American Express once declared me dead. They did send a nice letter to my estate though.
At least I got them to comp me the annual fee for that year.
Chase reply: I’m sorry, but we have no corporate procedures for bring people back from the dead.
This happened to my mother! She has uncommon but (as it turns out) not altogether rare names, both first and last. So when her lazy a*s life insurance agent discovered a woman with the same first and last (but not middle) name in the obituaries one day, he reported her as dead to the life insurance company. Never bothered to do any real checking. Just assumed it was my mom.
I gotta tell ya, once the machinery is set in motion it is hard to reverse. A shocking number of parties have an interest in whether one is alive or dead, including the government. And the word gets around REAL fast. And once they figure that you’re dead, you might as well be dead.
My mom was beyond furious with her knucklehead life insurance agent and spent at least 6 months trying to set everything straight.
And yet ... It has made for a good story.
As if suing will bring her back to life. ;-)