# Why does the post office care where you mail a letter? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 17, 2001, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782 "2001-07-17T09:21:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Spitzoli](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@Spitzoli](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spitzoli)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/21 "2001-07-17T19:59:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\* > As well, Kissimmee (Kiss-i-mee), Florida (34741) gets innundated before every Valentine’s Day. > \*\* Except that it’s pronounced Kih-SIM-ee… ---
**Author:** ![screech-owl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@screech-owl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/screech-owl)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/22 "2001-07-17T20:29:17Z")
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). ---
**Author:** ![andrew\_dupont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea666f/32.png) [@andrew\_dupont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andrew_dupont)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/23 "2001-07-17T20:33:59Z")
> [@](#): > > 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] ---
**Author:** ![screech-owl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@screech-owl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/screech-owl)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/24 "2001-07-17T21:04:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*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. ---
**Author:** ![lestrange](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/aca169/32.png) [@lestrange](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lestrange)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2001, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/25 "2001-07-17T23:51:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by 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 > > \*\* 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,](http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html) you never know what might happen. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2001, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/26 "2001-07-18T01:09:08Z")
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 \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Friday \* > > **…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 > > \*\* 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. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2001, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/27 "2001-07-18T01:11:28Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![AWB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2001, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/28 "2001-07-18T04:31:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*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. ---
**Author:** ![Jois](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ea666f/32.png) [@Jois](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jois)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2001, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/29 "2001-07-18T06:05:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*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 ---
**Author:** ![weeds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5e9695/32.png) [@weeds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/weeds)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2001, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/30 "2001-07-18T11:34:15Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![screech-owl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@screech-owl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/screech-owl)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2001, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/31 "2001-07-18T13:54:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*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!) ---
**Author:** ![lestrange](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/aca169/32.png) [@lestrange](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lestrange)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2001, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/32 "2001-07-19T01:54:42Z")
_originally posted by Duck Duck Goose:_ \*\* [/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. 😉 \*\* [/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.) ---
**Author:** ![weeds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5e9695/32.png) [@weeds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/weeds)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2001, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782/33 "2001-07-19T10:27:15Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by 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)? 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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-post-office-care-where-you-mail-a-letter/72782.md?page=1)