Front Page · Loyalty Desk
Dead Man Reaches Highest Loyalty Tier, Company Calls Him A Model Customer
Four months after the funeral, his subscriptions are not just active. They are thriving.
A family spent four months arguing about a password, and nobody had it. The man who did was dead.
On a scale of one to ten," the survey asked him, "how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?
Nothing was cancelled, because admitting you had the password felt worse than the bill itself. So the bill kept coming.
In month four, somebody finally logged in, hoping to save some money, and found an email waiting instead. "We miss you," it said, with money off his next order, addressed to him by first name. He forwarded it to the family chat. Nobody wrote his name.
His account had never missed a payment, never once complained, and never asked for a refund. The company had quietly noted all three.
Cancelling everything took longer than anyone expected, because there were more accounts than anyone had guessed. One was a monthly subscription for erectile dysfunction pills, delivered quietly to the house, more than once since the funeral. Nobody opened the boxes, but somebody still had to sign for them. A renewal reminder followed within days, praising his "consistency" and offering a loyalty reward for staying on track. He had never missed a dose.
A data team noticed him anyway, and his account was given a re-engagement score. It came back as "low activity, high value," and a retention email went out offering a discount for "coming back." He had never left.
A loyalty tier notice followed, warning that Gold status was under review. Nobody logged in to save it.
A satisfaction survey followed a week later, asking what the company could have done differently. It asked, on a scale of one to ten, how likely he was to recommend the service to a friend. Both questions went unanswered. The system logged that as a ten.
An internal report, seen by this newspaper, ranks dead customers as the company's best-performing group. They never cancel, never complain, and never ask for a refund. "We would like more customers like him," a retention analyst said, and did not elaborate.
This newspaper's own subscriber list was checked against the same report. Several of our longest subscribers turned out to be dead. None had ever written in to complain. We have listed them as highly engaged. Advertisers seem pleased.