Does anyone else get fed up with the “are you dead yet?” forms from their pension providers? What infuriates me is the categories they impose on who is considered to be a trustworthy witness. Is a vicar or an accountant any more trustworthy than an engineer or a secretary?
In the past I have taken my forms (with my state pension I have four providers, the BP one being especially important as they pay me £1.73 pa) into the mairie. I knew the previous mayor and secretary well and it was easy to get a signature and a stamp. Crapita (Unilever) is insisting I am known to whoever for 5+ years, so that rules out the current lot (including the secretary, as the wonderful “font of all knowledge” has retired).
The only accountant I know here is OH. Not eligible.
Doctor? He’s too busy, not fair. And Crapita wants him to be a friend. Really?
Best buddies worked in the engineering world. I’m going round there this afternoon and we need to come up with some suitably vague, esoteric phrase for a job title that can sit comfortably alongside the teachers and lawyers in this world. I just feel we shouldn’t have to.
I suspect it may be the employer that lays down the policy.My former employer’s scheme also uses Capita. I simply click on a link they send me via email or in the post enter a code, and it’s all done. When I occasionally ask them whether this a sort of proof of life check, they always hotly deny it, saying “we just want to make sure we’re paying you the right amount of pension.” It’s a proof of life… !
haha. It’s those who return the form saying “Yes, I am” which are really confusing.
My wife has the same annoyance but she simply gets whichever temp is in the mairie at the time to sign. Nobody ever asks me, they probably don’t want to be disappointed.
I just take my forms to the pharmacy. They happily affix their date stamp and a squiggle that could be anyone’s signature and I just fill in the rest. Scan it, send it back as an e-mail attachment, and all is well.
I just today got my first ‘are you dead yet?’ inquiry from the US Social Security Admin. Luckily , it arrived just before I moved and they actually trust me enough not to require a witness!
However, it must be snail mailed back to the US and since Trump’s tariff fiasco the reliability of mail to the US is pretty low. I’m going to make a copy and send the copy separately a few days later. So much for government efficiency.
My US company from whom I have been collecting a pension for 12 years has never asked for Proof of Life.
Haven’t we already been around this? I was about to respond and then I had a déjà vu moment.
Or maybe I’m the one going gaga
I might start numbering my posts and then subsequently just refer to them. Like that joke about people who had already heard all each others jokes. One would just yell out, say, number 42 and all the others would roll around the place.
I could have…
No. 1 Tirade against Israel, Netanyahu and his cronies.
No. 2 Tirade against Trump (reading the papers today, he’s definitely senile)
No3 Tirade against Farage and Reform.
No 4 Happy post about motor cars (excluding Chinese ones).
No 5 Happy post about technology.
In fact, rather than compiling the list myself, I can just ChatGP to do the analysis and then issue a cross referenced inventory in my own thread. My productivity gains could considerable.
We just did our life certificates for our German pensions. There’s an app, you take videos of you waving your ID card this way and that, and of yourself looking up and down and right and left, then send it off and it’s done!
My daughter in Nashville and who is a dual UK/US citizen needed to renew the British passport. She took it down into the FedEx office on Monday afternoon. Tracking reported back yesterday it had arrived at Heathrow and was on its way to wherever the renewal office is in the UK. Cost a fortune to send though but only way to ensure it gets there and back to her
I would send it FedEx, but it is not possible because it goes to a Post Office box in PA. Surface is the only way and there have been a lot of reports of people’s payments being cut off because the formeither never got there or they never scanned it into the system in time. And getting benefits turned on again is a nightmare. It takes months to even get an email response from SSA in Paris.
