Return to sender. Address unknown.

/that should do it - how long until the Royal Mail is as far under as the USPS?

talulahgosh: that would never happen in the us. they'd just throw it out. (after checking the envelope for money, if they were smart).

The USPS dead-letter office works pretty hard to get stuff where they're supposed to go. I've seen examples with just a first name and a zip code delivered.

Duzbuns Hopsit pfarmerrsc

talulahgosh: marcpen: My dad was overseas organiser for the RSPCA. Back in Blighty he once got a letter sent from Barbados addressed to:

Mr (surname)
Animal Man
England

/true story

CSB!!
care to share what the letter read?


"Please send me all your new or slightly-used goats."

walkerhound: Return to sender. Address unknown.

/that should do it - how long until the Royal Mail is as far under as the USPS?

Never. The Royal Mail doesn't have a government that wants them to fail.

Chupacabra Sandwich: My favorite real address I encountered in four years at UPS:
The double-wide behind wal-mart, Show Low, Arizona.

Seems specific enough. It's the only doublewide back there. The Tuff-Shed is actually a meth lab.

walkerhound: Return to sender. Address unknown.

/that should do it - how long until the Royal Mail is as far under as the USPS?

you get the same, Royal Mail is being/is bankrupted by pension articles. I think the path towards privatisation for Royal Mail will be smoother than for USPS though.

Link (new window)
from the wiki "The Postal Services Act 2011 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act enables the UK government to sell shares in the Royal Mail to private investors and includes the possible mutualisation of the Post Office. It allows for the transfer of regulatory responsibility from Postcomm to the communications regulator Ofcom."

talulahgosh: that would never happen in the us. they'd just throw it out. (after checking the envelope for money, if they were smart).

I just recently got a package that was addressed to me with my name, house number, and zip code on it - no street. On the outside of the package someone had written "Try !". So someone at the post office made the effort to figure it out. Which was nice because the package was a toy for my Secret Angel charity for Christmas.

Oops, that should have said "Try (my street name)". Forgot about HTML tags and stuff.

L33t Squirrel: I May Be Crazy But...: Duzbuns Hopsit pfarmerrsc

[upload.wikimedia.org image 300x410]

Came here to make a Going Postal reference, and am happy to see that I was beaten to the punch.

Try to be a little quicker on the trigger next time

Don't worry. He's got it covered.

But, can they deliver it faster than you could drive it there yourself?

/Just watched that episode last night
//*Spoiler alert!* No, you can't

no talent ass clown: L33t Squirrel: I May Be Crazy But...: Duzbuns Hopsit pfarmerrsc

[upload.wikimedia.org image 300x410]

Came here to make a Going Postal reference, and am happy to see that I was beaten to the punch.

Try to be a little quicker on the trigger next time

That's not what she said.

marcpen: My dad was overseas organiser for the RSPCA. Back in Blighty he once got a letter sent from Barbados addressed to:

Mr (surname)
Animal Man
England

/true story


I hope my letter to you arrives.

To:

'Marcpen'
Bullshiat Man
England

no talent ass clown: L33t Squirrel: I May Be Crazy But...: Duzbuns Hopsit pfarmerrsc

[upload.wikimedia.org image 300x410]

Came here to make a Going Postal reference, and am happy to see that I was beaten to the punch.

Try to be a little quicker on the trigger next time

Mrs. Cake, is that you?

Take that, email, twitter, facebook and every other form of electronic communication. Bask in the glory that is human intervention!

talulahgosh: that would never happen in the us. they'd just throw it out. (after checking the envelope for money, if they were smart).

I dunno. I got a Christmas card that my a friend sent to me that was severely misaddressed: wrong street name, wrong street number. And the funny part was it was delivered to my work address.

talulahgosh: that would never happen in the us. they'd just throw it out. (after checking the envelope for money, if they were smart).

I once sent a postcard with only a name and a state because I couldn't remember the rest of the address. It made it. Took longer than usual, but given the person I was sending it to has a name unique enough I probably could have left off the state and it would have made it...

joeflood: I had a package delivered to me with just my name and zip code. One other bit of fun in the US is to address it with only a ZIP+4 postnet barcode.

Might not work depending on the area. My zip+4 is "74066-RFD"

Local legend has it that a letter addressed to "Kenny the Queer" (small town with an odd sense of humor) was actually delivered. I think it had the correct zipcode.


21654 Oxford, MD.

I think it was a wedding invitation? around 1994? He was a buyer for a seafood distributor?

