Is a business reply envelope (No Postage Necessary If Mailed in The United States) considered to be stamped or metered?
How (if they do) do they track how much such mail moves under any one permit, or license, or whatever they call it?
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I’d guess metered.
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They scan the bar code. Postage Paid reply envelopes have bar codes indicating the permit and zip code information.
Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.
“We are here! You are saved!” --R. & F.
Kat,
As it happens, I dropped off some late mail while a USPS person was collecting the box. She told me to consider it stamped; frankly, I’d guessed the same as you. I don’t know the logic behind that - the only thing I can see is that metered postage is dated while stamped and business reply is not, perhaps that makes some difference? Since I’ve never received business reply mail, I don’t know - is it cancelled with a date stamp?
The other part of your reply makes utter sense - of course! he says while slapping forehead - but I think that question had lingered since before bar codes.
Oh, well, thanks for the insight on the current deal.
regards,
beatle
My company does bulk mailings and I’m the guy who gets to take 'em to the Post Office.
Business Reply Mail (or BRM’s as we call them) are most similar to indicia mail… The box printed in the top right corner of the envelope. We have separate accounts for our outgoing indicia mail and our incoming business reply mail. Our local Post Office bills us for the the incoming BRM’s.
We also have a metering machine for that which we can’t put an indicia on. No mailings of less than 200 pieces can bear the indicia.
I’ve had indicia mailings of up to 45 thousand pieces of mail. Small potatoes to some of the bigger mailing houses, but a big check for the Post Office.
The views expressed by Nekosoft do not necessarily reflect those of his employer, its parent company, the USPS, the Straight Dope Message Board or Nekosoft’s girlfriend. Anyone who says differently is itching for a fight.
So Nekosoft, when they come back are they cancelled?
#1.
Metered.
It can bypass cancellation, but is often hit in there somwhere between pick up and delivery.
If dropped in the wrong box, the bar code, and other striping at the top edge, will kick it out of the automated stream into a special category.
Which is; taadaa, business reply.
#2.
Simple accounting.
They first have to pay a ‘permit fee’ to use the business reply type of service, then the amount due per piece is collected at the delivery end.
They only pay for the pieces they recieve, but they pay a higher rate per piece, for the handling, and allowing them to use the coding system to direct the mailing to a certain department. (new subscriptions, product info, orders, surveys, etc.)
Since these are generally used to make it really easy and cheap for you to send them new business, and or money,
Whatever.
Some people have ‘postage due accounts’, and the amount is calculated, and the price subtracted from the account, then a reciept is given showing the amount subtracted.
Others that get lesser volume, may simply elect to pay the carrier the .69 (or whatever amount) due per piece. Cash of course always acceptable, sometimes checks.
The carrier has to sign for the amount due, and either pay it upon return, or return the items, having of course first attempted delivery.
#2b.
They don’t particularily track someones usage, other than to collect the correct amount owed.
Permits paid, amount due collected, they don’t care how much of it you get.
Not much in the way of cheating can go on there.
(You might however be able to get discounts for volume; the rate might be lower for large mailers.)
If you get some spam in your mail with a pre-paid reply envelope you can stuff it full of spam & mail it back. fun.
There were hundreds of tv ads for trystamps.com this season. Not any more. I wondered how that worked? Seems to be a barcode thing.
Please excuse my piggybacking on your thread, beatle.
I’ve joined that damnable CD club again, and they sent me a CD that I’m pretty sure I don’t want. I haven’t opened the thing yet; is there anyway to have it returned without opening it?
He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral
You could try writing “Return to Sender.” on it and sticking it in a mailbox. My sister did that once, but I don’t remember how it turned out. Either that, or call the CD club and find out.
Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.
“We are here! You are saved!” --R. & F.
Yes, they are canceled, as a matter of fact. Evidently metered mail is also “canceled”… the meter mark is also the cancelation, hence the date. Learn something new every day.
Plain Ol’ Return to Sender should work just fine on wayward mail. (We get buckets of stuff coming back.)
That barcoding is going to be the metering machine standard in a few years, the digital machines decommisioning the electronic machines (which themselves forced the decommisioning of the mechanical machines, although that’s not until March.)
What a joy to talk about the Post Office after all that secret agent stuff in some of those other threads…
The CD clubs get a little bitchy about that, but it works. I used to do it all the time in college and I’d get little letters saying to use the “Me no want” cards they were mailing me and stop sending them back CDs. Important part is, I never got billed.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
My experience - if you return enough of the “I didn’t return the card in time,but I didn’t ask for this CD” packages, they will eventually transfer you to the program where they don’t send you anything unless you ask.
That option is available, but they prefer the other because most people end up keeping the extra CD’s.
I’d figured out something else about keeping the CDs away. If you get free ones when you sign up, they bill you for the shipping. If you don’t pay this right away, they won’t send you the “selections”. In fact, they won’t send you the damn things until you pay the original shipping bill.
This last round, I just got plain tired of the damn overdue notices in my box.
He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral
In fact, they won’t send you the damn things until you pay the original shipping bill.
Smart, aren’t they?
They can tell if the addresses, and names are fake also.
well, not really; but you know?