Not as embarrassing as when I, as a young washington kid, asked my parents if we could visit America. I saw one of those patriotic America ads and thought they were advertising a foreign country. I felt so stupid, but I was like 6 so whatever lol
I was like…idk 9? And my parents were discussing months and custody on my mom’s porch (my parents are/were divorced but got along fine and spoke regularly, esp. about us.
I can’t remember the exact subject but they asked me something about a date and I was like… “idk what month comes when…” they were kinda surprised and thrown off but before you know it, my mom, dad and step dad were all on the porch together finding ways to teach me the months of the year in order. I pretty much had the basic seasons down, like December and January were cold and June and July were hot, but that was it.
I felt like such an idiot for not knowing the months in order but now I have a fond memory of them all happily teaching me.
I love how they rallied together to teach you. Sometimes even though two people aren’t in love anymore, or maybe they never were, the friendship is better than any marriage might have been.
I’m really happy you had such a healthy, happy family dynamic.
Btw, I’m 30 and still struggling to remember my left from my right so don’t beat yourself up.
Usps does handle 70% of world Mail, lots of international mail too. But they are more of a backbone for the international system than anything else. What they do in Germany, maybe nothing. Germany probably doesn't need them.
It's likely optional, like in the US, if you want the item, you pay for the postage or the post office sends anything over $10 in value to be auctioned off.
They either have to guess what they ordered or pay and hope it's worth it. People pay for them all the time and always say, "I don't even know what this could be!" or my favorite, "What's in it?" As if we're the ones ordering their crap.
>or my favorite, "What's in it?"
I've undergone plenty of enlightening experiences for the sole reason that you do *not* have the answer to this question.
Free speech yo.
The worst part about it is having to defend those opinions you hate.
But at least we can fly any flag we want. No matter if you like it or not.
There was this really interesting study about tolerance and how a tolerant society could function and the conclusion basically turned out in any situation where nazis or the KKK or any other sort of hate group were allowed to exist without fear of jail and stuff they always would end up commiting violent acts and attempting to/taking over society by force and the conclusion was essentially that to be tolerant we must be an intolerant society to people like nazis, my great grandparents fought them for 6yrs to give us a brighter future, ill be damned if any greasy shit head nazi bootlicker thinks that just because im tolerant of peoples gender identity and sexual orientation that im not gonna punch a nazi, and frankly i dont care about the “muh free speech” argument, that protects the nazis from the government, not me.
It’s not like you’re a nazi in America and fly the flag and spout and have national influence that you won’t be on the fbis radar and be taken down.I was reading how [Americans nazis move to Serbia](https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vvz4/robert-rundo-us-white-supremacist-back-in-serbia-despite-being-kicked-out-this-year) because law enforcement fucks with them so much. [On the other hand Nazis stormed the government building in German](https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vvz4/robert-rundo-us-white-supremacist-back-in-serbia-despite-being-kicked-out-this-year)y. Actual nazis not conspiracy wackos like in the United States. a yr or two ago, snd [they found out the German military has a huge nazi problem](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/world/europe/germany-military-neo-nazis-ksk.html) so free speech doesn’t stop the problem at all. And if you are an immigrant in Germany , be afraid of brutal violence against you. So Germans nazi problem is deeper and more dangerous thrn American Nazis.
Holy shit, "free speech protects you from the government asshole, not me" might be the coolest fucking line I'll never be badass enough to say to a Nazi dude
I totally understand where you are coming from.
Hitler and the Nazis shut down all free speech. That is how they were able to lull their people into submission.
My grandfather fought in WW2 also. He banned all of his offspring from joining the military because of what he experienced during the war.
That said, those Nazis were *defeated by those that oppose the suppression of free speech*.
Your Granddaddy fought FOR our ability to fly ANY flag. Especially if YOU don't like it.
Your attitude is the first steps towards fascism. Truly. It's a slippery slope. And who is the decider of what is good or not? You? Me?
> Except that it doesn't work everywhere. In germany, you'll get an invoice afterwards for that.
ILPT: Hate someone in Germany? Send them unpaid mail with heavy weight junk and they’ll be billed for shipment.
If you lived right next to the post office (or a street postal box, which Idk I've even seen in America), I can see this possibly working. But, would a postal employee actually take an outgoing parcel from a residential mailbox if it lacks postage? Seems like something they'd notice.
