The Bereavement Register

Gone, But Not Forgotten

On any given day, approximately 1,575 people die in the UK, according to ONS figures. As if this reminder of our own mortality wasn’t sobering enough, this same 1,575 deceased will cumulatively receive over 126,000 pieces of unsolicited mail in the twelve months following their deaths. The result? Undue distress to grieving family members and friends as well as adverse environmental impacts at a time when we’re all striving to be more eco-friendly.

This ‘dead post’ problem is part of a veritable junk mail tsunami of 4.2 billion items sweeping across Britain annually. Often containing valuable personal details such as name, address and date of birth, an ever-increasing amount of post is being illegally intercepted by identity thieves. According to CIFAS, the UK’s fraud prevention service, Impersonation of the Dead (IOD) is now Britain’s fastest-growing identity crime, with upwards of 70,000 families likely to experience the pain of discovering their deceased loved one has become a victim of IOD fraud this year alone.

At the end of the day, home shouldn’t be where the heartbreak is. So to stop the rising tide of junk mail afflicting UK households, The Bereavement Register® was established in 2000 as a free public service with the specific aim of stopping post being sent to people who have died – thus saving worry for surviving relatives and friends as well as helping prevent sensitive personal information from falling into the hands of unscrupulous mail fraudsters.

The process is simple: Name and address details for the deceased can be registered via telephone, online or by mail onto the Register’s central database. Marketers subscribing to The Bereavement Register® then name-check their mailing lists against the service’s extensive database before removing all deceaseds’ details. You can expect to see a significant reduction in the amount of mail received in approximately six weeks (while noting there will, unfortunately, always be some companies that do not clean their lists as regularly as they should).  If mail is still being received after this time, The Bereavement Register® invites you to forward these items to the service’s FREEPOST address, where companies will be contacted on your behalf.

Donna Marshall and Victoria Maskell are the public faces of The Bereavement Register®. Donna and Victoria personally field dozens of calls each day from family members and friends wanting to register deceaseds’ details. ‘When someone close to us dies it is obviously extremely distressing,’ observes Donna Marshall, The Bereavement Register’s® Account Manager.  ‘It can take all one’s strength to cope with the overwhelming sense of grief. So the last thing any of us need are constant reminders of our loss in the form of unsolicited junk mail addressed to the deceased. This is all too often an unwanted and unwelcome intrusion which can delay the healing process and sense of closure. ‘

That The Bereavement Register’s® database now contains over 3 million name and address records is testament to Donna and Victoria’s personalised and professional service – as is the fact that the Register is now used to screen over 72 per cent of all direct mail in the UK and is the deceased mail service of choice amongst the majority of Britain’s funeral homes and police constabularies.

‘It’s truly an honor to be able to assist families throughout the UK at what is arguably the most difficult time in their lives,’ adds Donna. ‘As The Bereavement Register® approaches its 10th Anniversary in 2010, I’d like to thank everyone who’s either subscribed to the service or helped spread word-of-mouth about what we do. It’s helping us help others and for that all here at the Register are incredibly thankful.’

Using The Bereavement Register® is easy and can be completed:

 

For further information, please contact.

The Bereavement Register®
St George’s House
15 Pembroke Road
Sevenoaks
Kent TN13 1XR
Tel: 01732 467 940
E-mail: help@thebereavementregister.org.uk