Chandigarh, Sept 25: A Life Insurance Corporation branch in Punjab sent out 3000 reminders for due premium payment to a policy-holder, incurring a postage cost of Rs 15,000 in the process. Narender Kumar, the policy-holder, said LIC's Mohali office had been flooding him with hundreds of reminders daily for the last six days. He now has several large bundles of LIC letters stacked up in his house. "I received nearly 3000 mailers during the past six days from LIC. The postman has been delivering hundreds of reminders from LIC everyday," says Kumar, who works at a shop here. LIC officials said on condition of anonymity that a computer glitch might have triggered the mailing madness. Asked why the error had not been detected when bundles of mail were being sent to a single address, an official said, "We have a mass mailing arrangement with the Post and Telegraph Department. LIC is looking into the matter, which has been referred to our IT branch to see what went wrong". "A single mail costs the organisation Rs 5. So the cost of sending 3000 reminders works out to Rs 15,000," said an official.
Narender Kumar had purchased his LIC policy worth Rs 50,000 last year with a quarterly premium of Rs 592.
Kumar said that he paid his premiums on time and had cleared the last one in August.
Bureau Report