Metropol

I received a bizarre letter today. It was a standard piece of marketing mail, excpet exceptionally wrong as they manged not only to spell my name AND address wrong, but they also didn't bother to include a stamp.

Nevertheless the letter got to me, with a new stamp evidently added somewhere in the postal system (which it has definitely been through due to the distinctive orange dot matrix printing on the top of the envelope).

A couple of images - the text of the stamp is:

"DO NOT SURCHARGE
CORRECT POSTAGE RAISED BY
REVENUE PROTECTION
TREAT AS 2ND CLASS
MCL"
I've been scratching my head about it... what on earth happened here? Googling the text of the stamp just leads me to various rather obsessive postal afficiado groups (seemingly the TV Forum equivelent for all things mail related... huh.) however I am curious.

/intrigued

If a letter doesn't have a stamp, the postman will knock on the recipient's door and charge them £1. In this case the 2nd class postage has obviously been charged to the direct mailing company (assuming they put their details on the back of the envelope) and the Royal Mail's revenue protection department has added the stamp to let the postman know.

Chie wrote:If a letter doesn't have a stamp, the postman will knock on the recipient's door and charge them £1. In this case the 2nd class postage has obviously been charged to the direct mailing company (assuming they put their details on the back of the envelope) and the Royal Mail's revenue protection department has added the stamp to let the postman know.

I hate it when that happens as we have to trudge to our sorting office on a Sat (as they close at 4pm) to pay £1 only to find its junk mail. You cant just leave it as it may be important.

You can also pay such a surcharge online, I'd imaging there would be a similar stamp applied to tell the postman to just deliver it and not bang on the door demainding payment.

nidave wrote:

Chie wrote:If a letter doesn't have a stamp, the postman will knock on the recipient's door and charge them £1. In this case the 2nd class postage has obviously been charged to the direct mailing company (assuming they put their details on the back of the envelope) and the Royal Mail's revenue protection department has added the stamp to let the postman know.

I hate it when that happens as we have to trudge to our sorting office on a Sat (as they close at 4pm) to pay £1 only to find its junk mail. You cant just leave it as it may be important.

If you did take that risk would the sender be then charged the £1 plus postage for it to be returned to them. I think Royal Mail should always return to sender in these cases. Would teach the sender a blooming lesson.

Don't know if it's standard procedure or just the nice man at our sorting office, but we're always allowed to have a look at the item before we decide whether to cough up the £1.

Before now, I've looked, decided it's definitely junk mail and told them I don't want it, thank you very much. No problem. I assume they return it to the sender and charge him the £1, or a bit more to include the return cost.

My thoughts ...

Possibly franked mail that didn't go through the senders franking system, that was intercepted in the sorting office, enquiries made and revenue received.