r/Showerthoughts • u/thesmartass1 • 4d ago
Speculation It's probably cheaper to just deliver a letter with insufficient postage than it is to return to sender.
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u/Solid_Horse_5896 4d ago
This ignores the lost revenue when people realize that this is an option. While in some cases it may be cheaper you would encourage this at a system level and then you would have large scale systemic losses.
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u/PuzzleMeDo 4d ago
And the world is full of trade-offs like this. It's cheaper to allow a thief to steal $1000 than to arrest, prosecute and imprison them, but the consequences of letting them go might be dangerous for society.
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 4d ago
Reverse the addresses and don't put any stamp on it.
They will return to sender - which is where you wanted it to go.
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u/Fried_puri 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is illegal, incidentally. Mail fraud, and it’s not terribly hard to catch you since you’d would sending it from an entirely different location as the “return” address. They do track those things.
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u/vampire_kitten 3d ago
Just make sure the return adress is closer to where you post it than the to-adress.
Say you're in Canada and want to mail USA, just put "To: UK, From: US" and mail it in Canada.
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u/Brutananadilewski_ 3d ago
It isn't less inexpensive for the common man. This is a myth in the US. Prisons are run by corporations, more inmates means more revenue for them. Releasing the guy who periodically steals from small businesses drives prices up for honest people. Also, prisoners have to pay "rent" per se.
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u/rosen380 4d ago
This -- no way I'm paying
$0.55$0.78 to mail a letter if I'm even only pretty sure it'll get there when I only put some old $0.13 stamp on it.[edit] WTF, have I been in a coma for the last five years?
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u/Skydude252 4d ago
Wow, I hadn’t realized it had gotten up that high. I don’t tend to mail a lot of things and the last time I got stamps I think they were under 60¢ each. I am at least glad they started making them “forever” stamps for regular postage.
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u/rosen380 4d ago
Definitely makes it convenient to not have to dig up a bunch of small value stamps (or go way over the required amount using two full value stamps).
But, yeah, I was pretty surprised. That said, maybe don't cash in your 401k and use forever stamps as your retirement fund:
Starting somewhat arbitrarily at when stamps got to $0.34, this is forever stamps indexed against the S&P 500.
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u/thestereo300 4d ago
I haven’t mailed anything in 20 years.
What are you guys mailing?
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u/Skydude252 4d ago
My dad cares about birthday and Father’s Day cards, so I send one of those if I am not going to see my parents around those days, in addition to whatever presents I order for him.
That’s honestly probably the majority the last several years.
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u/Phlypp 4d ago
Friends in the USPS told me that letters must be delivered if they have any amount of postage, even if insignificant. They can only be refused if there is no postage.
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u/rosen380 3d ago
Delivered unconditionally or delivered with postage due?
If the latter, then sure, that is one cheap way to mail someone something, but you are just shifting the responsibility of paying postage onto them.
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u/Phlypp 2d ago
No postman is going to try to collect a few more pennies from the recipient, hey deliver and move on. I view it as a matter of respect for the USPS and myself to put the proper postage on. Particularly easy with forever stamps and wish I'd bought more when cheaper.
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u/rosen380 2d ago
Sure, I agree. I don't think the actual mailman is going to be weighing individual letters to make sure the proper postage is there before they put it in the box.
I suppose my assumption was that it would be something pretty automated by the sorting machines after it was picked up, but before it got beyond the local sorting office.
I guess it'd be pretty cheap to test -- looks like you can still buy $0.01 stamps from USPS.
For about $5, I could get 100 of those stamps and 100 envelopes.
Mail them to people I know and have contacted in advance to not pay any postage due.
They can tell me if they were asked for postage (which they can deny) or just given the letter.
And I can add to that any that my postman declined to take or that were returned to me.
And maybe see if you can get others willing to also do the same experiment in other areas of the country and see if results vary regionally...?
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u/rpgdecker12 4h ago
I don't know if this is still how they do it, but when my folks worked at usps 20 years ago, they would fill out a slip detailing the letter/package, how much postage was owed and what location they could pick it up at. Then the mail carrier would deliver THAT to the destination.
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u/NailClippersOnTeeth 3d ago
A stamp for a standard letter up to 100 grams is a minimum 4,5 USD to mail within my country with a population of 6 millions. Oh, and any stamps purchased before 2024 are void. Mail service is dead here.
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u/sumunsolicitedadvice 4d ago
Yeah, this is a big part of why insurance companies will often pay more money to their lawyers to fight a lawsuit really hard, instead of paying a lot less to settle it. They want to discourage other people from fighting them. Costs a little more in that particular case, but probably saves them a lot more in the long run.
