Postal Pettiness
There is a small chance that couple of you [US addresses only] will have been asked by the Postal Service to pay 12 or 14 cents to receive our card. This was due to a mistake for which I can not apologise enough; it's not that we think we're so important that people should pay to receive mail from us.
Here's what happened: there is a special postcard postage rate that is lower than the rate for the lightest letters, but subject to certain conditions. I knew there was a rule about dimensions, and checked that our cards were in fact small enough before buying a sheet of postcard rate stamps. However, I had not realised that there was also a rule that the address must be written in landscape format. Because the stamps we're using are quite large, and because the design on the cards is in portrait format, we wrote the addresses in portrait format. Apparently this makes the postcard rate no longer apply.
Fortunately, our mailman is helpful, and noticed this when he collected the outgoing mail from this building, so the cards found their way back to us with an explanation. I'll be taking the stack of them to the post office tomorrow to buy the extra postage and re-send them, but I'm not 100% sure that all the cards were caught, because we sent some on Friday and only heard from the mailman today. So if yours was one that didn't get caught, please accept our humble apologies, and be flattered that at least you were one of the first people we sent a card to.
Here's what happened: there is a special postcard postage rate that is lower than the rate for the lightest letters, but subject to certain conditions. I knew there was a rule about dimensions, and checked that our cards were in fact small enough before buying a sheet of postcard rate stamps. However, I had not realised that there was also a rule that the address must be written in landscape format. Because the stamps we're using are quite large, and because the design on the cards is in portrait format, we wrote the addresses in portrait format. Apparently this makes the postcard rate no longer apply.
Fortunately, our mailman is helpful, and noticed this when he collected the outgoing mail from this building, so the cards found their way back to us with an explanation. I'll be taking the stack of them to the post office tomorrow to buy the extra postage and re-send them, but I'm not 100% sure that all the cards were caught, because we sent some on Friday and only heard from the mailman today. So if yours was one that didn't get caught, please accept our humble apologies, and be flattered that at least you were one of the first people we sent a card to.
4 Comments:
It's annoying, but it's not entirely without reason. Most mail has the address read by computer, but in order for the recognition to be mostly successful, the machine makes certain assumptions about the size/shape/layout of your mail.
When those assumptions aren't met, the likelyhood that a live human will need to examine and sort your mail goes up, and with it the cost.
planning a wedding has such high points as planning cakes, wine, food, music, and favors and such low points as dealing with the post office, venue, and caterer.
Anyway my thought is that if you can make it through all of the crap, you can make it through anything.
So, I just went to correct the postage on these, and the guy at the post office sold me: a pile of 10 cent stamps, and a pile of 4 cent stamps, and had me go at it.
The cards are now stamp-tacular.
It's a pity we don't hang out with more philatelists.
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