General Chat

I reused a stiffened envelope last week to send something to a very elderly relative- today the orginal and replacement arrived together.

I haven't yet been down to the Post Office to interrogate them - she was told I shouldn't have reused that sort of envelope. Has anyone heard of this prohibition?

why not ?? if all info from previous use had been removed and the right postage etc was reapplied i cant see what the problem is .

i have reused large jiffy bags with no problem

I have wondered if the label style stamp came off. It is a bit difficult to communicate as my relative is very deaf but she implied one of the problems was that I had put labels over the old address :-S :-S :-S :-S

The whole thing was made worse as I had to tell her it was on the way and she could be distressed when she got it. At long last we had the Red Cross papers for her father (WW1). She had never really know what had happened to him - but now she understands and she feels better about him.

I reuse Jiffy bags all the time..I send them mainly to my grandchildren in Oz,,,filled with things of course,though I like to choose small prezzies because of the cost of postage.
I cut them down as well,as long as they are well sealed.

I re-use envelopes and put labels over the old address. Could it be that one of the labels had come off and there were two post codes showing? As far as I know we are encouraged to re-use envelopes.

I always use second-hand envelopes/jiffy bags. If the old labels will come off easily, I remove them, otherwise I cover them up with new sticky labels. I have never yet been told that I shouldn't do it.

I believe it's called re-cycling --- and is very much in favour at the moment. :-)

The address under the labels was the same as the return address.

But what I find most odd as the one posted on Thursday of last week arrived in the same post as the one I posted yesterday. I don't yet know if the 'stamp' came off but if it was wrong to reuse the envelope how come it was eventually delivered. My relative even went to the sorting office in the heat yesterday to see if it was being held there for some reason......

Don't forget - it was accepted by MY post office for posting.

I reuse the pre paid envelopes of companies sending me forms to apply for their credit cards, they eventually get the message that I'm not interested when they see it is the blank forms and they paid for the privilege. :-D

I take a marker and cross out the old address and then put paper over top..

Allowed here but then again I don't know what you Europeans do

As Andysmum said, it is called recycling maybe it is a new concept over there :-D

Lets see - take any BLUE box and put three arrows on it going in sort of a circle and put paper in it. Then every two weeks drag it to the curb and the next morning the recycling fairies take it away. :-D ;-)

Somewhere I have a rubber stamp I bought years ago, that says

THIS ENVELOPE HAS BEEN RECYCLED

:-)

On line now I see a Rotarians newsletter from 1991 (about when I got mine) with an article on 'Office Ecology' that says

'Get a rubber stamp that says, "This envelope is being reused as part of our company's environmental commitment".'

Recycling has gone of style I think. The young don't seem to like 'reused' furniture, clothing, envelopes ... when incomes are higher and things are cheap to buy new, why bother?

Or put them in the recycle bin to be recycled ... as RMS says, the recycling fairies :-D

instead of taking personal responsibility and reusing ... or reducing in the first place ...

I recycle as much as possible.

I think the same jiffy bag went back and forward between my mum-in-law, my mum and me for years.

Plain envelopes, especially large ones & the ones with the window on them...........

Himself laughs, says it's my Scottish genes........ I cut them up, throw away the window part(into the recycle bin), and use the other two pieces for shopping lists & other notes. There's a huge collection of envelope bits in an empty tissue box (with the top cut off) on the kitchen bench.

I haven't bought a notepad for the kitchen for years!

Well, now I know that the label style stamp was still on it AND "an official Single USe only on it"

Looks like I do need to pop down to our local PO between rain showers to ask what was going on.

That single use only 'label' is for the price of posting label/stamp I think, not the envelope.

It was raining on Monday so I emailed the PO rather than walk to the village. Here is the relevant bit of their reply:

"I would like to take this opportunity to advise you that reusing and envelope that already has a post mark is not acceptable. Normally when this problem arises, we would return the item back to the sender. I am sorry that the Post Office did not advise you that you can’t send an envelope that has already been used"

:-S

Well, how strange, I have never heard that before. Maybe that is because I always stick a label over a previous postmark.

Just cover the postmark as well as the address?
If the old postmark is visible it possibly confuses their electronic sorting machines.

I had become to think they thought I had re directed the envelope as the story my relative had was that my mistake was to cover the original address.

I had crossed through the old post mark and counter clerk put the stamp label on himself.

I wish all the versions were the same then I would really know what I had done wrong. Also their reply was addressed to 'Dear Nameslessone' even though I had signed off correctly.

(Maybe they just want us to keep buying new ones all the time ;-) )

I wonder if the error was that the stamped label came off or partly off. I sent one once that the labelled postmark came off and the recipient had to pay to collect it.

The original letter would have had the post code printed on the envelope in machine readable form when the letter was first received at the sorting office. This could be by way of a bar code applied by the sender or otherwise the receiving sorting office adds phosphor dots for this which were virtually invisible unless you know where to look.

I wonder if this was the problem resulting in the envelope being sent right back to your local office by the sorting system when it was picked up by a human who realized it was a reused envelope. This would also explain why one envelope was apparently lost in the system for a week.

I don't remember if there was a machine code but as I remember crossing through the postmark I assume that if there was I also crossed it out. The invisible dots would mean that most envelopes could not be reused.

However, the envelope was NOT sent back as per their own instructions. It was held and delivered to the recipient the day after she had made her own enquires at the local sorting office, where she was told it was NOT being held.

This is her comment after I sent her a copy of the PO reply " Certainly seems the right hand does not know what the left hand is supposed to do!" Very much my own thought as all explanations to us have been diferent.