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The advent of technology that allows for the generation and mailing of identicalpieces of correspondence to multiple recipients, with everything but a few specific pieces of information (e.g., name, address, salutation) reproduced from a template, has also allowed for the large-scale commission of some embarrassing slip-ups (either through accident or sabotage). One of the more legendary (if apocryphal) tales of this nature holds that a bank sent a mass-mailing to thousands of its best (i.e., richest) customers, each one headed with the salutation Dear Rich Bastard. And automated or otherwise, the practice of periodically sending mail (such as Christmas cards) to persons with whom the correspondent is not in regular contact carries the potential for creating incidents both embarrassing and hurtful, as British MP Michael Brown noted in 2003: All of these elements sadly came into play in January 2005, when a 15-year-old Sydney, Australia, boy whose mother had died suddenly fifteen months earlier received a back-to-school check from the state government addressed to Mrs Passed Away. The Sydney Daily Telegraph described the unfortunate family's reaction: The family received apologies from Director General of Education Dr. Andrew Cappie-Wood and Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt, but they failed to mollify the teen's grieving father, who proclaimed: The letter has Bob Carr big-noting himself. I want an apology from him. Follow-up news accounts indicated that New South Wales premier Bob Carr initially said he would not be issuing a personal apology because he did not address the letter, but in the end Mr. Carr did extend an apology (personal or otherwise): A similar snafu occurred in December 2008, when the U.S. Army issued an apology for sending relatives of soldiers killed overseas letters that addressed them with a rather impersonal salutation:
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