I sent a letter and I got it back with the notice 'not deliverable as addressed, unable to forward"
Does this mean they had a forwarding address but it expired after a year? Or is there something else that happened?
It means they don’t have a valid forwarding address–as to whether that’s because the forwarding order expired or was never filed is unknown.
Go to the source:
'Not Deliverable as Addressed—
Unable to Forward
Mail undeliverable at address given; no change-of-address order on file; forwarding order expired.’
It’s toward the top under Exhibit 1.4.1.
Did the person now at that address tell the USPS the person is no longer there? That seems likely . There is no writing on the envelope but I have seen in the past where someone would write “no longer here” or something similar before returning it to USPS.
I’m not sure the envelope would even make it to the house now, given that the sorting is done remotely nowadays, largely by computer.
In the old days a local postalman could use his knowledge to fix a slightly incorrect address: "Tom Smith lives at 201 Main St, not 102!’ and would deliver it. Now the computer sorting notes that there is no 102 Main St address in it’s, so it rejects the letter long before it reaches that town.
They definitely do still make it to the house. 10 years after I moved into this house, I still get mail addressed to the previous residence, both first class and marketing mail. I scribble “No longer at this address” on the first class and toss it back in the mailbox for pickup tomorrow. I probably get 5-10 pieces of mail a week for the old owners.
if the person left no forwarding address how do they know the person moved if the letter never gets to the house?
Because the forwarding address lives at the postal center, not the house.
To repeat my question, if there never was any forwarding address submitted how do they know the person moved? That knowledge must come from somewhere.
All it takes is one instance of the current resident returning a piece of mail for the USPS to know that the person on the address is not there. Not everyone writes something on the envelope, if you just leave it in the box with the flag up the carrier knows what you’re telling them.
Whether it makes it to the house or not depends on what the mistake is. If 102 Main St doesn’t exist in that zip code, my guess is that it would be returned. If 102 Main St does exist, and it’s on the same route, the carrier might deliver it to 201. But if the carrier knows that Tom Smith gets mail at 201 Main St and gets a letter addressed to Diana Jones at 201 Main St, it’s going to be delivered to 201 Main St unless there is or was a forwarding order for Diana at that address in which case it will be forwarded until the order expires and returned after it expires. It’s possible that if Tom returns the letter to the carrier with some indication that Susan doesn’t live there, the carrier will return future mail without delivering it to 201 Main St, but that depends on the carrier’s memory - I doubt it would work for the person who sends a Christmas card once a year to the incorrect address.
But most of the time, mail addressed to Diana Jones at 201 Main Street is going to get delivered to 201 Main St unless a forwarding order existed at some point… Because even though the carrier might know Tom Smith gets his mail there, he doesn’t necessarily know if Diana moved in with Tom last month or that Tom moved out last week and Diana lives there now, or that Diana is Tom’s daughter and has begun using his address as a mailing address for some reason.