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The story
Since mid-September, a bereaved family’s account of being told by NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, that “only the account holder can cancel” after their mother’s death has been making waves on social media. The original article detailed the cancellation procedure NHK actually disclosed. In the thread, reports of canceling with a single phone call after reporting the death sat alongside reports of drawn-out procedures requiring disposal of the TV receiver and proof of the death certificate, leading some to suggest that handling varies by staff member or branch office. There was also pointed skepticism about NHK’s system itself — using the Basic Resident Register to hunt down new contracts, but apparently not to flag deaths.
Mon, Oct 5, 7:00 AM
“Only the account holder can cancel.”
A bereaved family’s account of this response from NHK has been making waves on social media since mid-September.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
your subscriptions are probably going to be just as annoying for your family to cancel once you're dead.
You guys got any plan for that?
For the ones billed through your phone, does canceling the phone contract not take care of it too?
If you cancel the credit card, there's no way left to pay, so the company will end up contacting the family anyway.
For subscriptions, once the bank account gets inherited or the credit card gets canceled, there's no account to bill anymore, so it cancels itself automatically.
NHK's problem is just that "doesn't pay" never triggers a forced cancellation — that's what's so awful about it.
Debt collectors: "Dispose of assets and we won't let you renounce the inheritance."
If you renounce the inheritance, you don't inherit the viewing contract or its payment debt either, so it doesn't matter.
She's already dead, so it's not like she's going to watch it anymore anyway.
Somebody shut them down already.
Though if you own your home with a mortgage, apparently it's not that simple.
Just get rid of the TV.
so does that mean they wanted to use the contract holder's death as the reason to cancel, even though someone's still living there with a TV?
The duty to hold the viewing contract falls on whoever installed the receiving equipment, you see —
and that person has gone and died.
My dad chased them off once
so they don't come around anymore (´^ω^`)
We're out in the countryside, too
Everyone should just show up with the deceased's remains in hand.
Bring the memorial tablet along too, while you're at it.
Then just have the local government handle it, you idiots — isn't that what public service is for?
I'm cancelling mine while I'm still alive.
But if you're alive, I bet they'd just flip it around to "you can't cancel because you're alive."
Being alive = watching TV, in their logic.
Lying to stop someone from canceling is straight-up fraud.
Make some kind of NHK-exclusive B-CAS card (the decoder card used for Japanese digital TV).
Guess they get yelled at there all the time,
because they looked seriously braced for a fight, lol.
After I let NHK's paperwork slide for a while,
a postcard showed up saying that since the person the discount applied to had died, they'd now be charging the full regular rate.
Where are they even getting that information from?
That'd be the city office.
When you file the death certificate and go through the process of returning the disability certificate, the office probably notifies NHK that the discount ends.
Yeah, thinking about it that way, NHK really is outrageous.
So a few years down the line you get hit with a back-billed surcharge, and then even dragged to court over it?
Not even a shred of gratitude for having been a viewer.
NHK even knows when you've moved —
they check the Basic Resident Register for that —
but then claim they have no way of knowing someone died? Give me a break.
Re: #62
Checking the Basic Resident Register is for tracking down people who haven't signed a contract yet, so they can be made to sign one.
It's not there so the broadcaster can kindly notice a viewer died and cancel the contract out of courtesy.
They snoop through the register whenever it suits them,
absolute worst.
Right?
When my father died, I was able to cancel over the phone too.
I'd braced myself for a hassle, so it was almost anticlimactic.
They even offered condolences and thanked me for all the years under contract — it actually got me a little teary.
This was 7 years ago, in the Chugoku region.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
At the root of NHK’s response is the logic that the viewing contract is an obligation imposed on “whoever installs the receiving equipment,” meaning the contract holder’s death, by itself, isn’t treated as direct grounds for cancellation. What split the thread was that reports of quick, single-phone-call cancellations existed right alongside reports of drawn-out procedures demanding a death certificate and disposal of the receiver — suggesting practice may shift depending on the branch, the staff member, or the timing. There was also the point that NHK uses the Basic Resident Register to chase down new contracts from people who haven’t signed up, but apparently not to flag cancellations when someone dies — something readers can easily misread as “if they already have the information, they should just tell us,” when institutionally that data is actually being used for an entirely different purpose.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “‘Only the account holder can cancel’ — post about a deceased mother’s NHK subscription causes a stir… the ‘actual cancellation procedure’ NHK revealed.”
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