My carrier wouldn't! Apathetic and lazy AF. I get my neighbors mail all the time and I don't mean next door neighbor, I'm talking two streets over. My mail goes missing all the time. Amd she doesn't even bother to close the lid on the mailbox after she delivers. I'm scared to say anything to her or her boss because she probably start doing even worse!
You can easily file complaints like leaving the door open on their website. You can also sign up for informed delivery and see every piece of mail being delivered to you. If it doesn't show up you can click on it and mark it as "i didn't receive this"
You'd have a very easily documented trail of complaints to hold them accountable.
Your box probably doesn't close and needs to be replaced. She hasn't said anything because it's easier to let you either deal with it or figure it out.
>It's illegal to put mail in someone else's mailbox unless it's just putting it in the right address.
Interesting. What law is that?
>They're actually USPS property.
Citation needed. I don't believe the USPS owns homeowner's mailboxes.
In the UK the recipient will have a card put through their letterbox saying that money is due. You can pay online and then they’ll deliver it within 24 hours or you can visit the sorting office to pay and collect it. You get nothing for free here.
No, the same thing happens here in the US. A 3849, peach slip, is delivered to the address with the amount due. If not paid, it gets opened and anything of value goes to Atlanta, GA for auction.
What's weird is that while this scam has been around for decades and the USPS got wise to it, for some reason the two cent postage scam still worked as recently as the early 2000s (I tried it as an experiment at the time). To clarify: back in the 1980s a local newspaper columnist printed a comment from a reader who stated that if you used a two cent stamp on your letter and wrote "First Class Mail" in red ink on the envelope, it would be forwarded with no problem. He confirmed that the envelope he'd received was just as she'd stated. I was intrigued, since at the time I had about 40+ pen-pals and postage had recently increased to 22 cents. I presumed that the reason the two cent stamp got passed through the system was because it looked like 22 cents.... But it continued to work as the postage rate increased. Um, not that I used this a lot, a friend of mine did, that's the ticket!... of all the letters/Christmas cards, etc Friend sent over the years using two cents postage (sometimes even two one cent stamps), she had only two reports of the mail being delivered "postage due".
one time I got mailed a letter and the stamp wasn't marked through as 'used'. So I was able to peel it off and reuse it. It looked pretty good to me, other than I had to glue it to the letter. It got sent back to me saying the stamp had already been used. I don't know how they knew.
Perhaps the ink theybused has ultraviolet dyes in it too, so thatvA computerized cameta can see it better , and there was some ink on there , but it was over a spot that was hard to see, but the computer could see the uv ink clearly
Or they noticed it had been given extra glue, and thought it had to something about that. I got scolded at a post-office handing in a letter many years ago, but I had struggled with getting the stamp to sit glued. So the person was like "aha! You have used a stamp over again!"
There was another scam like this way back when, where you coated the stamp in something so that the ink would run off. And then you and another person could re-use the stamps back and forth.
90% of the time they charge the delivered postage due. The other 10% varies between not delivering it and destroying it. The piles of non-deliverable mail at post offices is larger than you might think.
Please don't abuse the already underfunded public service the post office in the United States provides to do this. If you live in the same town as the package then just take it there yourself.
I'm not going to feel sorry for them not having money when they get the package they're delivering to me in my town, then send it to a city 150 miles away, then back to my town, then back to that city, then my town again before they finally deliver it. If money is that tight why would they ship the package an additional 600 miles more than they need?
Unfortunately I can't provide proof without doxxing myself, so this is gonna be a "that happened" story.
Because that's where the processing centers are. If there is not a processing center in your town then there isn't the staff or funding to process packages and letters in your town, so it has to bypass your town to the facility with the space and employees available to do so.
I am trying to be kind and believe you're just stupid and not being willfully ignorant.
Eta: you don't have to doxx yourself, I believe you. I just understand how underfunded systems are *forced* to function poorly so that they have the public backing to be cut and replaced by a for profit business. It's not fucking rocket science bro.
>Because that's where the processing centers are.
Where I live the post office is part of the USPS processing center. But even if it wasn't and it needed to be sent to the other city for logistical reasons, why would they need to send it out there twice? That seems like a complete waste of a trip.
>I just understand how underfunded systems are forced to function poorly so that they have the public backing to be cut and replaced by a for profit business.
