Why does the post office care where you mail a letter?

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

This is actually about a business situation.

I "am familiar with" a company who had wanted to mail a large in another state, and was going to get a mailing permit so that they didn't have to "real postage," and didn't have to show an out-of-state postmark.

Someone jokingly mentioned, "Well, why don't we just print it in (this border town), and carry it across the river to mail it?" To which, one person responded, "It's against postal regulations to transport mail (even mail that has not been "stamped") across state lines to mail it."

We're one big happy country, so why is it a deal?

[Mersavets]

God you have some stupid laws in America. In Australia, we'd take the people that made those stupid laws and we'd boot 'em. Yep! Boot 'em real good! D

[Xerxes]

Forgive me if I've mis-understood the following:

It's against postal regulations to transport mail (even mail that has not been "stamped") across state lines to mail it

Is this mail which you (or in this case 'the company you are familiar with') wrote/originated?

This seems - if I've understood this - a bit nonsensical.

[Mangetout]

Eh?

Have I missed something here?

So you write a letter in one location and decide to mail it in another location, which happens to be across an internal border and that's illegal?

strrrrrrange!
how would that be enforceable anyway?

[minty green]

"It's against postal regulations to transport mail (even mail that has not been "stamped") across state lines to mail it."

Cite, please. I've never heard of that before, and, all due respect to your colleague, I ain't buyin' it.

[kanicbird]

This is illegal?
Sometimes I may have took mail w/ me when I when on vacation out of state and might have mailed it when I got there. I might have done this because the mail I might be talking about might have been bills which the money for those bills is better sitting in my account then the bill collectors.

I frequently bring the mail with me on the train to work but that doesn't cross state lines.

[RealityChuck]

I seriously doubt there's any such law. Not only is silly, but it's unenforeceable. There aren't any check stations when you cross a state border, and I've never had the post office check my home address.

[Patty O'Furniture]

So I compose a letter in DC, drive 20 minutes to mom's house in MD and mail it - that's a violation of some sort of postal regulation? What do I have to do in order to comply with regulations? What if I don't address the envelope until after I cross the MD border? Or do I just have to wait and apply the stamp only when I'm in the state that the letters will be mailed from? How about if I write 50% of the letter in DC and the other half in MD? Maybe if I write the letter without intent to mail it, then find myself in another state & decide to mail it after all?

How about if I carry the letter, envelope & stamp in different containers, and don't assemble them into a proper piece of mail until I'm in the next state?

[Kaje]

Originally posted by Attrayant
How about if I carry the letter, envelope & stamp in different containers, and don't assemble them into a proper piece of mail until I'm in the next state?

Not a chance, the letter sniffing dogs can smell an out of state letter a mile away

The only thing that works in my experience, is you take the letter, wad it up and stick in a balloon, swallow the balloon and pass it once you reach the desired state... however this can be risky as the balloon can rupture inside your stomach en-route causing severe internal paper cuts

[Annie-Xmas]

Well, you might as well come arrest me now. All the letters and yes, even packages, I've assembled in New Jersey, and then blindly taken on the bus to mail them when I reach my destination so people can get the cool New York City post mark.

How could I have been so stupid?

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

A mailing of about 10,000 statements per day, first class mail. Someone in our meeting said that it was illegal to transport them across state lines to mail, but did not offer a cite.

If there is such a regulation/law, I doubt that intended targets are individuals, but who knows. . .

[wring]

actually, you can even mail something to a postmaster for them to resend it with that postmark (there's a city named "Christmas" that does a bang up business every December for that, and IIRC, Hell MI will also do that). So I doubt that there's any law about that at all. (although, perhaps what might be going on is if there was a bulk mailing rate applied, there may be some special handling requirement)

[TheLoadedDog]

I'm a postal worker. OK, I'm an Australian postal worker, but I can give a rather bizarre angle on the US situation. At the mail facility where I work, we get a lot of business mail from US companies (with US return addresses) which has been posted in bulk IN THE NETHERLANDS!!! So mailing across state lines ain't nuffin'. As well as the US/Netherlands thing, the posting of bulk mail in other countries comes in many other combinations. As other posters have pointed out, the law described in the OP is stupid and unenforceable. Ignore it.

