TIAA-CREF, a big financial services/retirement fund, recently sent out letters about an advisory vote. I got a letter because my late father left me part of his fund. I get mail from TIAA-CREF all the time, but this letter was special, because it was addressed not to me but to my estate.

“Estate of Susan McCarthy.” As if I were DEAD.

I wasn’t dead. I checked.

Reports of Mark Twain’s death were exaggerated. At one time.

But I was worried. Not because I’m superstitious, but because if a bureaucracy gets it into its files that you’re dead, it can apparently be surprisingly hard to get them to accept that you’re not.

Who cares what they think? Well, a St Louis woman—46 and not dead—sued her bank and the credit reporting company Equifax, because they persisted in calling her dead and would not let her refinance her mortgage or apply for a new credit card. Apparently her alleged deadness made her credit score drop. (Any zombie can tell you how unfair this is.)

Concorde says he’s not quite dead.

Kimberly Haman ended up filing suit after nearly a year elapsed and Heartland Bank and Equifax were still unable to wrap their tiny bureaucratic minds around Haman’s existence and find any way to correct their records.

See this letter from the bank, for example:

Dear Kimberly Haman,

We regret to inform you that we are unable to proceed with your loan as of today June 20, 2013. The reason for your denial is that your status from Equifax is reporting you as deceased.

Once this gets straighten out with the bureau we would like to have you re-apply for the extension of credit for a home loan, but at this time we are unable to offer you a program at this time.

(That’s not an apology at all, despite the token appearance of “regret.”)

Guy being carried is not dead yet, in fact might go for a walk.

Haman’s suit charges that Equifax and the bank violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by failing to investigate and fix the problem.

Haman’s not the only one. For example, Social Security makes this mistake about 14,000 times a year. It’s even worse than identity theft, because your accounts get shut down. You’ve been archived. So awkward.

So I foresaw possible trouble. Then I got another letter from TIAA-CREF:

Dear Participant:

We recently sent you voting information for the 2015 TIAA Advisory Vote. The salutation erroneously included the words “Estate of.” Please accept our apology for this error. Please note that this does not impact your ability to participate in the TIAA Advisory Vote using the information provided. We have identified the cause of the error and have made the appropriate changes to our system to ensure that this does not occur again. Thank you.

Sincerely,

TIAA-CREF

Zombies trying to clear up a bureaucratic misunderstanding.

That’s much better. They acknowledge the error, apologize, say they’ve figured out what went wrong and fixed it, all without my uttering a peep of complaint. Though I am sure that many others who got these letters did peep and peep mightily. That’s the difference here, I bet. Kimberly Haman was just one person whose existence was in doubt. TIAA CREF may have sent out as many as 3.9 million of these “Estate of” letters. Some of the recipients may be touchier than me on the subject of being Not Quite Dead Yet.