Insurer apologises over letter gaffe

... and occasionally apologising

Insurance giant Scottish Widows has apologised after sending out 100 letters offering health cover to people it knew had died.

The blunder came to light when widower David Watkins opened a letter sent to his wife, addressed "Mrs Mair Watkins (Deceased)".

The letter asked Mrs Watkins, who died of cancer a year ago: "If you became too ill to work, how would you cope financially?".

And it enclosed a mock cheque offering a tax-free income for the rest of her life, and also made out to "Mrs Mair Watkins (Deceased)".

'Infuriated'

Mr Watkins, who is not a Scottish Widows customer, said: "I was just appalled.

I don't want anything like this happening to someone else

David Watkins

"I know mail gets through to people who have passed away, but when they acknowledge in the letter that the person is dead it is incredible. It infuriated me."

He called for Scottish Widows to be "brought to task" over its blunder, which the Edinburgh-based insurer has blamed on an administration error.

"I don't want anything like this happening to someone else," Mr Watkins said.

Mailing error

Scottish Widows has said the error was caused by lax processing when it sent a mail out to 400,000 of its own and Lloyds TSB's customers.

"Regrettably, the procedure Scottish Widows has in place to make sure that this kind of error does not occur was not followed for this mailing," a spokesman said.

"Scottish Widows is sincerely sorry for any distress this error has caused."