Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
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It looks like they went "postal" on you.
Perhaps its better going postal on the mail, than on each other.
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They get me here in Dutchess county also..its more magic marker now then pen strokes !
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Seriously, I think a lot of Postal People hate us.
I was trying to explain to a counter clerk that I donate my used stamps to kid groups. I was in there trying to get them to stop or carrier from vandalizing our mail with his marker.
She blew up at me, something like 'All you so called stamp collectors! You are all crooks! You just want to reuse stamps!!' I got nowhere trying to report her. For years after that until she apparently retired I refused to go to her window, even when next in line. I think she seriously thought it was a big racket. God, the people USPS hires..
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"All you so called stamp collectors! You are all crooks! You just want to reuse stamps!!"
But think about that. If she honestly believed that, and hers was not an isolated opinion, perhaps tracking the origin of sharpie attacks could be correlated to something else, like popularity of Professional Wrestling. Who knows. It could be a great study into modern society!
The mind boggles.
Lars
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The first thing I noticed on your cover was the lack of a $0.00 PVI. I have learned to leave the top right corner of any cover blank for a PVI, even $0.00, when sending a decorated cover. That PVI tells downstream clerks that SOMEBODY in USPS calculated the postage and properly cancelled it. (At least my local USPS folks always hand cancel the stamps before they issue a PVI).
If you deposit any decorated cover into the mailstream instead of presenting it at the counter, you're asking for trouble (or a sharpie).
Lars
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""All you so called stamp collectors! You are all crooks! You just want to reuse stamps!!""
I'd love to see their training program! I'll bet it's all around fraud and loss prevention. When I was collecting New Jersey town cancels I kept running into clerks that refused to cancel my cover. One accused me of wanting a backdated cover to mail in a lottery win or something!
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To paraphrase the USPS mission statement,
"The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the correspondence of the people. "
There is nothing about the postal service supporting stamp collectors; it purpose is to allow people to correspondence with each other.
I fully understand how frustrating ‘marker monkeys’ can be. A while back I sent a nice parcel with a full pane of imperf stamps as postage only to have it canceled with a Sharpie marker. But they can cancel the stamps in any fashion they wish. I wonder if stamp collectors were upset when post services started using ‘killer cancels’ back in the 1800’s? Did revenue collectors get upset when firms used cut cancels on documents and their stamps? A lot of collector do not favor pen cancels on classic stamps but we all accept them as legitimate and period correct.
While the current pen cancels and big ugly markers might not look great, are they not a part of postal history?
Don
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Awe the beginning of a brand new collection...Let
s see...hmmm let
s call it.... 21st century Postal Cancellations
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"While the current pen cancels and big ugly markers might not look great, are they not a part of postal history? "
"hmmm let's call it.... 21st century Postal Cancellations Thumbs Down"
Do you think Scott will list all the colors??
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I've seen Michael's selling bandoleers in the "stamping" section of their stores.....
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"You just want to reuse stamps!"
I'm not supporting that postal clerk's bad attitude towards a customer, but her comment makes me think that perhaps she did not know that older stamps were still valid for postage (if they had not gone through the mail stream before). Once in a while when I see a new/different clerk at a counter, I get the question, "Can you still use those old stamps?"
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Interesting observations. A couple more thoughts...
I recently sent Michael###'s a package which he posted here as being similarly abused. But he said the next package arrived without any cancellations.
I have had a number of (mostly U.S. and Australia) members mention that my packages (almost always with 3-8 different commemorative stamps) arrived uncancelled.
And I have never received a package from an SoR member similarly/deliberately vandalized (one exception in 40 - from the U.S.).
My hypothesis is therefore: there is a segment of USPS employees who take it upon themselves to be sharpie-vigilantes for some reason.
If members are interested in tracking this, I'd be happy to receive their submissions via email and report back occasionally on findings (point of origin, destination, etc).
Dave.
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Perhaps it isn't apparent in the scan, but the stamps were all lightly hand canceled by the clerk in the Sharon Springs post office, which was very thoughtful. I assume that the sharpie wielder was a bit closer to Brooklyn. That said, I receive several "philatelic" pieces of mail every week, along with dozens of pieces with uncanceled stamps, and have never had any history of this before.
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Here is the imperf pane I mentioned in my post above.
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I'm sure there are some who philatelists; however, I think the "marker monkey" problem stems from insufficient instruction being provided to the letter carriers.
