If a snail mail without a from address is failed to deliver, where does it go? Who keeps it?

Question

I know it could happen for various reasons. What if there's a valuable item in there?

Answer 1

Dead letters office. I belive it becomes property of the US postal service and they do what they want with it. According to www.usps.com if it is undeliverable first class with no return address, it is discarded.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

It is held in the sorting office for a determined period and then incinerated. This is rare as most businesses have return addresses and If you post a letter you would normally know exactly where you were gonna send it before you posted it so that the recipient was there. If the items enclosed were valuable it wouldn't be advisable to send without insuring the item and once again putting a return address on it. If someone was foolish enough to do this then I guess the item would be kept by the postal officer who opens the letter. Moral of the story...ALWAYS use a return address.

Answer 4

WASHINGTON — Return To Sender (RTS) Mail. It's labor-intensive and time-consuming to process nixie mail. Two areas — Eastern and Southeast — are doing something about that.

They both have implemented breakthrough productivity initiatives to reduce manual processing of RTS mail.

The Eastern Area is applying a yellow sticker to each RTS mailpiece and checking off the endorsement.

The Southeast Area is consolidating RTS mail by endorsements, processing it on automation machinery and spraying the "reason for return" endorsements in red ink on the envelope. The endorsement is located above the delivery address and below the stamped area, on the right side of the envelope.

The RTS mail will say "Return To Sender" in red ink followed by one of these endorsements: "Undeliverable as Addressed," "Attempted Not Known," "Insufficient Address," "No Such Number" or "For Reason Shown."

If it says "For Reason Shown," a handwritten explanation will appear underneath.

USPS Engineering is reviewing some minor optical character reader lift kit modifications needed to support the Southeast Area initiative. Following this review, and further evaluation, additional information will be provided to field employees. For now, it's important to educate field managers, clerks and carriers on the new RTS endorsement formats.

Questions? Contact Gaye Hirz, Field Operations Standardization Development, at 202-268-4120 or [e-mail].

Answer 5

I was told that it goes back to the post office closest to the delivery point and is put into an "undeliverable" bin. I don't know how accurate that is. I'm pretty sure that at some point, the post office probably destroys the "undeliverable" bin ... but I wouldn't know how often that is or if that's completely accurate. I only know that they have such a bin for "undeliverable" items.

Answer 6

it comes to my house. and thus most of my weekends are full as i rummage through all of them for any good stuff..