Dead Poet Told to Pay Up

I can see how this would happen, but come on, this is funny:

Two notices were delivered by GEZ, a licence-collecting agency, which threatened to mount legal action against the literary hero, who is best known for his poem Ode to Joy, which was put to music by Beethoven, unless he quickly settled his monthly €17 (£14) bill.

They were sent to a primary school bearing Schiller's name in Weigsdorf-Köblitz, a town in the eastern state of Saxony.

The second came despite the school's headteacher sending the agency a letter informing them that "the addressee is no longer in a position to listen to the radio or watch television".

GEZ replied saying Schiller would only be exempt if he could prove he did not own television or radio sets.

After the confusion was settled, a spokesman for the agency apologised. "We have to deal with such a huge amount of data, that something like this can happen, and the name Friedrich Schiller is not so unusual that it stood out as strange," she told The Guardian. "We will now alter his status in our computer system."

Because as we all know, the computer is never wrong!

Comments

[gary dobbs AKA WESTERN WRITER JACK MARTIN]

I believe William Shakespeare is also facing a final demand for payment for two quills and a ye olde candy bar.

[The Wandering Reader]

Wow... that is really quite incredible. Like you said in your post, I can understand how this would happen, but still... you would think that after the company recieved the letter from the headmaster that they would have checked the records more carefully. But alas, it all comes down to money these days...

Thanks for the interesting post!

- The Wandering Reader