Another thread re unwanted merchandise being received pointed to this postal regulation below. So, if I’m selling say an iPod via eBay and it accidentally gets posted to the wrong address the recipient has essentially won the lottery? I have no recourse to retrieve the merchandise?
Umm, no not unless you also accidentally address it to that wrong party.
In other words, if you mail to
John Smith
123 Main street
Anytown, CA 90000
And you write
John Smith
23 Main street
Anytown, CA 90000
So Mary Brown gets it at 23 Main street, then she can not open it, as it’s not addressed to her, she must return it to the PO/USPS.
Think about it this way: If you ‘incorrectly address’ something to someone and then come after them for the price of what you shipped them, you just took them for a potentially unlimited amount of money while not giving them any possible way to avoid that expense. Even if you claim to be satisfied with just shipping charges, you could still say the item never arrived, or arrived damaged, to get the full amount anyway.
No one said they have to pay for it, just that they can’t open it or keep it, they must return it to the USPS.
I’ve heard this before but doubt it is enforceable. How can a requirement to fix someone else’s mistake be imposed?
There’s no “requirement to fix someone else’s mistake”, it’s just that you are not allowed to open mail not addressed to you. Postal regs say you are supposed to return the item to the USPS.
You don’t have to fix the mistake. However, if something has been delivered to you by mistake, you have to allow them to fix the mistake, e.g., by calling on you and taking it back. If you don’t, then you are stealing someone else’s property.
From Title 18 of the U.S. Code:
"Section 1701. Obstruction of mail generally
Whoever knowingly and willfully obstructs or retards the passage of
the mail, or any carrier or conveyance carrying the mail, shall be
fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or
both.
Section 1702. Obstruction of correspondence
Whoever takes any letter, postal card, or package out of any post
office or any authorized depository for mail matter, or from any
letter or mail carrier, or which has been in any post office or
authorized depository, or in the custody of any letter or mail
carrier, before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was
directed, with design to obstruct the correspondence, or to pry into
the business or secrets of another, or opens, secretes, embezzles, or
destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not
more than five years, or both.
….
Whoever, without authority, opens, or destroys any mail or package of
newspapers not directed to them, shall be fined under this title or
imprisoned not more than one year, or both."
If something is ADDRESSED TO YOU, you have the right to open it and keep it. Otherwise it is an invitation to extortion.
If it is not addressed to you, you aren’t. So DrDeth’s example would only work if there is a John Smith at the address it was delivered to (or the package is address to “occupant”).
Opening SOMEONE ELSE’S mail, even at your address is mail fraud (according to this caseat least, which came from this thread)
Great cite!
I come home, stop by the community mailboxes and get the items in my assigned box. I get to my house and realize I have items not intended for me. How is my requirement to return the items enforced? No authority has factual knowledge of where the item is.
Has anyone actually been prosecuted for this? Cases where the item was removed from the postal system to include individual mailboxes are a different case.
Though I wonder how this interacts with all the other laws that say the opposite (e.g. that finders very much does not mean keepers).
e.g. if you bank makes an accounting error and deposits a million dollars into your account, you don’t get to keep that money. If you withdraw it, and spent it, its theft.
What if they mail you a million dollars by accident? Which rule applies.
You get to keep the physical check, but the person (or organization) which wrote the check can put a stop payment order on the check, i.e. the physically delivered item (the paper check) is yours to keep. But the bank is not fully obligated to let a deposit attempt through.
If, however, you deposited it and the deposit went through (which itself can take a couple days, even after you leave the bank), that’s a strong indication that the transaction was valid. This is especially true since any bank would double-check a check deposited for such a large sum.
Now, if the bank decided to send you cash or a diamond via mail, it’s yours to keep.
Read griffin1977’s cite. Yes.
Not exactly the same. In the case cited, opening the mail was only detected due to the credit card fraud.
Yes but the conviction he was appealing (unsuccessfully) was not the fraud part but the mail theft part. He argued that having the credit card statements was not theft as they’d been delivered to his apartment (addressed to the former tenant). The judges found that it was in fact theft.
My point was not that it was not legally enforceable but that in the absence of other crimes it is not practical to enforce. There would have been no case for mail Frau to appeal without the credit card fraud.
This week I threw away mail for a previous resident. She is deceased. In what practical way am I likely to be prosecuted for my crime.
Years ago, someone was taking my mail from my mail box (individual box in front of my house). I suspected my ex-boyfriend. I told the post office, who told me to call the police. The police told me to watch the box and take pix of whoever was taking my mail.
I simply could not take time off work to sit at home, peeping through the curtains, waiting for someone who may or may not show up and steal my mail. I gave up and rented a box at the post office. I didn’t have a car at the time, so fetching my mail was a two-hour round trip by bus.
No one cared about catching, much less prosecuting, whoever stole my mail. 
There are lots of laws that are hard to enforce due to lack of immediate and obvious evidence. So?
If that case hasn’t gone any farther, then apparently it’s different in different parts of the country: