Going Postal: Man Receives 55,000 Letters From The Same Company
No one likes to receive a student loan statement in the mail, but as CNN reported on February 4, 2020, Dan Cain's family just might take the cake in this particular regard. Cain was just going about his day when suddenly, the mail arrived like the vengeance of several pantheons of gods from ancient religions. At first, all he received was a letter notifying him that he had a little something waiting for him at the Post Office. However, when he turned up to collect, said something turned out to be 79 bins of mail. Every single bin contained around 700 letters, and every single letter was a student loan statement. That's roughly 55,000 student loan statements in total. Ouch.
The situation raises a lot of increasingly confused questions. Why would anyone terrorize someone's existence with 55,000 letters? Why exactly 55,000? Why didn't the Postal Service take one look at the pallets of paper sent to the same guy and raise an eyebrow? Oh man, what if they were all legit letters and the dude actually managed to get 55,000 separate student loans somehow, and the company was now coming to collect? Talk about a nightmare.
A glitch of epic proportions
As CNN tells us, the events actually have a perfectly good explanation, even though it is a rather dumb one. The sender of the letters, College Avenue Student Loan Company, had merely tried to send the Cains a "statement for a student loan they took out for their daughter's tuition." However, thanks to what was clearly a pretty hefty glitch in their system, that single statement somehow morphed into well over 50,000. As for the mailman, the Postal Service did wonder about the situation, but as spokeswoman Naddia Dhalai commented, they were still "committed to providing the best customer service so every piece of mail we receive will be delivered to our customers."
As for Dan Cain, he remains in good spirits about the incident, and has been thinking about using his unsurprising letter barrage for a big old bonfire. However, he's still facing a potential extra twist to the tale: It turns out the College Avenue Student Loan Company made a mistake in the letters, and they're now sending him a corrected version with the accurate interest rate. It remains to be seen just how many letters the Cains receive this time, but Dan already has a plan should the barrage of letters repeat itself: "I might have to return to sender."