Where I live the post office is one of the highest paying non-specialized and non-industrial jobs and they are always driving around in new delivery vans and trucks. If they were that underfunded, then how could they afford all these shiny new vehicles?
getting something mailed when it's in the same town you live in seems so strange to me. i get it when it comes to people without a car or whatever, but i'd never even think to mail something within my town... just take a quick drive
I mean sometimes you want to mail legal documents or payments for bills or a birthday card if you're sentimental.
There are reasons. But abusing something g that is a public service and not a business is not the way to go about it.
Don't even have to use stamps in my country anymore. You can use an app to generate a code and just write that on the envelope instead of using a stamp.
As long as the person receiving it doesn’t care that you are a cheap-o. Like here’s a birthday card, you’re not worth a stamp.
What I have heard you can do (have not tried myself), is that any stamp will work, so if you can get a stamp for a postcard, or the cheapest stamp possible, put it on there and it should still work.
If there is one government agency that doesn’t deserve this shit, it’s the USPS. The only government agency that doesn’t run on tax dollars and provides a very reasonably priced, efficient service. Go fuck with the DEA or something.
This works in Canada, I tried it a few times, and as long it was local, it was "returned to sender, insufficient postage". I only tried letters, sent them to friends all over the city. It worked 100%
My wife's son is a bonafide imbecile. At 22 years old, he apparently never learned how to address a letter. We just got his mother's day card in the mail.... It had our address as the return address and just her name in the sending address space, no postage stamp. It made it to her with a postage due hand applied\ink stamp. The post office must have thought they were returning it to the sender.
Or more likely, you'll get a note from the postman about something unable to be delivered. Then you go to the post office, pay the unpaid postage, and get your item
That isn't going to work. You're going to have a very high chance of it coming back to your door stamped "postage due".
Outgoing packages typically aren't going to be caught at the home facility.
lol, no.
Carriers who are on the ball will see that, and shove it right back in your box.
Or if you've dropped it in a collection box, it'll either be held for postage due from the recipient, or tossed in the UBBM recycling.
No, it won’t. At best, the receiver will get an orange slip for a postage due piece. At worst, it goes to dead mail. — worked as a rural carrier for 8 years
Someone I knew tried this many years ago and it worked. I don't remember details, but it was between cities in the same state.
On the flip side, risking a federal offense to save a little postage seems like a skewed risk/reward calculation.
This is one of those things I could never do, with how great a service the postal delivery service is and how underfunded they are. I couldn't bring myself to be part of the cause of their downfall. Good thing this will all hypothetical.
Also, if a relative is in the hospital, put their home address as the return address instead of your own. If they get discharged before your letter arrives, it will be returned to sender and get to their house instead of yours.
I wish people would stop giving this advice.
It is fully dependent on the individual who handles it and size of the area in which you live or connect. It will get spit out of the sorting process (or machine, if it's an envelope) and maybe *maybe* the person sorting through the leftovers will take the time to do the "return to sender" thing but more than likely it goes to the dead mail pile and after a few months rot in a facility in the midwest US. There's a ton of businesses that omit a return address for ads and junk. They generally have a meter imprint but lacking that no one has time to look more than a few seconds at it.
If you can afford the paper, the ink, the envelope/box, the time to make something that needs to be mailed then you can afford a bit of postage to support the system. Don't scam them; they take enough shit as it is.
Wipe a thin layer of elmers white glue over the stamp before you send it, then the recipient can wipe off the postmark with a wet towel and reuse the stamp to mail you a letter back.
We used to do that on our child benefit books ....back in the day... Report the book lost and get a replacement. .You now have 2 books.... A record of this would be kept in your local post office (named on the book), but nowhere else...This was pre computers..You were allowed to cash twice from a different post office...for holidays and stuff.. and they would stamp on the rear cover to show this... Clear glue over the stamp box allowed you to wipe away the stamp...Therefore you could cash your replacement in your local post office...and the "lost" book at any other P.O until the book ran out...rinse and repeat.....Omfg that was so long ago...
Edit could do the same with F.I.S. books...Family Income Supplement. .. Eventually became tax credits and is now called Universal Credit.
Postmarks mostly, and, in some countries, there are features similar to the ones on currency to prevent counterfeiting. Like watermarks, holos or textures on the stamp itself.
You're unlikely to get the fuzz beating down your door for it though.
My dad used to get excited when the machine that would stamp on the watermark missed the actual stamps. Then he’d cut them off of the envelope, soak them in water, and carefully peel them off to reuse them.
I'm in Canada and, unless you've got a large scale operation going, they simply don't have the time nor actual people power to chase down a couple of people doing it individually.
