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On Thanksgiving Day, Ellis had cuddled up with her sleeping cat on the couch to send holiday greetings to friends. There in her inbox, lurking between several well wishes, was an email from an unrecognized sender with the subject line, Final Account Statement. Upon opening it, she read the following:
Dear Ellis,
Your final account statement dated -1 has been sent to you. Please log into your portal and review your balance due totaling #TOTAL_CHARGES#.
Payment must be received within 30 days of this notice to avoid collection. You may submit payment online via [Payment Portal Link] or by mail to:
Chamberlin Apartments
123 Main Street
Anytown US 12345If you believe there is an error on your account, please contact us immediately at 212-555-1212.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Chamberlin Apartments
Ellis had indeed rented an apartment managed by this company, but had moved out 16 years earlier. She'd never been late with a payment for anything in her life. What a time to receive such a thing, at the start of a long holiday weekend when no one would be able to do anything about it for the next 4 days!
She truly had so much to be grateful for that Thanksgiving, and here was yet more for her list: her broad technical knowledge, her experience working in multiple IT domains, and her many years of writing up just these sorts of stories for The Daily WTF. All of this added up to her laughing instead of panicking. She could just imagine the poor intern who'd hit "Send" by mistake. She also imagined she wasn't the only person who'd received this message. Rightfully scared and angry callers would soon be hammering that phone number, and Ellis was further grateful that she wasn't the one who had to pick up.
"I'll wait for the apology email!" she said out loud with a knowing smile on her face, closing out the browser tab.
Ellis moved on physically and mentally, going forward with her planned Thanksgiving festivities without giving it another thought. The next morning, she checked her inbox with curious anticipation. Had there been a retraction, a please disregard?
No. Instead, there were still more emails from the same sender. The second, sent 7 hours after the first, bore the subject line Second Notice - Outstanding Final Balance:
Dear Ellis,
Our records show that your final balance of #TOTAL_CHARGES# from your residency at your previous residence remains unpaid.
This is your second notice. Please remit payment in full or contact us to discuss the balance to prevent your account from being sent to collections.
Failure to resolve the balance within the next 15 days may result in your account being referred to a third-party collections agency, which could impact your credit rating.
To make payment or discuss your account, please contact us at 212-555-1212 or [email protected].
Sincerely,
Chamberlin Apartments
The third, sent 6 and a half hours later, threatened Final Notice - Account Will Be Sent to Collections.
Dear Ellis,
Despite previous notices, your final account balance remains unpaid.
This email serves as final notice before your account is forwarded to a third-party collections agency for recovery. Once transferred, we will no longer be able to accept payment directly or discuss the account.
To prevent this, payment of #TOTAL_CHARGES# must be paid in full by #CRITICALDATE#.
Please submit payment immediately. Please contact 212-555-1212 to confirm your payment.
Sincerely,
Chamberlin Apartments
It was almost certainly a mistake, but still rather spooky to someone who'd never been in such a situation. There was solace in the thought that, if they really did try to force Ellis to pay #TOTAL_CHARGES# on the basis of these messages, anyone would find it absurd that all 3 notices were sent mere hours apart, on a holiday no less. The first two had also mentioned 30 and 15 days to pay up, respectively.
Suddenly remembering that she probably wasn't the only recipient of these obvious form emails, Ellis thought to check her local subreddit. Sure enough, there was already a post revealing the range of panic and bewilderment they had wrought among hundreds, if not thousands. Current and more recent former tenants had actually seen #TOTAL_CHARGES# populated with the correct amount of monthly rent. People feared everything from phishing attempts to security breaches.
It wasn't until later that afternoon that Ellis finally received the anticipated mea culpa:
We are reaching out to sincerely apologize for the incorrect collection emails you received. These messages were sent in error due to a system malfunction that released draft messages to our entire database.
Please be assured of the following:
The recent emails do not reflect your actual account status.
If your account does have an outstanding balance, that status has not changed, and you would have already received direct and accurate communication from our office.
Please disregard all three messages sent in error. They do not require any action from you.We understand that receiving these messages, especially over a holiday, was upsetting and confusing, and we are truly sorry for the stress this caused. The issue has now been fully resolved, and our team has worked with our software provider to stop all queued messages and ensure this does not happen again.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email [email protected]. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
All's well that ends well. Ellis thanked the software provider's "system malfunction," whoever or whatever it may've been, that had granted the rest of us a bit of holiday magic to take forward for all time.