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I'm sure it depends a bit on the delivery and sorting offices involved. The UK (I'm an ex-pat) seems to be WAY better than the US at this - it seems they really

I'm sure it depends a bit on the delivery and sorting offices involved. The UK (I'm an ex-pat) seems to be WAY better than the US at this - it seems they really want to deliver the mail and make an effort to do so, vs here in the US where it's almost the opposite - like they are looking for any excuse NOT to deliver. I had one returned to sender since the post office wouldn't figure the missing town from the zip code! I've read stories of letters to rural areas in UK where "so & so, sheepstown" is enough to get it delivered since the carrier knew who so & so was. As a kid in the UK I remember once asking for a refund on a can of hot-dogs that was one short, by sending a note on a greasy chinese take-out lid without even adding a stamp to it. The post office delivered it, and I got my refund!

michaelt 4y ago
> I had one returned to sender since the post office wouldn't figure the missing town from the zip code! Well, here in the UK the norm (for non-commercial mail) is not to include a return address on the outside of the envelope. To return something to the sender, they have to open it and hope they find an address inside. Much easier to just deliver it!
- lmm 4y ago
  > Well, here in the UK the norm (for non-commercial mail) is not to include a return address on the outside of the envelope. Huh? I was always taught to put your address on the back.
  - tokamak-teapot 4y ago
    Yes, I always put my address on the back of parcels (who sends letters?). I also always use the short form: house number and post code. Is this a good method? No idea. Decades of sending parcels. None failed to arrive, so no attempts to return to sender.
simmonmt 4y ago
This Tom Scott video shows some of the surprising (to me) lengths to which the USPS does go to figure out the right address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxCha4Kez9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxCha4Kez9c Obviously this doesn't apply to your case, but I certainly didn't think they'd have a national center for decoding terrible handwriting.
- HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
  Interesting, but you'd think that even these OCR fallout cases could be automated by neural net (I'd expect super-human performance on a task like this), especially since they have the training data right there. It's cool how well integrated this is with the sorting centers where each mail piece actually is, so that the cases they handle essentially flow thru (with a retry attempt) as normal. I've got to wonder why my piece with missing city but 100% legible otherwise-complete address including ZIP was still returned to sender. Seems it may have been policy for a certain class of mail (this was international registered, with a tracking number printed on it). In this case, to make matters worse, despite having themselves returned it to overseas sender, they then kept on sending me updates on their failure to locate it when I asked them to track it!
etothepii 4y ago
A Royal Mail letter posted without a stamp would likely lead to an insufficient postage card being delivered which would require the postage + £1 attaching to it for the letter to be released.

michaelt 4y ago

> I had one returned to sender since the post office wouldn't figure the missing town from the zip code! Well, here in the UK the norm (for non-commercial mail) is not to include a return address on the outside of the envelope. To return something to the sender, they have to open it and hope they find an address inside. Much easier to just deliver it!

lmm 4y ago
> Well, here in the UK the norm (for non-commercial mail) is not to include a return address on the outside of the envelope. Huh? I was always taught to put your address on the back.
- tokamak-teapot 4y ago
  Yes, I always put my address on the back of parcels (who sends letters?). I also always use the short form: house number and post code. Is this a good method? No idea. Decades of sending parcels. None failed to arrive, so no attempts to return to sender.

simmonmt 4y ago

This Tom Scott video shows some of the surprising (to me) lengths to which the USPS does go to figure out the right address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxCha4Kez9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxCha4Kez9c Obviously this doesn't apply to your case, but I certainly didn't think they'd have a national center for decoding terrible handwriting.

HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
Interesting, but you'd think that even these OCR fallout cases could be automated by neural net (I'd expect super-human performance on a task like this), especially since they have the training data right there. It's cool how well integrated this is with the sorting centers where each mail piece actually is, so that the cases they handle essentially flow thru (with a retry attempt) as normal. I've got to wonder why my piece with missing city but 100% legible otherwise-complete address including ZIP was still returned to sender. Seems it may have been policy for a certain class of mail (this was international registered, with a tracking number printed on it). In this case, to make matters worse, despite having themselves returned it to overseas sender, they then kept on sending me updates on their failure to locate it when I asked them to track it!

etothepii 4y ago

A Royal Mail letter posted without a stamp would likely lead to an insufficient postage card being delivered which would require the postage + £1 attaching to it for the letter to be released.