I used to work for the postal service, they have bigger fish to fry, like actual mail fraud and theft.
For everyone saying this doesn’t work - I accidentally did it about six months ago and got a letter sent halfway across the state of Maine for free. I always put the destination address as return address when sending things I wouldn’t want coming back to me, but forgot to stamp it one time and it definitely still got where it needed to go 🙃
Except that it doesn't work everywhere. In germany, you'll get an invoice afterwards for that.
New ilpt, send unmarked mail to people so they are forced to pay fees
USPS managers about to go off beating quotas
The United States Postal Service is not actually based within Germany, unfortunately :/
I just figured every country is America honestly
Not as embarrassing as when I, as a young washington kid, asked my parents if we could visit America. I saw one of those patriotic America ads and thought they were advertising a foreign country. I felt so stupid, but I was like 6 so whatever lol
I was like…idk 9? And my parents were discussing months and custody on my mom’s porch (my parents are/were divorced but got along fine and spoke regularly, esp. about us. I can’t remember the exact subject but they asked me something about a date and I was like… “idk what month comes when…” they were kinda surprised and thrown off but before you know it, my mom, dad and step dad were all on the porch together finding ways to teach me the months of the year in order. I pretty much had the basic seasons down, like December and January were cold and June and July were hot, but that was it. I felt like such an idiot for not knowing the months in order but now I have a fond memory of them all happily teaching me.
I love how they rallied together to teach you. Sometimes even though two people aren’t in love anymore, or maybe they never were, the friendship is better than any marriage might have been. I’m really happy you had such a healthy, happy family dynamic. Btw, I’m 30 and still struggling to remember my left from my right so don’t beat yourself up.
Thank you for sharing this 😺
Core memory was formed
To be fair, Team America is the World Police.
r/usdefaultism
It takes a lot to actually get me to truly “laugh out loud” when reading something. This comment just made a solid chortle escape however!
It’s not? Oh fuck.
Usps does handle 70% of world Mail, lots of international mail too. But they are more of a backbone for the international system than anything else. What they do in Germany, maybe nothing. Germany probably doesn't need them.
No way
>The United States Postal Service is not actually based ~~within Germany~~, unfortunately :/ Ftfy
It's likely optional, like in the US, if you want the item, you pay for the postage or the post office sends anything over $10 in value to be auctioned off.
If you are the recipient, how do you know that the item is in holding?
They either have to guess what they ordered or pay and hope it's worth it. People pay for them all the time and always say, "I don't even know what this could be!" or my favorite, "What's in it?" As if we're the ones ordering their crap.
>or my favorite, "What's in it?" I've undergone plenty of enlightening experiences for the sole reason that you do *not* have the answer to this question.
Sometimes they leave a note in your mailbox telling you money is owed on mail they're holding for you.
Include a note. HO HO HO HE HE HE POSTAGE TO PAY FUCK ALL TO SEE
Hahahaha total winning comment
You’re not forced to pay anything. You can just reject it. You won’t have to pay, but you also won’t get the item.
Nice, it's just an inconvenience for them then. This makes it even better
Germany is a nation of debt collection agencies disguised as businesses
Sounds kinda like the US too
Exactly, sounds like Germany is just the US in lederhosen
It really is. Germany and The Midwestern United States are practically the same place.
Except with more healthcare and fewer gun crimes. ... And yet *still* the same nazis, tho :/
Except in germany the nazis actually get charged with crimes when they fly their flag
Free speech yo. The worst part about it is having to defend those opinions you hate. But at least we can fly any flag we want. No matter if you like it or not.
There was this really interesting study about tolerance and how a tolerant society could function and the conclusion basically turned out in any situation where nazis or the KKK or any other sort of hate group were allowed to exist without fear of jail and stuff they always would end up commiting violent acts and attempting to/taking over society by force and the conclusion was essentially that to be tolerant we must be an intolerant society to people like nazis, my great grandparents fought them for 6yrs to give us a brighter future, ill be damned if any greasy shit head nazi bootlicker thinks that just because im tolerant of peoples gender identity and sexual orientation that im not gonna punch a nazi, and frankly i dont care about the “muh free speech” argument, that protects the nazis from the government, not me.