[Friday]

What is probably illegal is to put a return address on your package that is out of the area. If a package that has insufficient postage is sent back to the return address, then you can get free mailing by putting the actual address as the return address.

Just my $.02. (still not enough to mail a postcard).

[NotMrKnowItAll]

Forgive me, I did not pick my username at random. But, it is conceivable that some sort of regulation exists to prevent competition in interstate mail transport. Did not some regulation get relaxed to allow the existence of Federal Express, DHL, and UPS? I vaguely remember that. A scenario supporting the supposed regulation that comes to mind is imagine 40 years ago, you own an airline, and make daily flights from L.A. to N.Y. You offer, for a fee, to transport letters to and from, with the letters dropped off at the main post office at the destination. This would cut out and airmail revenues the P.O. could realize in this situation. But even here, the spirit of the regulation would be to eliminate competition, not to prevent the creation and the posting of mail to occur in differing states(think about printing companies and possible contracts with out-of-state clients).

Just a guess, I was completely unable to download regulations containing the word /interstate/ from http://www.usps.gov

[Duck Duck Goose]

Nice to see you picked a good accurate user name.


No, AFAIK there's no law against taking stamped mail across state lines to mail it, that is, mail with actual stamps on it. However, postage meter mail and bulk rate mail are different. Mjollnir, if the mailing you are talking about was metered mail, then yeah, you're not supposed to take it anywhere other than local.

I'm assuming you're talking about a mass mailing, which would be standard/bulk rate? You can't just "carry it [a bulk rate mailing] across the river and mail it." It has to do with how postage meters and mailing permits work.

http://new.usps.com/cgi-bin/uspsbv/s...ing101&D=17519

Classes of Mail: Standard Mail

Minimum Weight: None

Maximum Weight: 15.9999 ounces (less than 1 pound)

Minimum Quantity: 200 pieces or 50 pounds of mail

Standard Mail is mail matter not required to be mailed as First-Class Mail or Periodicals. Lower nonprofit rates are available for Standard Mail but require specific authorization.

Mailers use Standard Mail to send:

Printed matter, flyers, circulars, advertising.
Newsletters, bulletins, and catalogs.
Small parcels.

All Standard Mail rates are bulk rates, and each mailing must meet a minimum quantity of 200 pieces or 50 pounds of mail. There are no single-piece Standard Mail rates. In Standard Mail, there are rates for letters and flats/nonletters. Unlike First-Class Mail, there is no separate Standard Mail card rate (cards are mailed as letters or flats/nonletters). Standard Mail parcels (for instance, a small merchandise sample) are charged a residual shape surcharge.

http://new.usps.com/cgi-bin/uspsbv/s...ing101&D=17441

What are Bulk Rates?

The Postal Service offers discounts for bulk mailings because you do some of the work that otherwise would have to be done by the Postal Service (for example, sorting the mail by ZIP Code or transporting the mail to a different postal facility). Everyone benefits from this "worksharing." Mailers make an investment in time and technology, and the Postal Service’s costs are reduced and you pay less postage.

In order to mail at bulk rates, you need to:

Get a mailing permit (permission to mail) and pay an annual mailing fee.
Pay postage using one of several very convenient methods: precanceled stamps, postage meter, or permit imprint.
Make smart choices about the size, shape, and weight of your mailpiece.
Ensure that your addresses are accurate.
Presort the mailpieces (separate or sort your mail by ZIP Codes).
Take your mail to the post office where you hold your mailing permit.

