Just because it fits in an envelope it's NOT a letter...

Recently I mailed some seeds in an envelope and wrote "please hand process". I put 52 cents' worth of stamps. Normally I would stick it in my mailbox and let carrier Kim take it away. Up to recently, that always worked w/o incident.

I had to go to the P.O. on another matter and decided to take the above envelope w/me. Counter person weighed it and told me I owed about 70+ cents. He explained that the P.O. was losing money on people mailing non-letter items in envelopes, so in order to control losses, a "bulky" envelope is now considered a parcel. According to the rep, if it is not perfectly flat, the envelope rates DO NOT apply.

Maybe most of you already knew this but I didn't.

Bummer! I mail seeds in a padded envelope, and as long as it fits through Canada Post's letterbox-shaped measuring device, it goes at letter rate.

maybe the operative word is "bulky". If i doesn't go thru that letterbox measuring device, then it's a parcel.

What did they mean by "perfectly flat", I wonder? Unless the laws of physics are different for mail, an envelope must have a third dimension, depth, which is measurable. Does your Post Office not have an offical ruling on what thickness an envelope must be in order to qualify as a parcel rather than a letter? Or is your local Postmaster making the rules up as he/she goes?

I am lucky that this country post office that I frequent is staffed w/ friendly, reasonable personnel, so I'm not concerned about them hassling me for fun. I understood him to mean that if the envelope cannot be processed by machine, then it's not an envelope, it is a parcel.

You are lucky to have nice Post Office folks! However, I'd advise checking the US Post Office website for the official rules, just to be sure. When I lived in the US, I used to go to different Post Offices depending on what I was mailing where: one would give better rates for domestic parcels, the other for overseas!

Would the former letters/parcels arrive at the destination with postage due?

PO is losing money but that ain't where... LOL

This has to do with the new postal rates that became effective in May. The rates are based on weight and thickness. I work for a publishing company and it's caused many problems with our shipping. From what I gather not all the post offices are charging the same price.

Vossner, they have had this rule here for at least 5 years here. I was told that not even a sample of cloth is allowed to be mailed as a letter.

So anything that is not a letter pays the parcel fee and this starts with a minimum of up to 500 gr at the equivalent of almost US$20.00 (no matter if the mailer only weighs 10 gr).

Now you know why I pack my seeds the way I do? LOL.

Hugs,

Ursula

things that make you go 'hmmm.'

My PO occasionally gets out the little template-measurer-thingy and if the envie won't fit through the hole, then it's considered a non-machinable item, requiring the NM surcharge. Funny that you mention that not all POs are following their own rules/prices.

*GRRRR* always irks me how each office treats you and prices differently than another!

All I know is you can fold 5 pieces of standard 8.5x11" paper into an envelope for the cost of one 41 cent stamp.

Sometimes I get mail sent BACK to me, "not enough postage" and sometimes I GET mail from other people with another envelope that says, "postage due ___ cents, please leave the money in this envelope for your mail carrier."

I love to leave pennies.

My carrier is very nice, she has even made return trips just to accommodate me or other neighbors. The substitutes are generally pretty good also. But, every now and then, there will be a creep in the lot. This is a true story about what happened to me recently in another town's post office.

I was mailing a parcel and took a label like that one shown in the link to write addy info. I went to the trouble of cutting any reference to USPS/priority mail, form#, as I knew I was not using the label for priority mail. The lady weighs my package and tells me the postage for PM. I tell her it is a parcel and she proceeds to tell me she knew the label I had used was the PM label so she was obligated by law to charge me accordingly. I paid the extra postage not without wondering what kinda of horrible morning this poor woman had had, that she felt compelled to take it out on me.

It is true that I had taken a PM label for parcel addressing, but to anybody's naked eye, I had converted it into a plain, white, stick on address label. Go figure.

http://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10152&storeId=10001&categoryId=13357&productId=11655&langId=-1

We used to have an employee at our little country post office who always asked if there was a letter inside the parcel, and of course there always was. So she charged extra! Thankfully, that woman retired a few years ago.

Oh I have heard that one kywoods---not supposed to mail a letter within a package. How absurd!

An individual magazine sent first class is taking 3-4 weeks to be delivered within the US. We mailed a flat rate priority envelope and it took 5 days to arrive at another city in NJ and it was empty. Then they sent it back to us - that was almost $5.00 to mail and it didn't even get out of the state.

The only think I'm sure of is that the USPS will deliver my bills to me.