Man gets 55,000 duplicate letters from student loan company

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/04/couple-receives-55000-duplica.html

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That’s 55,000 chances to say “fu#k you”, I’ll take it.

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55,001st time’s the charm?

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Who makes this kind of mistake? Obviously as Iowa proves, it’s computers or more likely the programmers.

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Seems odd no one in the outgoing mail department at the student loan company would have noticed the issue unless, of course, they have completely automated that part of the process.

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The should deduct the cost of 54999 letters and postage from the loan

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Thought #1: 55,000 at maybe $0.75 a piece (printing & post), that’s $41,250. Wouldn’t it have been nice if they just applied that to the student loan instead?

Thought #2: This may mean there’s at least 55,000 student loans out there from this company. That’s damn sobering.

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Very similar to this from a few months ago: Woman got 500 letters from healthcare company in 5 days [VIDEO] - Boing Boing

Why did nobody at the post office tell him that was an option before he made two trips? Oh right, because post office.

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I thought about the cost, but realized I’m sure they send it bulk mail. That’s only $.186/piece, so $10,230 in postage. I don’t know what it costs per piece to print and stuff it in an envelope, but at those kind of quantities it’s pretty dang cheap. I still think they probably spent at least $20k on this little glitch. I’m sure he’d rather have that applied to his account than sitting in his living room floor.

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Time to refinance that student loan elsewhere, immediately, as I would never be able to trust that company to be processing my payments correctly ever again.

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Behold, the multiplicative power of incompetence!

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Nah, they just played their hand too early. He’ll still get 55k letters over the course of the loan.

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Postage alone:
Full-service Barcoded Mailings:*
150 pieces or more to the same 5-digit zip: $0.2300

$0.23 x 55,000 = $‭12,650‬ just for the postage

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So the predatory company spent $15K+ of their own money AND they are going to give him a statement credit for the inconvenience? Sounds like as close to a win/win as one gets with student loans.

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“Hey, how much does this guy owe and how many notices should we send?”
“55,000”

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The company apologized for the error and is working to correct it by sending 55,000 copies of the statement reflecting the correct amount.

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Oh it’s all fun and games until the Accounts Receivables software sends him 55,000 notices that he’s behind on the 55,000 payments he owes and demands that he send them 55,000 checks, one in each return envelopes they’ve enclosed, or they’ll send each of them to collections.

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Because overworked, underpaid workers.

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Were these bills from Trump University?

Or they have so many student loans that 55,000 dups were lost in the flow.