How Much Will the Post Office Put Up With?

http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html

by splat • 17 years ago

127 47 17 years ago

jakewolf• 17 years ago

mshafrir• 17 years ago

"Helium balloon. The balloon was attached to a weight. The address was written on the balloon with magic marker; no postage was affixed. Our operative argued strongly that he should be charged a negative postage and refunded the postal fees, because the transport airplane would actually be lighter as a result of our postal item. This line of reasoning merely received a laugh from the clerk. The balloon was refused; reasons given: transportation of helium, not wrapped."

matt1• 17 years ago

I burst out laughing when I read that in the article.

This is good too: "Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection. After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as he worked his route. "

diN0bot• 17 years ago

interesting: "Wrapped brick. Wrapped in brown paper; posted in street corner box with same amount of postage as was strapped to unwrapped brick. Extreme weight for size made package seem suspicious. Notice of attempted delivery received, 16 days. Upon pickup at station, our mailing specialist received a plastic bag containing broken and pulverized remnants of brick. Inside was a small piece of paper with a number code on it. Our research indicates that this was some type of US Drug Enforcement Agency release slip. The clerk made our mailing specialist sign a form for receipt. "

wglb4• 17 years ago

No chocolate for him.

ericb• 17 years ago

I did a similar experiment with good results in college--mailed an individually wrapped slice of American cheese to a buddy.

psadauskas2• 17 years ago

I mailed a can of soda that was only available in the town where my college was to a friend across the country. It arrived intact, only slightly dented.

ja27• 17 years ago

In college, Unilever mailed a bar of soap (in the normal bar-of-soap box) to every student on campus. The whole post office reeked of scented soap. Dozens wound up in fountains around campus. I can't smell that soap without being grossed out.

jacquesm• 17 years ago

For an exercise in school we had to draw a postcard. Some of them looked pretty good so we decided to see what would happen if we used them.

100% success, all of them arrived stamped and on time.

So, if you're ever out of stamps but you have an urgent envelope to mail... bring out those crayons, success guaranteed.

socillion• 17 years ago

Actually, just mail it with either no postage or one cent postage. It has a high probability of getting through, even if it's international mail. I did some experiments a few years ago, and of the 4-5 I sent every one of them got through.

Crayons wouldn't help anyway, except for maybe fooling people. The postal service machine's actually only look at the envelopes for flourescence which is applied to the stamps. In reality, the stamp's design could be totally blank. However, if the package or letter is an odd size, humans must handle it because it would otherwise jam the machinery - the reason there are now charges for oddly shaped mail. So, if you're scamming the USPS, make it an envelope that will have to be processed by people. Maybe a 1/2 too wide or something like that.

I'm not 100% about this, but I think the machinery spits out the envelope for a human to look at if there doesn't appear to be a flourescent stamp; else stamps from 50+ years ago would be invalid.

One more interesting item: the USPS uses some pretty cool OCR to read the addresses on mail. As I recall it has a 98% accuracy, although I wouldn't be able to find the source.

budu3• 17 years ago

I like the way they went an extra mile to treated the employees with decency. Kudos.

"We sought out as many of the USPS employees who had (involuntarily) been involved in the experiment as we could identify, and gave them each a small box of chocolate"

inaka• 17 years ago

Moving to Argentina has given me a newfound respect for the USPS - their reliability, sense of duty, and their humanity. In many ways they are a representative slice of America - flawed but generally reliable, hard working, and flexible.

Losing things in the mail, spending hours waiting in line to pick up a package, christmas presents delayed for three months for no apparent reason, all of these experiences down here make me miss those guys.

davidw2• 17 years ago

In Italy, you can't sent a package without tying a &&(* string around it.

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

Your comment triggered previously unsuspected knowledge of cartoon swearing, making me suspicious that your censoring is both too short and containing two ampersands next to each other, which just isn't on (apparently - who am I to argue with my subconscious?).

On a closer look, one of your ampersands appears to be italicised, suggesting your original typing was two characters longer and more even, which would make it look more typical.

HN's markup doesn't seem to have been designed with cryptoswearing in mind.

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

What's been your experience of living down there otherwise?

Also, is Fedex or something similar an option?

mrtron• 17 years ago

I loved the daily show bit about how the government can't efficiently run health care - he mentioned how the USPS can deliver a letter across the country in a few days for a few cents.

It really is an impressively efficient distributed system considering the hassles involved, specifically the diversity of items as listed in this article!

solutionyogi2• 17 years ago

I hope you realize that it doesn't really cost few cents. The taxes paid by us keeps USPS running. FYI: USPS lost 2.8 billion dollars in 2008.

jcl• 17 years ago

Of course, this was all back in 2000. I imagine the tolerance of unusual objects in the mail has changed somewhat in the interim.

aberman• 17 years ago

Reed Hastings tried this experiment in 1997 with DVDs. It worked, and he founded Netflix.

wglb4• 17 years ago

It has been fashionable to trash the post office (USPS) but growing up in a rural route area, I occasionally did a test by sending a letter to the grandparents with just the last name, the city name and the zip. Always got there. I probably could have just put the name, county and zip.

nostrademons• 17 years ago

I've heard that someone once addressed a letter to:

HILL

JOHN

MASS

And it got there. See if you can figure out the intended recipient - it took me a good half hour. Spoilers at http://www.randomhouse.com/features/billbryson/bb_title/disp...

codyrobbins• 17 years ago

I once mailed a postcard from Honolulu addressed only to

  Michaelangelo McKasty
  Albany, New York

and it never arrived. I find it highly unlikely there is more than one Michaelangelo McKasty in Albany. I assume the USPS clerks in Albany are somewhat more disenchanted with their jobs than the ones in Andover, and just threw the postcard away.

ars• 17 years ago

You can put just the zip and the P.O. box number and it'll get there.

psadauskas2• 17 years ago

The zip+4 uniquely identifies every address in the US. We're probably nearing a billion addresses, though, I wonder what happens after that?

wglb4• 17 years ago

Well, this was before the +4, and the official address was Rural Route #.

andyking• 17 years ago

There's a picture in my local paper this week of an envelope. It's addressed simply to:

The editor of the local paper

Congleton

Apparently, it arrived at the offices of the Congleton Chronicle without an issue.

johnohara• 17 years ago

Article has 2000 copyright -- Powered by Wordpress. Has Wordpress been going strong 8 years, or more?

jonknee• 17 years ago

No, but people are able to upgrade their content management systems. The internet wasn't around in 1900, but you can read news articles from that period just fine on NYTimes.com.

patio11• 17 years ago

I know how much the Japanese Post Office will put up with, because the US Social Security Administration can't handle a mail merge:

"Patrick McKenzie $CITY, Japan"

is deliverable.

olliesaunders2• 17 years ago

Page seems to be a 404 now. Any chance of a new link?

olliesaunders2• 17 years ago

Hm, working again. :-)

How Much Will the Post Office Put Up With?

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