So, when you're doing a bulk rate mailing (and I'm including Standard mail in this):

YOU--get the mailing permit at the postmark of your choice.
YOU--charge up the postage meter.
YOU--run the envelopes through the meter.
And YOU--take it down to the Post Office where you hold your mailing permit.

There's no such thing as taking unstamped or unmetered bulk rate/standard mail somewhere else to "get a good postmark". No Post Office will accept unstamped/unmetered bulk rate mail, period. And if you just dump it in a mailbox, you get in big trouble.

Now, of course, if you wanna take unstamped pieces of mail across the river to New York, and sit there in the Post Office lobby and peel and stick stamps, and then mail it, AFAIK there's no law against that. Be my guest.

However, I will run this past the Better Half when he gets home from lunch. But I doubt it. Otherwise, everybody who wrote postcards from their vacation and forgot to mail them until after they got home would be liable to Federal legal action.

And P.S. to Friday, yeah, not only is what you suggest "probably" illegal, it is also "definitely" illegal, it constitutes Mail Fraud, and will get you 5 to 10 in the Federal pokey.

[Duck Duck Goose]

P.S. Mjollnir, if it's 10,000 pieces a day, every day, it probably isn't "First Class", it's probably a bulk rate/standard permit.

[Kaje]

Originally posted by Friday
What is probably illegal is to put a return address on your package that is out of the area. If a package that has insufficient postage is sent back to the return address, then you can get free mailing by putting the actual address as the return address.

that's a hot idea... i wonder how they would catch you for something like that... i'll have to try it one of these days

[TheLoadedDog]

If the US situation is anything like the Australian one, then NotMrKnowItAll is on the money. In Australia (and possibly the US), an individual can post a letter to the next suburb or to the other side of the continent for the same rate. Companies, on the other hand, can receive all sorts of discounts on their mail depending on distance (and also whether or not the company has "presorted" the mail by area or postcode -less work for the post office). There is a law here which states that a bulk lodgement of mail must be made at the nearest designated facility to the company doing the mailout. This is to stop, for example, a company in Sydney posting its Sydney mail normally, and sending its Melbourne mail privately by the thousands in a cardboard box to a contact in Melbourne who would mail it there at the local rate. I still think it's hard to enforce though.

[screech-owl]

[screeching halt]

Originally posted by wring
...(there's a city named "Christmas" that does a bang up business every December for that...

Yup, Christmas, Florida, just east of Orlando gets more than 25,000 letters annually in Novemeber just for the Christmas postmark, and according to the woman I spoke to at the post office, in December 2000 alone, they received and posted out more than 300,000 letters, not including packages.

If any of the Teeming Millions wants to add to their numbers, bundle up your stamped mail in a package addressed to

Postmaster
Christmas, FL 32709

and they will postmark it and mail it from there.

In addition, they have a staff (husband and wife) who answer all the letters sent there written to Santa Claus - in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, they received more than 500 Santa letters from children in the former Eastern European bloc.

As well, Kissimmee (Kiss-i-mee), Florida (34741) gets innundated before every Valentine's Day.

Just thought I'd share a bit o'trivia for the day.

[/screeching halt]

[Spitzoli]

As well, Kissimmee (Kiss-i-mee), Florida (34741) gets innundated before every Valentine's Day.

Except that it's pronounced Kih-SIM-ee...

[screech-owl]

Trust me, I know that (I live there).

I broke it up into the way the tourists and people who think it's a big joke pronounce it - "It's Kis-SIM- me by day, and KISSA-ME by night" - gets really old, really fast.

Which is why the post office gets swamped in February (my letter carrier told me they get about 30 mailbags daily in early February (the other post office (the larger one gets much more 'to be postmarked here' mail).

[andrew dupont]

If any of the Teeming Millions wants to add to their numbers, bundle up your stamped mail in a package addressed to...

WHOA! Reading this topic (and specifically this post) has reminded me of another arcane mail law (sorry I don't have a cite)--that it's ordinarily against the rules to mail a bunch of letters en masse to one location. Why? the post office would make more money if you mailed each one separately, I suppose. Of course, I might be wrong. But I know I've heard that somewhere.

