In response to several missing checks that may have been lost in the mail, the Bursar’s Office of the University of Wisconsin sent out an e-mail to affected students this week.
The e-mail was received by students who were printed a tuition refund check dated Aug. 28 but had not yet deposited the check.
Affected students now have the option of stopping payment on the check if they haven’t received it yet.
Bursar Cathie Easter said the students can reply directly to the e-mail to have their check reprinted and mailed.
“This way they don’t have to sit and go ‘Gosh, I gotta call the Bursar’s Office,'” Easter said. “It gives them a way of turning it around more quickly so we can get them their money.”
The e-mail also informed students they could take out a no-interest loan from the Bursar’s Office. The money will be taken out of the student’s reprinted check.
The checks will be printed by the same Milwaukee-based company as the originals, since it is the fastest way for the Bursar’s Office to get the checks out.
“We’ve been working with the company for years, and this is the first problem,” Easter said. “We’ve documented the company did everything they should have.”
Marge Oklae, spokesperson for the United States Postal Service’s Lakeland district in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said her office has done “everything humanly possible” to find the missing checks.
She added that if any of the first three digits in the zip code were incorrectly labeled, the letters could have easily ended up in another state.
“We’ve searched all of our facilities everywhere from the point of the mailing through the entire chain of potential locations where it could have ended up in within the Lakeland district,” Oklae said.
USPS rarely misplaces items, Oklae said.
“It’s just a very unusual circumstance that it even happened, in light of our tremendous customer satisfaction rating,” Oklae said. “And we ourselves would like to find out ultimately what’s happened to this mailing.”
Easter added this is the first time her office has had a problem with USPS, and the post office has sped up its search process in recent days.
UW Division of University Housing has been informed of the issue and will extend deadlines for the first payment as needed.
