Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

[PenguinLife]

Ah the fun of dealing with big companies, a friend of mine was working for a regional cell phone company some years ago that was bought out and liquidated by one of the major national carriers. During the shutdown process there were wave after wave of layoffs, at one point his job was terminated and he was given a severance package, the next day he was called back in and asked to work for a couple of more weeks. During the time he was called back the entire HR department was terminated and HR of the few remaining employees was turned over to the new national parent company, after a couple of weeks he was terminated again and was again issued a severance package based on his X years of employment. Being a good guy he repeatedly reported to the parent company of their error with his duplicate severance and they refused to do anything about it as they did not have access to the records and accounts from the regional HR department, etc. Upon advice from his lawyer he deposited the duplicate severance in an interest bearing account, and waited X years before touching it.

[Corinda]

Same thing happened to me with some stock options....got a new car out of it...but never forget about KARMA. When I left my next job I thought I had 90 days to cash in my options and turns out....I only had 30 days...lost all of my options.

 

I honor and respect Karma now.

[piper28]

My travel agent is pursuing this with Princess too. She is pretty sure that Princess doesn't collect or save SSNs. She will try to find out what database the erroneous information is coming from and also wants Princess to train their phone reps to not imply that they have SSNs. She's one of their major accounts so her influence is much greater than mine.

 

Yeah, I thought the comment originally about checking Social Security roles seemed a little odd. I wouldn't think SSA would release that info to Princess, and I know *I've* never given Princess any social security info, and certainly wouldn't expect them to need it.

 

That said they probably do subscribe to some service by some company to help them keep their lists up to date, but they're not likely to tell you who it is.

[tomtravel23]

While not as severe as being expunged from Princess' records for being (prematurely) deceased, I keep running into a problem with my Princess profile information. For some reason, every so many months Princess changes my profile to say that I live in Richmond, Virginia. Not that I have any issue with Richmond, but I have lived in the same house in Michigan for the past fifteen years and have never lived in Virginia. So, I make it a point to check my profile every few months and grumble a bit each time I correct my address.

[nreeder]

Maureen and I are both happy you are still with us! Many happy cruises in your future. We will be on Trans Atlancic to the Baltic next April.

 

Norm

[shredie]

I used to get a warning from SSA about someone who was "impersonating" me, who turned out to be me. I never did find out what their problem was, but after I filled out a bunch of paperwork and appeared in person at their office, the warnings stopped. I told them I didn't care who got the benefits, me or me. :)

[LeeW]

As others have said, you have to fix this because it might be an indication of identity theft. Hope the fix sticks!

 

About 10 years back one of our credit cards (store brand) started showing up with a different first name. We would fix it, and then a few weeks later it would revert. Problem lasted for over a year. We got the bills, nothing unusual charged, just wrong name. Finally a customer service person killed off the weird name. That fixed the issue permanently. So if the first fix doesn't work be patient and try again.

[jsiegel]

I received a call from Princess Customer Service today (two weeks from my email). The representative said that I am not the only person who has been declared deceased while still alive. The Customer Service and the Captain's Circle departments have not been able to determine where the erroneous information is coming from but he assured me that it has nothing to do with social security numbers. He is bumping the problem up the chain to upper management. He was able to resolve the My Princess title problem and I'm back to being a Ms.

 

I have started receiving emails again from Princess but received a brochure in the mail today sent just to my husband. Guess their email versus paper marketing departments use a different version of the database?

 

Jackie

[elliair]

In June 2014 I returned from a Princess cruise and two weeks later had my travel agent try to book another cruise for me. She had trouble because Princess had me purged from the database as deceased. After several hours she was finally able to talk to a representative at Princess who was able to reinstate me. Once she explained what had happened I realized that must have been the reason that I had stopped receiving brochures from Princess. They had started coming to my home addressed just to my husband, not both of us.

 

 

I noticed recently that Princess brochures were again being addressed to just my husband.

 

I just called the Princess and the representative could not find me in his database. He checked with the Captain's Circle Desk representatives and they confirmed that I had been marked deceased again. The Captain's Circle representative reinstated me (again)

 

 

The phone representative said that Princess uses a service to purge the database using Social Security files or something. He was not able to find out the name of the service or company.

 

I'm a little concerned because it sounds like some sort of identity theft may be the problem with their supplier's database.

 

Has this happened to anyone else on these boards? Suggestions on how I should pursue this? I did send an email to Princess explaining what seems to be going on and asking for the name of the service company. I hope to take me seriously and respond.

 

Jackie

 

No that hasn't happened to us yet, but I've been getting brochures from Holland America addressed to my husband and a woman with a different name other than mine!:eek: I keep asking him who Ann is!:D

[martij6]

There's a web site (Legacy dot com) that allows you to search obituaries. It also provides a link to the Social Security Admin's listing of death records. No SS#'s necessary, just a name. Might be worth a look see to find out if someone with your name (or similar) that lived nearby passed away around the time this started. If Princess is accessing such records, it may explain what's been happening to you.

 

Joel

[erni]

Jackie - just glad to hear you are still alive and kicking.

May we cruise together against some day.

 

Sue & Ernie

Sacramento

[Cruz-OR]

We received a Princess mailer addressed to an elderly family who had died about a year earlier. Right above the name and address was a campaign slogan for their mailer. It read, "Come Alive in the Caribbean". For a very very brief moment we thought it might work if we dug ..........

[suntan]

After reading this thread I'm wondering if the problem is not with an outside organization wrongfully declaring the OP dead, or having addresses changed on the cruise personalizer, or other people's names appearing on mailings. I'm thinking this is sounding more like an internal problem at Princess - is someone there changing the information? I will be looking at my information on Princess' site to make sure it is correct.

[jsiegel]

Sue and Ernie: great to hear from you. Chances are we will end up on the same cruise together again. I retired so am no longer in downtown Sacramento.

 

Norm and Maureen: I sent you an email. Still at the att address?

 

Cruz-OR: tragically funny. Glad you were able to see humor in it. I would probably be very upset.

 

Suntan: What I was seeing on My Princess online was OK, it had my number of cruises and showed my future cruise deposits. What Princess told my agent was that since I was deceased all my records and deposits were gone. I'm glad they were able to restore them.

 

I checked the legacy website. I couldn't find my obituary, so who knows where Princess is getting there information from.

 

Jackie

[RocketMan275]

Jackie,

 

Just to be on the safe side, have you checked with a doctor? You might wish to make sure. You might be dead and just don't realize it.

[rdsqrl]

zombie alert!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Thrak]

They do say a second opinion can be imortant...

[generichandle]

When I read OP's first post, I immediately wondered if DH might have some plans she did not know about ........ :eek:

 

Doug ;)

[alreadypacked]

I would check your credit reports and medical insurance to see if there are any reports or insurance claims on your record that isn't yours. That will give you some idea as to whether or not you have an ID problem.

Perhaps there is a mix up of names in the Princess database. Someone else with your same name may have died and that is what is causing the problem.[/quote]

 

 

This would be my guess as well. My past guest file was regularly merged with the file of another passenger who had my exact same first and last name (Not even a very common name) who also resided in Florida.

 

This person had only cruised 2 or 3 times, unlike myself who cruised once a year or more. Every time I booked, I'd be on the phone forever straightening out my past guest record. Luckily, I keep all my "cruise cards". That made it easy to recite all of my past cruises for the cruise line rep who'd restore my cruise history. In the end, the only thing that stopped this "confusion" was taking my husband's last name when we married.

 

It seems the cruise lines employ some type of software that automatically deletes or merges what appears to be incorrect or duplicate passenger files.