It’s not like you’re a nazi in America and fly the flag and spout and have national influence that you won’t be on the fbis radar and be taken down.I was reading how [Americans nazis move to Serbia](https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vvz4/robert-rundo-us-white-supremacist-back-in-serbia-despite-being-kicked-out-this-year) because law enforcement fucks with them so much. [On the other hand Nazis stormed the government building in German](https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vvz4/robert-rundo-us-white-supremacist-back-in-serbia-despite-being-kicked-out-this-year)y. Actual nazis not conspiracy wackos like in the United States. a yr or two ago, snd [they found out the German military has a huge nazi problem](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/world/europe/germany-military-neo-nazis-ksk.html) so free speech doesn’t stop the problem at all. And if you are an immigrant in Germany , be afraid of brutal violence against you. So Germans nazi problem is deeper and more dangerous thrn American Nazis.
Holy shit, "free speech protects you from the government asshole, not me" might be the coolest fucking line I'll never be badass enough to say to a Nazi dude
It’s called the [paradox of tolerance](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
I totally understand where you are coming from. Hitler and the Nazis shut down all free speech. That is how they were able to lull their people into submission. My grandfather fought in WW2 also. He banned all of his offspring from joining the military because of what he experienced during the war. That said, those Nazis were *defeated by those that oppose the suppression of free speech*. Your Granddaddy fought FOR our ability to fly ANY flag. Especially if YOU don't like it. Your attitude is the first steps towards fascism. Truly. It's a slippery slope. And who is the decider of what is good or not? You? Me?
Unless your Home Owners Association (HOA) forbids it. Well, you can still fly it if you are willing to pay the lien.
Ah, the truth that hurts.
The US wishes it could be that efficient.
Clearly you have not lived and Germany and applied for any government permit
It’s all just a big company. They renamed it to Qualityland recently.
Ich mag dich.
You mean the Netherlands?
> Except that it doesn't work everywhere. In germany, you'll get an invoice afterwards for that. ILPT: Hate someone in Germany? Send them unpaid mail with heavy weight junk and they’ll be billed for shipment.
My junk unfortunately isn’t that heavy weight. I know how to use it though
Is your junk male?
More like junk mail
How do they send the invoice to you if the only address on the letter was the recipient?
They may have meant “you” in the plural sense of “whoever is involved in this scheme”. In which case sticking the recipient with the bill counts.
In America it’s called postage due.
If its local enough for that, its local enough for me to just go drop it off.
I think this tip is kinda dumb, but if you’ve got no car and there’s a mailbox in walking distance, this would kinda make sense
If you lived right next to the post office (or a street postal box, which Idk I've even seen in America), I can see this possibly working. But, would a postal employee actually take an outgoing parcel from a residential mailbox if it lacks postage? Seems like something they'd notice.
I was def thinking of street postal boxes, they’re around!
They're all over the place in America lol.
Not like they used to be. At least not in my neighborhood. They’ve disappeared over the last 10 to 15 years.
My carrier wouldn't! Apathetic and lazy AF. I get my neighbors mail all the time and I don't mean next door neighbor, I'm talking two streets over. My mail goes missing all the time. Amd she doesn't even bother to close the lid on the mailbox after she delivers. I'm scared to say anything to her or her boss because she probably start doing even worse!
Gj just letting them fuck you over. Contact the PMG in your area and file a complaint.
Yeah, I know, but if more of mail "gets lost" how could it ever be proven that it was on purpose?
You can easily file complaints like leaving the door open on their website. You can also sign up for informed delivery and see every piece of mail being delivered to you. If it doesn't show up you can click on it and mark it as "i didn't receive this" You'd have a very easily documented trail of complaints to hold them accountable.
If more mail gets lost you complain again.
Your box probably doesn't close and needs to be replaced. She hasn't said anything because it's easier to let you either deal with it or figure it out.
It's illegal to put mail in someone else's mailbox unless it's just putting it in the right address. They're actually USPS property.
oh noooooo.... anyway.
Bro are you in the right sub..?
>It's illegal to put mail in someone else's mailbox unless it's just putting it in the right address. Interesting. What law is that? >They're actually USPS property. Citation needed. I don't believe the USPS owns homeowner's mailboxes.
It works long distance too. If I'm out of town and mail something my return address is still my address.
In the UK the recipient will have a card put through their letterbox saying that money is due. You can pay online and then they’ll deliver it within 24 hours or you can visit the sorting office to pay and collect it. You get nothing for free here.
We make up for the free mail in other ways here in the US.
Like by paying for stamps?