This is taken from the City Delivery Carriers Duties and Responsibilities handbook (M41):
"131.14 Do not remove stamps from mail or throw away or improperly dispose of mail. Line through uncanceled stamps (except on philatelic mail) to prevent re-use. Delivery Point Sequence mail may contain uncanceled stamps that will not be identified until the mail is being readied while performing street duties. These stamps should also be lined through (except on philatelic mail) to prevent re-use."
The parenthetical instructs carriers to not line through uncanceled stamps on philatelic mail but the handbook doesn't tell them how to treat those stamps or even how to determine what constitutes philatelic mail.
Looking at Don's image in the previous post, I'd be hard-pressed to consider that as being philatelic mail...
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09:46:00am
It is their job to protect the USPS revenue source. That is part of the job. Some do, some don't and a few seem to relish the opportunity to take out their unresolved sexual and emotional issues on a helpless envelope. But I'd like someone to explain in what way multiple strikes on an envelope from Britain that had some very nice Machin panes that clearly displayed circular date stamp cancellations protected the USPS revenue stream.
I've never tried to use a stamp bearing Queen Elizabeth's image to frank US mail, but were I to have done so I suspect that it would be returned for US postage.
Years ago, one of my grand daughters tried to mail a birthday card to me using a well cancelled UK X-mas stamp and some glue stick.
I am not sure whether it was the cancelled UK Xmas stamp, ( still firmly attached to its original torn envelope.) or her addressing it to "Grampa" and the house number in her six year old penmanship, that caused the mail man to leave it in the street side mail box ( My daughter and grand daughter lived with us at the time so it was more or less addressed to where she mailed it.) but she was thrilled to find it the next day's mail after school and bring it to me. But nonetheless it failed to transit the mail system.
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"These stamps should also be lined through (except on philatelic mail) to prevent re-use."
I think many USPS employees are listening, probably why I get a large number of philatelic envelopes and parcels with no cancellations. Those with a smattering of old stamps would be better off nicely cancelled rather than being face unused but without gum.
Someone else said that for envelopes, when using old stamps, you should use one low value recent stamp because that has the coating that the cancelling machine looks for... could that be why I get a lot of machinable pieces with no cancel?
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Then there is always the possibility that USPS has a lot of unbalanced people in their ranks. We've all heard the jokes bout 'going Postal' etc. It may be a stereotype but having worked as a Temp for them a couple Summers while in college, I can attest that there are an awful lot of crazies working there.
My visit to my local PO alluded to earlier was due to concerns about a carrier we had who took it upon himself to vandalize my mail. More than once I walked past him sitting in his van going through letters and defacing stamps. He also had some obsession about how our curbside box was not the 'right height' and was threatening to stop making deliveries. This sounds extreme but he was one factor in our deciding to move eventually, my wife was afraid of him.
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Snick, your story reminds me of my own from several years ago.
We live on a busy 2-lane thoroughfare that once was a country road. It now cuts through an old residential area. To the east of us are retail, a school and apartments. To the west are several blocks of residential lots where homes were built from the late '30s to the '50s. Of all the residential blocks, ours (possibly the oldest) is the only one where any residents needed to cross that busy street to get the mail from our mailboxes. Out of a few dozen homes, we're talking about four homes where we had to risk crossing that street six days a week to get our mail. It had probably been like this since our home was built in '39.
Two of our new neighbors decided to send a petition to the PO to get these four mailboxes moved to our side of the street. All four affected homeowners signed the petition, and the individual at USPS quickly responded with a rejection letter.
I had gotten to know our carrier and asked him about the situation. The petition authors had never talked to the carrier about the problem and he said he had always wondered why our four mailboxes were on the "wrong" side of the street.
I asked why he thought the request was rejected. He said it was simply a matter of having sent the request to the wrong individual. The rejection letter had come from someone who had nothing to do with such matters. The carrier gave me the name of the correct individual to contact. I sent that individual a letter and got a quick response saying they'd need to do an evaluation of the situation including the effect on the relevant route or routes. The carrier said it should be a slam dunk because it wouldn't materially affect his route, the only route that would be affected. He was right. The USPS did their study and a few weeks later they authorized all four homeowners to move our mailboxes to our side of the street.