Cool and odd person. Town is about 750 folks in Summer time.

walkerhound: /that should do it - how long until the Royal Mail is as far under as the USPS?

It does help that the Royal Mail charges what would be 72 US cents to deliver. On a rather small territory. The USPS charges (because of a political rate-board that won't let them charge more) less than the postal services of Mexico or Turkey. And our bulk-rate mail is at even more of a discount compared to anywhere else in the developed world.

Let's all sent postcards to "Drew Curtis, Nutsack Squirrel Lane, Lexington, KY"

Let's all sent postcards to "Drew Curtis, Nutsack Squirrel Lane, Lexington, KY"

just added to the xmas label print batch

talulahgosh: that would never happen in the us. they'd just throw it out. (after checking the envelope for money, if they were smart).

Not necessarily, at least not several years ago. I've had one delivered without address but with name and city, but it's not the largest town ever.

I can't get my post office to deliver things to me that are correctly labeled.

ritalinchild 54: Local legend has it that a letter addressed to "Kenny the Queer" (small town with an odd sense of humor) was actually delivered. I think it had the correct zipcode.


21654 Oxford, MD.

I think it was a wedding invitation? around 1994? He was a buyer for a seafood distributor?

Cool and odd person. Town is about 750 folks in Summer time.

Emily Post disapproves.

My grandpa once received a letter that was addressed with just his name. The letter carrier at the sending end had noticed the lack of address, but recognized the name and remembered the town and state from earlier letters from the same sender. With town and state added to the address, it sailed through the postal service, with a bit more information added each time it was handled. Made it there in less than a week.

\CSB

Clearly, the only way that James Carrigan of Glasgow is going to get his card is through the persistence and pluck of the Royal Mail. It's not like Britain has the internet yet, or anything.

it's been done (new window)

talulahgosh: that would never happen in the us. they'd just throw it out. (after checking the envelope for money, if they were smart).

You'd be surprised.

talulahgosh: that would never happen in the us. they'd just throw it out. (after checking the envelope for money, if they were smart).

You're not kidding. The farking post office where I live couldn't figure out what to do with a package sent to me with my street address instead of my PO box because Amazon won't accept PO Boxes as valid addresses for some reason. All they would have had to do is look for my name in their records since my street address had to be listed on the PO box application, but it was easier to just mark it "return to sender."

ritalinchild 54: Local legend has it that a letter addressed to "Kenny the Queer" (small town with an odd sense of humor) was actually delivered. I think it had the correct zipcode.


21654 Oxford, MD.

I think it was a wedding invitation? around 1994? He was a buyer for a seafood distributor?

Cool and odd person. Town is about 750 folks in Summer time.

Normally if you have a zip code on it, it will get there. Assuming of course a small enough population. The letter just gets sent on to the post office that handles that zip code. Then they look for other mail bearing the same name (or ask the carriers if anyone knows the nickname) and deliver it to that address. Doesn't work in really dense areas, but it does work in rural areas. A name and full zip will normally get it there every time.

For two weeks my whole apartment building did not get any mail because the postal carrier was "too short" to put letters in the mailboxes (note: my mailbox is waist high). So our mail just backed up in the Post Office until enough of us complained. Now some other postal carrier had to pick up our area. So, to quote Liz Lemon, "women should not be postal carriers."

Osomatic: Hey, the Royal Mail once delivered a letter from me to Sir Terry Pratchett, addressed to:

Sir Terry Pratchett
Writer
Wiltshire, England

He got it. I know for a fact because he wrote me back.

I'm sure the whole "Knight of the Realm" thing narrowed the search window down some.

When I was a grad student I'd done some field work in Australia. The car rental company I'd used later sent out Christmas cards to all its customers, but was using a mailing label just high enough for a three-line address, so the card addressed to me had my name, my office building address, and the name of the research center (without university name), and nothing else. The card still made it to New York in 10 days, the usual transit time for air/sea mail from Australia. Postal workers in both countries must have made an effort to look up the research center because no one wrote anything on the envelope.


On the other hand, I know of someone in India who tried to send a package addressed to "Prof. X, University of Columbia" when they meant Columbia University, and the package clearly took a detour to Bogota, Colombia on its way. Oops.

WOOD
JEFF
MASS


Which of course is addressed to Jeff Underwood, Andover, Mass.

I sent a Christmas wish list to:

Santa Claus
North Pole
Top of the world

And I knew they delivered it, because on Dec. 23, my third grade teacher died in a drive-by shooting.