Testing the USPS [Experiment #001]

    Recently an idea struck me. Because I am curious whether or not they would send certain packages or envelopes under certain conditions, the United States Postal Service (USPS) needs some testing. My first test was this: Send an envelope with insufficient postage accompanied by a coin to make up for it.

    I decided to start out small and work up to more outrageous tests. If you have any ideas on testing the USPS let me know, I will probably try it as long as it’s not harmful or illegal, obviously.

1. I place insufficient postage accompanied by a quarter. I taped the quarter in place of where the other stamp should have gone. I did not use a return address so that they could not send it back, even though they really are sending it back to me, they just don’t know it! Then I wrote a note on the side explaining my circumstances.The note under the postage says (after I took this photo I added “-thanks” at the end):
   

   Sorry, I didn’t have another stamp but had to send this before the mail was picked up. Here is the change for it.

   (click images for larger view)
   
2. Just to be sure they did not grow suspicious, open the envelope and find nothing, I placed a piece of important documentation.
3. I then sent the envelope off in one of those big blue mailboxes. To avoid any extra suspicion I sent it from another city, Fargo.
4. Usually an envelope arrives at its destination within about three days, however, I did not expect to find this one. But I did. Here’s the proof! When I sent this envelope to myself I did not think it would succeed. In the case of it succeeding I pictured the quarter removed by a postal worker and a stamp in place of it. As you can see in this photo the quarter was left the envelope throughout its travels. The printing over the postage was scattered into a bunch of little specks because there was too much space between the paper and the printer.

Posted by flipjargendy March 2008

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