91–100 of 162 posts
Every year my grand parents have to take a photo of themselves holding a recent newspaper with date clearly visible to whoever is managing their pension. After the internet and apps plaged the world, now they have to download an app then tilt node and wink to the camera to prove that they are alive. ("If you cannot use a phone, ask your children") I have mixed feeling about this, it's hard to say this is not degenera…
This reminds me of one time I tried to get a birth certificate and I was asked a proof that I was born. Just to make it clear. Not to prove I was born for those particular parents. It is born in general.
> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.
To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...
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To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...
To be fair? That's like saying "To be fair, some people try to steal money from banks, so it's okay if the ATM sometimes doesn't work."
> letters make no mention of a deadline or the fact that their payments will cease if they do not respond within 28 days. A spokesperson said this was “to avoid causing upset” This is the most stereotypically British thing I’ve heard this year
This whole story reminds me of the movie Brazil.
Barclays closed my mother’s bank accounts because they thought she had died. It was a “clerical error” ie someone had received a death certificate and processed it with about as much rigour as a 2 year old could muster. They sorted it within 5 days though and paid out compensation and sent her a hamper as an apology. Hopefully they fired the moron who kicked off the process too. At the end of the day this shit happen…
> Hopefully they fired the moron who kicked off the process too. God forbit you make such a grave mistake as reading a number off a piece of paper and typing it into a system incorrectly. It's almost asif the interaction between the systems is the problem and not the human on the end... It may even have been some sort of "AI" that happened to recognise a letter incorrectly. It's quick to call for people tp be fired,…
In this case their investigation said that the date of birth and last name were matched but the first names were not. This was flagged through by someone who didn’t do their job.
Thats just negligence of duty. I would expect to be minimally fired if I fucked up and hurt someone.
Barclays closed my mother’s bank accounts because they thought she had died. It was a “clerical error” ie someone had received a death certificate and processed it with about as much rigour as a 2 year old could muster. They sorted it within 5 days though and paid out compensation and sent her a hamper as an apology. Hopefully they fired the moron who kicked off the process too. At the end of the day this shit happen…
> Hopefully they fired the moron As you say things happens, so who are you going to fire? It mostly is just a bad coincidences that make these things happens, it mostly is not the guy committing the error who is at fault. I do not want to live in a society where you treat the administrative clerks like you imply.
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Japan estimated 5% in 2006, for one data point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi
Japan is Japan [1]. What is your data point for European and American countries? [1] https://hansondoremus.com/2014-4-28-there-are-four-kinds-of-...
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To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...
That is throwing the baby out with the bath water. The amount of fraud doesn't justify creating such burden on users. The problem is there is a market failure in the form of misaligned interests (the provider's best interest is to make the process as difficult as possible, not only to curb fraud, but also to avoid paying actual customers). This can only be fixed with government oversight and steep fines (so steep tha…
Misaligned interests don’t create market failures. Usually imperfect information or costs/benefits borne by third parties do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair? That's like saying "To be fair, some people try to steal money from banks, so it's okay if the ATM sometimes doesn't work."
More like, "some people try to commit fraud, so banks are required to implement AML/KYC processes to make the attack more difficult". Repeatedly asserting one is not dead is, if you think about it, more or less analogous to the documentation requirements for managing a large account at an investment bank. Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.
From the original article: "According to the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees Teachers’ Pensions, death register entries may be matched to scheme members even if personal details differ. The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link."
The problem is with the approach in attempting to reduce fraud.
Once a false positive from an incomplete match from the death register is proven false - when the pension recipient tells you they are still alive - you don't need to check up on that same incomplete match every 12 months, because you already know it's false.
Demanding "a solution of some form" completely misunderstands the problem and is the same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal.