I have been wondering for quite some time now just what would happen if you were to mail something by putting a fake mailing address in the middle of an envelope and the real mailing address in the corner (reserved for the return address) and then casually “forgetting” to place a stamp on the envelope prior to tossing it into the nearest U.S. mail bin. I assume that it is also quite illegal, and would care to know just how one could be caught in the act of free postage. If you were caught, would you be punished harshly?
As I understand it, the P.O. will neither deliver nor return mail that has no postage. I have heard of people putting the intended addressee’s address in both places and putting on a one-cent stamp. The recipient must pay the missing postage. If he choses not to pay, the letter is destroyed. That’s how I heard it.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
That did work up until about twenty years ago. I know, I tried it. For fun only. Really now, postage is cheap and we haven’t quite become a nation of thieves yet, have we? Well, USPS wised up to it, and I believe things stand pretty much as biblio described.
This devious method was outlined in one of the books in the ‘Big Secrets’ series (Big Secrets, Bigger Secrets, Biggest Secrets), all by William Poundstone. That series is a very interesting one. It gives info on things that are either very hard or impossible to research yourself, making it a valuable, if dated in places, reference book. I’m not surprised that the USPS wised up to it since it’s publication. At least the books say that blue boxing no longer works. Blue boxing, now there was an interesting pursuit. Sending a certain tone down the phone line after calling an 800 number would allow you to secretly stay on the line to the number without Ma Bell knowing, letting you call another number using the 800 number’s phone system. The call was free to you, allowing you to make a few friends in Australia. Thing is, the tone was far from secret. The cereal Cap’n’ Crunch gave away a whistle that hit it dead on. A blind boy with perfect pitch could whistle it. And one line of BASIC on your Commodore 64 (this was in the 70s, remember) would produce it perfectly. I’m sure plenty of fone phreakers had plenty of phun with that little gag. Until the phone companies wised up, that is. And now Ma Bell’s dead, ending a chapter in illicit fun forever.
“We can imagine no reason why, with ordinary care, human toes could not be left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found . . . it seems to us that somebody has been very careless.” Pillars v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 78 So. 365, 366.
Hmm…what do you suppose Mr. Postman would do if you put two separate addresses and stamps on both sides of an index card. Postage and all (since the return address thing hasn’t worked since the stone age (sorry, I’m a wisecracking youngster)…ooh, double parentheses)!
My credit card company (and most everyone elses, from what I gather: MBNA America) puts it’s address in the return space of its reply envelopes. I’ve noticed most everyone else puts little blanks for you to fill in your full name and address. I get a tiny grin imagining that by leaving my name off the return address, I can’t be added to the whatever mailing lists those ‘forms’ might generate.
I believe this topic was covered here before. The consensus was, I think, that if the return address was local you could get away with this scheme, but the post office won’t send the mail across the country for you.
The USPS will return unstamped mail to the return address. At least, my carrier will. He returned an unstamped letter that my upstairs neighbor sent. Of course, he returned it to my mailbox, but that’s what I’ve come to expect from the idiot who works my route. Their willingness to do this probably varies inversely with the distance from the return address at which the unstamped letter is found.
Ahem, (looks around for postal inspectors) after reading Big Secrets in my teens, I tried this trick out. It did work, and yes, it was a local address.
I’ve got an actual letter carrier here, and he says, yes, eventually. If you only did it once, probably not, but the Post Office knows that once you start doing it, you won’t be able to stop, and eventually some local letter carrier somewhere will catch on to the fact that an awful lot of mail with your address on it in the wrong spot is being sent, and they’ll sic the Postal Inspectors on you. It’s a felony offense, by the way, but the actual penalty escapes him at the moment.
Letter carriers DO tend to notice weird stuff like that. They don’t just schlep the mail around.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen