Academic

Thanks for nothing (almost), or when form generated letters sound silly

By Tung Yin

I got this letter in the mail today from Caltech -- the palace of horrors where I suffered four years in exchange for a B.S. degree:

The bold-face text is in the original.  And it's entirely true, the last donation that I made to Caltech was 21 years ago!  And although the letter says $1, I actually sent only 1 cent -- in a postage pre-paid envelope, of course.  The alumni office person who opened my envelope sent me back a letter saying that he spent months trying to figure out what to do with my "contribution" and finally decided to kick in 99 cents to bring it up to $1 in my name.  He also said that he would take my name off future mailings.

And for a while, I did not get any solicitations from Caltech.  Several address changes later, from Los Angeles to Berkeley back to Los Angeles to Oklahoma City to San Diego back to Los Angeles to Iowa City, the Caltech Alumni Association found me again.  And then followed me here to Oregon.

But come on, it sounds a little absurd to send an alum a letter thanking him for a $1 contribution made 21 years ago.  I realize this is probably the result of a mail merge, but it goes to show the limitations of such complete form generated letters.  Some sort of filter would probably be a desirable addition to stop wasting the institution's money.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on August 17, 2010 (boomark / email).