DESPITE a 22-month wrangle by a widower to have his dead wife’s name removed from a phone bill, communications company EE has still not got the message.

The company assured Darlington resident Tony Siddle that they would remove his late wife’s name from his mobile phone bill after The Northern Echo highlighted his plight in early October.

Mr Siddle had been trying to have his late wife’s name, Sarah, replaced with his own after he took over her mobile phone contract when she died of cancer in December 2012.

He said that receiving monthly reminders in the form of EE bills addressed to Mrs Siddle was distressing for both him and his two sons and he repeatedly asked the company to remove her name from their records.

When The Northern Echo contacted EE in early October, a company spokesman said they would rectify the matter immediately.

However, Mr Siddle was upset to receive a text message from EE on his mobile phone this week addressed to Sarah.

He said: “It really is soul-destroying and I am at the end of my tether with it.

“I feel like I should just try and cancel the contract altogether, what else can I do?”

A spokeswoman from EE told The Northern Echo this week that the offending message had been in the system before the name change to Mr Siddle’s account.

She said: “We have looked into it and we can reassure Mr Siddle that the account has been fully updated.

“The text he received was already processing through the system before the update and he won’t receive any additional ones.”