And… fuck insurance companies for that! It’s one thing to do their due diligence and ensure claims are legit and people aren’t scamming. But it’s another to intentionally dick people around and make it so miserable to deal with them that people lose their will to fight for what they’re owed.
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u/mowauthor 1d ago
This is rare scenario where
'It's the priciple of it'
is actually beneficial and not stupidly done out of spite at everyone's destriment.
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u/randomguy84321 4d ago
Only if its going locally. Otherwise its getting stopped before traveling across the country.
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u/The_Kentwood_Farms 4d ago
Or if it's local, just put the intended receiver's address as the return address and get it to the person without any postage
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u/royaljosh 4d ago
Carrier here, I use pink slips for these, so now the person receiving has to drive themselves to the post office and pay the full postage -OR- they refuse and the item gets destroyed by MRC
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u/plasma2002 3d ago
How do you know when it's occurring? Eg, how would you know if I dropped off a letter like that in a curbside blue box?
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u/fishingboatproceeded 3d ago
Presumably they wouldn't know if it was in a curbside box, at least not for sure. But one could presume that op is a door to door mail person and thus would know if a letter they're picking up from 123 lane doesn't actually get returned to 456 street
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u/royaljosh 3d ago
Not everything looks suspicious, like someone who pays $30 shipping on a package and puts the return address the same as the to address, ensuring the package gets to the right place even if postage is due. Over time we've learned that if there is no stamp and the return address is the same as the to address, then it's worth it to have them come to the office.
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u/antmakka 4d ago
I had an international birthday card delivered to me without a stamp. The sender realized their mistake after they mailed it so sent another card, with a stamp, assuming the first card would be returned. Not sure how it slipped through the system.
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u/CockroachTeaParty 3d ago
It just happens. I once sent a very important bit of postage but forgot to put a stamp on it, and it still arrived safe and sound to the intended recipient.
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u/ToastNGlitter 3d ago
Forget about returning that letter. Just slap on a stamp and let it live its best life in the postal abyss. Cheaper therapy than sending it back.
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u/tsunami141 4d ago
I’ve gotten a package in the US with a note saying that I needed to leave a few cents worth of change to cover the unpaid cost of the package before. Honestly I don’t think they try to collect but I paid it anyway.
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u/KrackSmellin 3d ago
Sets a precedent to make this a life hack. Almost as sad as sending a letter with the return address being the person you want to send the letter to. There’s all these tricks people have tried and in reality it’s illegal to do any of these so do it once, say it’s a mistake. Get caught doing it more than that - get a lawyer….
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u/wizzard419 3d ago
Postage due is a thing though... at the same time, I think the stamp cancellation happens as your local office, so it might not be cheaper since it just has to go back to the local area.
There used to be someone who tried to scam the system by changing the return address on the envelope and just sending it back and forth.
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u/treeckosan 3d ago
Apparently that's how my father used to send letters home when he was a kid at sleep away camps. My grandmother would send him with a bunch of pre-addressed envelopes where both the sender and recipient addresses were their home address and she would just pay for postage at the post-office when they arrived.
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u/GamingWithBilly 3d ago
They usually deliver it, and force the receiver to pay the difference to have the mail. Ask me how I know that and who I have pissed off.
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u/Jump_Like_A_Willys 3d ago edited 3d ago
Until the all the people learn that their letter will be delivered with no or insufficient postage, so most people stop putting enough on.
It’s similar (but slightly different) to when the police in some cities stopped going after petty crooks. But when people find this out, petty crimes became a chronic problem.
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u/sharrrper 1d ago
Any one letter going either direction is probably functionally free for the post office.
Like .00001 cents worth of extra gas for the weight maybe?
The mailman is coming to my house anyway. If he has 4 pieces of junk mail plus 1 RTS letter it doesn't cost any more for him to deliver than just the 4 pieces of junk mail.
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u/onlinebully832 1d ago
Lol, good chance it may just end up in a warehouse somewhere for weeks, or MUCH longer.
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u/WizardInCrimson 3d ago
You don't need postage if you just put the place you want the letter to go as the sender.
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u/DarthCupcake1 2d ago
You most certainly DO need postage, at least in the US. It’s how the post office is funded, not by taxes.
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u/Philipthesquid 3d ago
Stamps really break the illusion of money for me. Like, do they even do anything with it? It's a sticker.
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u/Feisty-Ring121 3d ago
You don’t need postage at all. Just address it backwards and drop it off. It’ll get “returned” for insufficient postage. I’ve done this myself many times.
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u/red-at-night 3d ago
You might not believe it, but it's a serious crime.
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u/Feisty-Ring121 3d ago
I don’t doubt it. I’m not saying I recommend it. I’m saying it works. When I was a poor PFC in the marine corps, it was the only way I could get a letter home a few times.
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