIK that's correct in the Netflix, and Spotify, cases.

Some services charge you in advance for the next period, so if you fail to pay
they will (or should) simply stop the service.

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nojvek
NYTimes is the worst. I legit hate their system. Signing up is so easy. Input
credit card payment details and click a button. Done!

Cancelling is another beast. It took me 2 months to cancel. So many phone
calls that never end up to the person in charge of cancellation. They make
cancellation really hard. Eventually I reported to my bank, who cancelled my
credit card. Really hate NY times.

DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO NY TIMES.

~~~
londons_explore
No need to cancel the card - you can simply block all payments to them, and
they'll quickly end your subscrt.

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imtringued
That really puts a different spin on this dark pattern... There are situations
in which a person must cancel their contract and these companies are trying to
abuse that situation to make money.

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dexterdog
This is where a simple auto cancel fails and a cancel by opening a support
ticket is far superior.

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dataminded
I'm really sorry for your loss.

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quantgenius
I am so sorry for your loss.

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readhn
This is terrible. Sorry for your loss.

With a wave of deaths coming from COVID.. this is going to be a big issue in
the coming days/weeks.

~~~
cameronfraser
Aren't less people dying overall though? People aren't out driving as much or
taking other risks.

~~~
jshevek
In some regions, so far, I believe so. We can also expect fewer deaths from
the flu, which is not insignificant. We'll see whether this remains true.

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soulchild37
My condolences

