Some organizations that request money or information often include return self-addressed envelopes. This is convenient. What I don’t understand is why a few of them also include their own address again in the top left corner, where, as the sender, you would normally insert your own name and address. What is the point in the organization’s address being in both sender’s and recipient’s locations on the envelope?
The only reason that I can come up with is that if you forget to put postage on a letter, it is sent back to the presumed sender at the address on the top left. Is this a ploy to fool the postal service so that the letter reaches them whether there is postage or not? Surely they must be wise to that trick?
What does the postal service do with letters that do not have adequate postage but where the sender’s and recipient’s names and addresses are the same?
Shalom Mano,
Your supposition is precisely correct.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Jeff,
Surely the postal service would not fall for this?
Shalom Mano,
The postal service involves individuals who are rated on how fast they process the mail, not on how many fraudulent envelopes they can identify and in the process slow down their processing speed.
The cost of returning a letter with insufficient postage to the return address is the same as forwarding it to the addressee. Identifying that a stamp is missing — insufficient postage is only checked if the item weighs more than an ounce — is simple and can be automatically kicked to the return-to-sender pile.
Any letter sent to a not-for-profit is likely to contain a check and the last event any not-for-profit wants to occur is for a check-containing-envelope to be returned to the sender due to a missing stamp thus giving the sender a chance to reconsider the donation.
Most contributors remember the stamp. By putting their own address in both locations, the not-for-profit is just covering it’s butt and the postal service is too busy to deal with what has to be a tiny percentage of its daily load.
B’shalom,
Jeff