I really wouldn't worry about postal laws, though...
[boring anecdote]
My aunt (father's sister), who owns a private post office (a la Mail Boxes Etc.), once had my grandfather (mother's father) come in to her shop wanting to ship a gift to a friend. As standard protocol, the return address HAS to be from the shop and not the person sending, so she was about to cover up his return address when he expressed his displeasure, saying that without the return address the recipient wouldn't know who sent him the gift. When asked why there wasn't a note in the box, my grandfather replied with some obscure rule about the post office not wanting people to put letters in packages, or something like that...he ended up taking the package to a "real" post office. This is the kind of thing that happens when you take postal "laws" too seriously.
[/boring anecdote]

[screech-owl]

Originally posted by andrew dupont
...WHOA! Reading this topic (and specifically this post) has reminded me of another arcane mail law (sorry I don't have a cite)--that it's ordinarily against the rules to mail a bunch of letters en masse to one location....

I don't see anything regarding that in the USPS website - perhaps DDG's Better Half can clarify. I'm sure they don't care as long as it has sufficient postage and you are not trying to defraud the USPS.

There are all sorts of 'laws' people create - my mother told me once it was illegal to put a stamp on the envelope upside-down.

[lestrange]

Originally posted by Kaje

that's a hot idea... i wonder how they would catch you for something like that... i'll have to try it one of these days

Well, when you're bulk mailing this doesn't work. If you want mail returned to you (or whatever the return address is) if it's undeliverable, you have to put "Address Service Requested" under the return address, and each returned piece can cost you $0.18 and up, depending on the weight of the piece. For bulk mail, this is more expensive than the actual mailing, which usually costs about $0.10-$0.15 a piece (at least with the mailings I do). And postage is paid on every single piece right up front at the Bulk Mail Entry Unit, or they won't take your mail.

With regular mail, I'm not sure how well it would work--it would depend on how reliably mail would be "returned." The only time I had a regular first class letter returned, it was months after I sent it. Returned bulk mail has on occasion taken six months to get back to me. And I'm not at all certain the PO returns every undeliverable first class mail piece to the return address, let alone pieces with no postage and an obviously out of area RA. So this isn't exactly the quickest, most foolproof way to get free postage. But I'm not sure how they'd catch you if you decided to make a habit of it. Hey, try it and see what happens. The USPS has done weirder things, you never know what might happen.

[Duck Duck Goose]

Okay, I went upstairs and interrupted the Better Half in his important Pen Computing magazine reading. He says:

The rule about not putting letters inside packages applies to bulk rate mass mailings of packages, like soap samples. If you're working in the office that's sending out these bulk rate mailings (actually it's standard or periodical rate), and you happen to see that one is addressed to your mom or your cousin, you're not allowed to slip a letter in there. Nothing of a personal nature is allowed to go inside standard/bulk rate/periodical mass mailings. Companies aren't allowed to send invoices, for example, inside bulk rate mass mailings.

And he says yes, if you want to send a whole bunch of letters postmarked "Hell, Michigan" or "Santa Claus, Indiana", you just send the whole bundle, with postage on them, to the Postmaster of whatever post office, and they will hand-cancel them for you.

Originally posted by Kaje

that's a hot idea... i wonder how they would catch you for something like that... i'll have to try it one of these days

What happens is, people who do this rarely do it only once. They tend to do it over and over again, sending it to the same person each time (the letter to Mom, etc.) The most common variation involves leaving the stamp off, so it's Returned To Sender For Insufficient Postage. Eventually the letter carrier at the other end notices. Letter carriers are not stupid. He doesn't think, "Gee, here's another letter Returned to Sender. Mom's Alzheimer's must be worse." He thinks, "Hmm," and he calls the Postal Inspectors. They come to your house. You end up spending the next 5 to 10 in the federal pokey. And all to save 34 cents on postage. Do not try it, no matter what Lestrange says.