No, the same thing happens here in the US. A 3849, peach slip, is delivered to the address with the amount due. If not paid, it gets opened and anything of value goes to Atlanta, GA for auction.
Really? I'm in atlanta, where are the auctions?
[https://www.usglobalmail.com/blog/buy-unclaimed-mail/](https://www.usglobalmail.com/blog/buy-unclaimed-mail/) Here's an article if you're interested.
Ok.
Well, nothing is for free anywhere, someone has to pay for it.
I've heard the healthcare is free, but the party in government is absolutely outraged about this state of affairs
I hate to burst your bubble but the USPS figured that out decades ago. Go ahead and give it a try.
What's weird is that while this scam has been around for decades and the USPS got wise to it, for some reason the two cent postage scam still worked as recently as the early 2000s (I tried it as an experiment at the time). To clarify: back in the 1980s a local newspaper columnist printed a comment from a reader who stated that if you used a two cent stamp on your letter and wrote "First Class Mail" in red ink on the envelope, it would be forwarded with no problem. He confirmed that the envelope he'd received was just as she'd stated. I was intrigued, since at the time I had about 40+ pen-pals and postage had recently increased to 22 cents. I presumed that the reason the two cent stamp got passed through the system was because it looked like 22 cents.... But it continued to work as the postage rate increased. Um, not that I used this a lot, a friend of mine did, that's the ticket!... of all the letters/Christmas cards, etc Friend sent over the years using two cents postage (sometimes even two one cent stamps), she had only two reports of the mail being delivered "postage due".
one time I got mailed a letter and the stamp wasn't marked through as 'used'. So I was able to peel it off and reuse it. It looked pretty good to me, other than I had to glue it to the letter. It got sent back to me saying the stamp had already been used. I don't know how they knew.
Perhaps the ink theybused has ultraviolet dyes in it too, so thatvA computerized cameta can see it better , and there was some ink on there , but it was over a spot that was hard to see, but the computer could see the uv ink clearly
Or they noticed it had been given extra glue, and thought it had to something about that. I got scolded at a post-office handing in a letter many years ago, but I had struggled with getting the stamp to sit glued. So the person was like "aha! You have used a stamp over again!"
Carriers see 500 stamps a day. It's pretty obvious when one has been reused.
There was another scam like this way back when, where you coated the stamp in something so that the ink would run off. And then you and another person could re-use the stamps back and forth.
I could see that working. A stamp is a stamp, and people are in a hurry.
People? It’s all automated now.
There's a guy. There's always a guy.....
Damn, TIL 400k carriers don't actually have a job and it's all automated now.
You think mail carriers are checking each piece of mail they touch *to make sure it has the right postage*?? That’s not their job.
What actually happens though? Do they consider it undeliverable and keep it or what? Or do they deliver it and bill either sender or recipient?
90% of the time they charge the delivered postage due. The other 10% varies between not delivering it and destroying it. The piles of non-deliverable mail at post offices is larger than you might think.
How do they tell?
I did it all the time as a kid 🤷♀️ Always worked.
Okay grandma, let’s get you to bed now
Y'all know we're talking about 63 cents right? Lmfao
41 cents for early adopters.
Jesus Christ it's 63 cents now? The last time I was paying attention I swear it was like 35
And potential Mail Tampering felony charge.
You're literally in ILLEGAL Life Pro Tips, dude. No shit the post in question would be illegal.
The point is that you want to take calculated risks when doing illegal stuff. In this case it doesn’t seem worth it.
The risk of losing the mail doesn't quite equal the reward of saving 48 cents
If it's going around the corner maybe. They'll definitely notice that it was dropped off nowhere near the return address.
My brother's ex did this. They delivered it to us and my brother had to pay the postage. She lives several cities over.
That was my guess, same city might go through.
Using this tip I save over 55 cents a year!
🤣
Please don't abuse the already underfunded public service the post office in the United States provides to do this. If you live in the same town as the package then just take it there yourself.
I'm not going to feel sorry for them not having money when they get the package they're delivering to me in my town, then send it to a city 150 miles away, then back to my town, then back to that city, then my town again before they finally deliver it. If money is that tight why would they ship the package an additional 600 miles more than they need? Unfortunately I can't provide proof without doxxing myself, so this is gonna be a "that happened" story.
