New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: How does your App deal with the death of one of your users?

Ask HN: How does your App deal with the death of one of your users?
13 by herodotus | 0 comments on Hacker News.
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. I had to use text messaging to close her NY Times subscription. I texted "I need to cancel a subscription" The bot asked me why 1. No time to read 2. Price concern 3. Service issue And I was told I had to answer 1, 2, or 3! Really? Then a human got involved, and he/she was good, but obviously the bot still has some control because at the end I got this: "Thank for contacting the New York Times, I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day." Come on.....this is terrible. The human realized this and immediately added "And also before you go, I wanted to express my most sincere condolonces to you and your family" 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?

Middlesbrough