[Duck Duck Goose]

Oops, left out: But if you're sending a CARE package to your kid at college, you may certainly stick a letter in there. And actually, the Post Office wishes you would, because it makes it easier for them to deliver the package when the label you didn't glue on there properly falls off.

[AWB]

Originally posted by Friday
What is probably illegal is to put a return address on your package that is out of the area. If a package that has insufficient postage is sent back to the return address, then you can get free mailing by putting the actual address as the return address.

I once noticed that the supplied envelope for a bill I was paying had not only a window for the mailing address to appear through, but that same address was pre-printed in the upper-left corner as the return address. (The "real" [i.e., my] return address was given blank lines on the envelope flap.) Before I mailed it, I asked a postal employee at the Post Office about it. He simply said they did that in case I forgot postage, so that it would be "returned" to them, and they'd still get their payment. I asked, "Isn't that illegal?" He just shrugged.

[Jois]

Originally posted by Mjollnir
This is actually about a business situation.

I "am familiar with" a company who had wanted to mail a large in another state, and was going to get a mailing permit so that they didn't have to "real postage," and didn't have to show an out-of-state postmark.

So far so good on the answers to this thread, but I still have reservations about the OP above. Most large mailings, bulk rate mailings, are not postmarked but have the postage printed on, often in the form of a small box saying something like "Bulk rate paid blah, blah, blah."

If you get a mail house to put real bulk rate stamps on envelopes, they still aren't postmarked (cancelled), these stamps can't be used except in bulk mailings so there is no need to mark them as cancelled.

It seems to me that they would just leave off their return address and have the item mailed right from their regular post office and be fine.

Jois

[weeds]

Some years back when it was the Post Office Dept., Bell telephone would use its scheduled maintenance trucks to take their checks from Detroit to Flint, after a few years the P.O. calculated that Bell wasn't mailing as much as it should. They took Bell to court and made them mail the checks. Now none of the checks ever went outside of Bells organization, but that didn't make any difference. Of course we now have the internet & U.S.P.S. so the rules probably changed.

[screech-owl]

Originally posted by weeds
....Of course we now have the internet & U.S.P.S. so the rules probably changed.

U.S.P.S. = post office (United States Postal Service)
Did you mean U.P.S. (United Parcel Service)?

{And welcome to the boards, if you haven't been already!)

[lestrange]

originally posted by Duck Duck Goose:


[/b][/quote]
They come to your house. You end up spending the next 5 to 10 in the federal pokey. And all to save 34 cents on postage. Do not try it, no matter what Lestrange says.

[/b][/quote]

Awwwww, Duck,you're no fun.

Do it anyway, Kaje, I dare ya! C'mon, it'll be fun! They'll never catch you!

(No, sir, I swear I had nothing to do with it. I begged Kaje not to do it, it'd be flouting the God given laws of this great country, I said, and you don't want to do that. That would be immoral. But Kaje just laughed. I swear, that blood-curdling laugh will echo in my soul until my dying day. My mother always told me Kaje was bad news, but I didn't know how bad until that awful moment. Me, I'm completely innocent.)

[weeds]

[quote]Originally posted by screech-owl
[b]

Originally posted by weeds
....Of course we now have the internet & U.S.P.S. so the rules probably changed.

U.S.P.S. = post office (United States Postal Service)
Did you mean U.P.S. (United Parcel Service)?
sorry I didn't make that clear, it was the U.S. Post Office Department a part of the cabinet, now it's the U.S. Postal Service an entity that is neither public or private, some of the former monopoly rules changed, and with the internet a company can make up the check in one place and print the checks anywhere. I don't know what the rule is now but before even internal company mail was subject to a postage bill, although I think that only applied to mail outside the P.O. area usually another city, it wouldn't apply to mail in the same building. We used to have a pretty strong monopoly.