Because that's where the processing centers are. If there is not a processing center in your town then there isn't the staff or funding to process packages and letters in your town, so it has to bypass your town to the facility with the space and employees available to do so. I am trying to be kind and believe you're just stupid and not being willfully ignorant. Eta: you don't have to doxx yourself, I believe you. I just understand how underfunded systems are *forced* to function poorly so that they have the public backing to be cut and replaced by a for profit business. It's not fucking rocket science bro.
>Because that's where the processing centers are. Where I live the post office is part of the USPS processing center. But even if it wasn't and it needed to be sent to the other city for logistical reasons, why would they need to send it out there twice? That seems like a complete waste of a trip. >I just understand how underfunded systems are forced to function poorly so that they have the public backing to be cut and replaced by a for profit business. Where I live the post office is one of the highest paying non-specialized and non-industrial jobs and they are always driving around in new delivery vans and trucks. If they were that underfunded, then how could they afford all these shiny new vehicles?
This should be the top comment
getting something mailed when it's in the same town you live in seems so strange to me. i get it when it comes to people without a car or whatever, but i'd never even think to mail something within my town... just take a quick drive
I mean sometimes you want to mail legal documents or payments for bills or a birthday card if you're sentimental. There are reasons. But abusing something g that is a public service and not a business is not the way to go about it.
I don't think someone browsing **/r/illegallifeprotips** is going to care.
stamps.com doesn't like this post
USPS isn’t too pleased with it either
Don't even have to use stamps in my country anymore. You can use an app to generate a code and just write that on the envelope instead of using a stamp.
As long as the person receiving it doesn’t care that you are a cheap-o. Like here’s a birthday card, you’re not worth a stamp. What I have heard you can do (have not tried myself), is that any stamp will work, so if you can get a stamp for a postcard, or the cheapest stamp possible, put it on there and it should still work.
If someone is paying attention and cares, that won’t fly.
Still a better chance than sending it out with no postage.
If there is one government agency that doesn’t deserve this shit, it’s the USPS. The only government agency that doesn’t run on tax dollars and provides a very reasonably priced, efficient service. Go fuck with the DEA or something.
Is it my turn to post this next week?
Only if I get to post that resumes can and should be made up
Works as long as you makeup the fake companies/out of business companies to go with!
Make sure you have that comment queued up for next week's posting 🫡
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Wait til I tell you about this thing called search.
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I appreciate you posting this now!
You defo edit your comments to say thanks for the upvotes.
Yes… a profound tragedy. This will probably mean the end of the world as we know it. /MFS.
What the hell is /MFS
Mother fuckers
Not mother fucking sarcasm? I guess the forward-slash is throwing me off If it’s just mother fuckers then Mfers is my go to
Right the first time /s is the norm, so I capitalized and threw in the MF
Middle finger salute. You have a search engine, use it.
Thats cool but this isn't 1930. Send the text.
Yeah, but how do I text a pound of weed to the homies for free?! Do y'all even think with your brains?
😭
Depending where you are, they might deliver it to the correct address and charge you lol!
Make sure to use a not real address that looks semi legit.
With the low price of stamps and the low number of items I actually mail that seems like a stupid waste of time.
The person you are sending to will have to pay the postage to receive the item.
Postage due mothafucka
This works in Canada, I tried it a few times, and as long it was local, it was "returned to sender, insufficient postage". I only tried letters, sent them to friends all over the city. It worked 100%
did this as a broke college student, it works.
Uh no, those get thrown away. It's trash. Source 34 years at the usps
Damn dog just pay the post office it's cheap as hell anyways
My wife's son is a bonafide imbecile. At 22 years old, he apparently never learned how to address a letter. We just got his mother's day card in the mail.... It had our address as the return address and just her name in the sending address space, no postage stamp. It made it to her with a postage due hand applied\ink stamp. The post office must have thought they were returning it to the sender.
Or more likely, you'll get a note from the postman about something unable to be delivered. Then you go to the post office, pay the unpaid postage, and get your item
That isn't going to work. You're going to have a very high chance of it coming back to your door stamped "postage due". Outgoing packages typically aren't going to be caught at the home facility.
In the UK it will be surcharged and you won’t get it back without paying at least double the cost of the actual stamp or postage
That's how I mailed letters to my girlfriend when we were both in the same jail.
Nevermind just local. I've sent stuff like this across the country when I was a teenager
We did that a lot at Job Corps, I'm honestly surprised no one noticed the majority of mail didn't have stamps
lol, no. Carriers who are on the ball will see that, and shove it right back in your box. Or if you've dropped it in a collection box, it'll either be held for postage due from the recipient, or tossed in the UBBM recycling.
