Tip for posting with large letters

[purplemon18]

I recently had my local postal carrier knock on my door to tell me that he kept getting several of my items every day that the automated systems had mis-directed back to me because of the return address. He had to keep sending them back again.

Amusingly, I think he came expecting a fight, like we would blame him or Aust post. He was probably quite relieved to discover otherwise when we thanked him profusely for letting us know.

He also had no idea what the problem was and even said that we were addressing our mail correctly.

In May I got 9 orders that had been marked by customers as late delivery. That number is fairly consistant every month and I hadn't worried about it because it's never near the 5% limit. I figured it was either normal for a certain percentage to be late or impatient customers.

I use pre-printed labels to save time, and used to put them on the back of the envelope. To solve my problem I tried putting them on the front, top,left, like business letters from the bank. That didn't work either.

Upon closer inspection of the business envelopes, I noticed that the return address is not formatted properly and they just put everything on 1 or 2 lines. So if you are having the same problem with late deliveries, try reformatting the return address.

In june I only had 1 item marked as late delivery by the customer. Last time I spoke to my postal carrier, he said that it seems to be fixed. However that was not long after I changed the labels, so I am only 90% sure it worked.

Examples:

Normal envelope address format looks like this:

Joe Bloggs

21 First St

Coogee NSW 2133

Australia

Business envelope return addresses look like this:

Joe Bloggs 21 First St Coogee NSW 2133 Australia

[davewil1964]

I use a 3 line ink stamp in the block on the reverse of the envelope that says 'sender'.

I haven't had any problems doing it that way.

[*tippy*toes*]

I address my large letters like:

TO:

Joe Bloggs

21 Something Street

SOMETOWN NSW 1234

On the back I write:

FROM:

Jane Bloggs

36 Another Street

ANOTHERPLACE NSW 2314

I have never been marked as late postage. I make sure the TO and FROM are in capitals and underlined. I hand write my large letters, so I ensure it's obvious.

If I hand write a parcel label, I do the same thing. I know the average person knows that the address is where it's going, but I assume no one does, so spell it out for them. It takes 2 seconds to add TO and FROM on the envelope/label and as I said, I've never had a late postage defect.

[heihachi_73]

Always put "From" on the back. And yes, computers are only as smart as people make them and they can't distinguish the back from the front regardless of the fact that the stamps are a dead giveaway of being the front of an envelope. If the envelope has postcode boxes on it, make sure to also write the postcode in the boxes even if it is already printed with the address, it makes it a lot easier to sort things over looking at one square inch of 10pt Arial in the middle of a large envelope.

[glenbankloel]

Yep always write FROM on the backs of our envelopes.

Gotta keep the KISS principle in mind all the time!!!

[medalsbadgespatches]

I usually put a large cross through the return address on parcels. My local PO said sometimes the return addresss is picked up as the delivery address. The large cross must disrupt the scanner somehow.

[brerrabbit585]

I was told by my PO to do the same thing when I was posting small parcels where it was hard to tell the back from the front.

[purplemon18]

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@medalsbadgespatches wrote:

I usually put a large cross through the return address on parcels. My local PO said sometimes the return addresss is picked up as the delivery address. The large cross must disrupt the scanner somehow.

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Ah yes, that would work too. Rather than disrupt though, the scanner has probably been programmed to ignore addresses that have been crossed out.

[go-tazz]

I've always put the buyers details in the middle of the envelope in sizeable letters with the To: in front of it and my

address in smaller letters with From: on the back and the top left section of the envelope.

I've never had a problem doing it that way.

When I first started that's what my PO recommended as the scanner will pick on on the larger lettters as being

the To: address.