I could strongly be wrong but I think that one is something you can sort of pull off IIRC.
As a kid, I tried to mail a letter without a stamp by having the return address be the address I wanted to send it and my address as the destination address. They put the letter back in my own mail box, so technically I mailed a letter for free. 😌
Where I live, the mail would also be delivered, but the return address would get a request for payment letter by the postal service. At least that’s what happened when my letter was 1g too heavy for the paid format.
Postal Secret Service has entered chat
Got 'em
Put the return address as the address you want to send it to, no stamp needed
Wha…oh my god. How have I never realized this???
Now if you’l excuse me, I have to make a collect call to my parents. My name is Bob Adababyitzaboi.
May work a couple times in town, in the same ZIP Code; may come with free trip to federal penitentiary
One time my uncle sent me a letter and couldn’t remember the address of my place at the time, so he addressed it to, “White house a block away from the corner of [street] in [town, state]” and it made it here.
This was, obviously, well before you could just use Street View or whatever.
I attempted to find the article but search engines are terrible. They mentioned that advertising companies often have a book of mail tests; things they attempted to mail to see if they would be permitted. Some of the examples included:
A sock with an address written on it, partial addresses, wet paper, vague addresses like your example, local names like “sues bar”, tom cruises house, a sandwich in a bag, poster board, flags. They get pretty creative and like a record of what might work for pitch meetings. Generally if it looks plausible, they attempt it.
As long as the address is specific enough to get through the right distribution center and to the right ending post office… chances are the carriers it ends up with will absolutely figure out where it needs to go.
USPS is amazing Where is their thin colored line? Real “boys in blue”
The postal service is one of those things that’s amazing the fact that half the things arrive at their intended destination knowing what is involved in the logistics of the whole thing.
Yep, when we visited most of the houses had little names they would use for their address. Villa Bonita 200m S of xxx
Iceland, draw a map on it and the right name and that’s all you really need.
In Bangkok, “street names” are entire city quarters and houses are numbered chronologically by when they were built.
So it isn’t unusual to have 237 be right next to 1550.
238 could be 2 miles away.That sounds even more chaotic than the Japanese system.
What’s that?
Complicated. There’s the city, and it’ll be broken into neighborhoods with their own names. Then that will be broken down into blocks (approximately) with their own numbers. Then each building has its own number within the block. So you can only find a place based on its address (assuming no online mapping) if you already know approximately where it is.
Before Google maps became a big thing, taxi drivers would have massive books full of neighborhood maps which they would refer to when you told them the address you wanted to go to.
they have a system?
“You know, the house next to the one that has that little cunt kid. You know the one. Always leaving his bike on the lawn, and being a real disrespectful little shit if you try to explain it’s gonna get stolen in THIS neighborhood. The house next to that. The white one, not the blue one on the other side.”
Mailman: “Oh. Yeah. I DO know that little fucker. Damn near tripped over his bike when it was covered in snow, and I didn’t know it was there.”
Pff, two years. Used to do that shit all the time when I was a kid. It always worked.
Yeah, I’m old too. Setting letters in the mailbox with some change on top for postage wasn’t uncommon.
If it works it ain’t stupid
So… This is stupid?
Well 50 cents hasn’t been enough for a domestic stamp since January 2019, so probably not. It’s currently 73 cents.
Those are forever quarters though aren’t they
Dude your mom’s a forever quarter
I havent seen it in years because of forever stamps and digital postage, but people used to actually do this to make up for a few cents postage for a heavy letter, et c. My mom is notoriously cheap though, so maybe it is just us.
When I was a kid and would send very stuffed letters, we just left a dollar paper clipped to it, they would leave the change the next day for heavier stuff.
When I was even younger I used to leave flowers in the mailbox for the mail person, and they got me a little flower statue for xmas and left it in the mailbox for me. That’s a memory I haven’t thought of in a long time so that was pleasant :)
I could have sworn this was a thing.
I remember it as a kid, but they don’t allow it anymore. It fucks with high-speed sorters