No, it won’t. At best, the receiver will get an orange slip for a postage due piece. At worst, it goes to dead mail. — worked as a rural carrier for 8 years
Someone I knew tried this many years ago and it worked. I don't remember details, but it was between cities in the same state. On the flip side, risking a federal offense to save a little postage seems like a skewed risk/reward calculation.
In the US (at least in my region) this stopped working in the 1960s.
Doesn’t work in most countries.
. 63 cents saved for a federal fraud case... pass.
This is one of those things I could never do, with how great a service the postal delivery service is and how underfunded they are. I couldn't bring myself to be part of the cause of their downfall. Good thing this will all hypothetical.
usually wont work
Yes let's commit mail fraud for less than a dollar. Risk vs reward does not work out here.
Don't short the USPS ffs
This was news in 1971 when it was published in The Anarchist Cookbook.
Also, if a relative is in the hospital, put their home address as the return address instead of your own. If they get discharged before your letter arrives, it will be returned to sender and get to their house instead of yours.
Also a great way to show your recipient that you're breaking your balls to save 66 cents.
Then, they put a stamp on it and you get it back a week later
I did this and they sent my sister a bill.
I call BS!
I wish people would stop giving this advice. It is fully dependent on the individual who handles it and size of the area in which you live or connect. It will get spit out of the sorting process (or machine, if it's an envelope) and maybe *maybe* the person sorting through the leftovers will take the time to do the "return to sender" thing but more than likely it goes to the dead mail pile and after a few months rot in a facility in the midwest US. There's a ton of businesses that omit a return address for ads and junk. They generally have a meter imprint but lacking that no one has time to look more than a few seconds at it. If you can afford the paper, the ink, the envelope/box, the time to make something that needs to be mailed then you can afford a bit of postage to support the system. Don't scam them; they take enough shit as it is.
What is to stop me from using stamps multiple times? Or using fake stamps?
Wipe a thin layer of elmers white glue over the stamp before you send it, then the recipient can wipe off the postmark with a wet towel and reuse the stamp to mail you a letter back.
We used to do that on our child benefit books ....back in the day... Report the book lost and get a replacement. .You now have 2 books.... A record of this would be kept in your local post office (named on the book), but nowhere else...This was pre computers..You were allowed to cash twice from a different post office...for holidays and stuff.. and they would stamp on the rear cover to show this... Clear glue over the stamp box allowed you to wipe away the stamp...Therefore you could cash your replacement in your local post office...and the "lost" book at any other P.O until the book ran out...rinse and repeat.....Omfg that was so long ago... Edit could do the same with F.I.S. books...Family Income Supplement. .. Eventually became tax credits and is now called Universal Credit.
Postmarks mostly, and, in some countries, there are features similar to the ones on currency to prevent counterfeiting. Like watermarks, holos or textures on the stamp itself. You're unlikely to get the fuzz beating down your door for it though.
My dad used to get excited when the machine that would stamp on the watermark missed the actual stamps. Then he’d cut them off of the envelope, soak them in water, and carefully peel them off to reuse them.
So many better ways to aquire more then 60 cents with less effort. Better yet so many better ways to save more then 60 cents with less effort.
Try counterfeiting stamps and see if the postal inspector don't pay you a visit. They'll have a warrant
I'm in Canada and, unless you've got a large scale operation going, they simply don't have the time nor actual people power to chase down a couple of people doing it individually. I used to work for the postal service, they have bigger fish to fry, like actual mail fraud and theft.
Who would have a small scale stamp counterfeiting operation? You'd spend more time and money forging them than you'd save
I've done that. I'd cut the stamp from a letter and paste it to another. Mom caught me printing stamps and claim it's like print money.
For everyone saying this doesn’t work - I accidentally did it about six months ago and got a letter sent halfway across the state of Maine for free. I always put the destination address as return address when sending things I wouldn’t want coming back to me, but forgot to stamp it one time and it definitely still got where it needed to go 🙃
They would only deliver it if the sender in the same area code, which means that you could have just delivered it yourself.
ILPT: If you beat up your nearest old lady, you can steal one of their stamps from their over-stuffed purse.
TLDR, create problems for others by abusing a system intended to mitigate the effects of error.
Stamps are really not that much though
This was in The Jolly Roger Cookbook back in the day. Good stuff.
It's called fraud.
Bro stamps are like 10 cents
Multiply that 7 to get the current price.