The moral of the story: do a little research before contacting USPS and don't assume the response you get is from someone who cares or knows anything about the matter in question.
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keesindy,
I find it mind boggling that the USPS delivers your mail where they decide to deliver, whether that is where you live, or not.
Equally mind boggling; you couldn't just pull up your mailbox and plunk it down on your side of the road?!?
If you hadn't spoken to the carrier and gotten the right name to apply to, you could have just moved your houses across the street, so that the USPS would then be delivering the mail to where you live.
Isn't that what the payment for the stamp is for? To deliver to the address on the envelope, and not to the other side of the street?
But; yes I've seen the rural roads, secondary highways, etc with mailboxes on one side and houses on the other. I do understand their reasons.
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A question that also begs to be asked... when does USPS decide if your box is at the curb or mounted on your house. I live in a development and the boxes are at the curb. Last house I lived in... in fact the last two, the boxes were mounted on the wall outside the front door.
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We live at the end of a paved dead end county road and our mailbox is a mile up the road on the main highway. I asked for an application at the P.O. to request being able to move it to our front driveway. The Postmaster said I could submit it, but there was virtually no chance of it being approved. Actually, she said there wasn't a chance in hell, so I never have submitted it. I never put out going mail in the box, I always take it up to the P.O. window. The only other option is to get a box at the P.O.
WB
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The postal workers here in Brooklyn are hard at work. Even though this priority mail envelope was lightly cancel, and no doubt dry when it went to the post office in Sharron Springs, it arrived in my mailbox soaking wet, and zealously canceled with green marker. Fortunately the auction catalog it contained was alright.
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11:44:49am
re: Another Anti-Philatalist
It looks like they went "postal" on you.
Perhaps its better going postal on the mail, than on each other.
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
They get me here in Dutchess county also..its more magic marker now then pen strokes !
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this post
re: Another Anti-Philatalist
Seriously, I think a lot of Postal People hate us.
I was trying to explain to a counter clerk that I donate my used stamps to kid groups. I was in there trying to get them to stop or carrier from vandalizing our mail with his marker.
She blew up at me, something like 'All you so called stamp collectors! You are all crooks! You just want to reuse stamps!!' I got nowhere trying to report her. For years after that until she apparently retired I refused to go to her window, even when next in line. I think she seriously thought it was a big racket. God, the people USPS hires..
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
"All you so called stamp collectors! You are all crooks! You just want to reuse stamps!!"
But think about that. If she honestly believed that, and hers was not an isolated opinion, perhaps tracking the origin of sharpie attacks could be correlated to something else, like popularity of Professional Wrestling. Who knows. It could be a great study into modern society!
The mind boggles.
Lars
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
The first thing I noticed on your cover was the lack of a $0.00 PVI. I have learned to leave the top right corner of any cover blank for a PVI, even $0.00, when sending a decorated cover. That PVI tells downstream clerks that SOMEBODY in USPS calculated the postage and properly cancelled it. (At least my local USPS folks always hand cancel the stamps before they issue a PVI).
If you deposit any decorated cover into the mailstream instead of presenting it at the counter, you're asking for trouble (or a sharpie).
Lars
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
""All you so called stamp collectors! You are all crooks! You just want to reuse stamps!!""
I'd love to see their training program! I'll bet it's all around fraud and loss prevention. When I was collecting New Jersey town cancels I kept running into clerks that refused to cancel my cover. One accused me of wanting a backdated cover to mail in a lottery win or something!
Login to Like
this post
re: Another Anti-Philatalist
To paraphrase the USPS mission statement,
"The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the correspondence of the people. "
There is nothing about the postal service supporting stamp collectors; it purpose is to allow people to correspondence with each other.
I fully understand how frustrating ‘marker monkeys’ can be. A while back I sent a nice parcel with a full pane of imperf stamps as postage only to have it canceled with a Sharpie marker. But they can cancel the stamps in any fashion they wish. I wonder if stamp collectors were upset when post services started using ‘killer cancels’ back in the 1800’s? Did revenue collectors get upset when firms used cut cancels on documents and their stamps? A lot of collector do not favor pen cancels on classic stamps but we all accept them as legitimate and period correct.
While the current pen cancels and big ugly markers might not look great, are they not a part of postal history?
Don
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07:11:15am
re: Another Anti-Philatalist
Awe the beginning of a brand new collection...Let
s see...hmmm let
s call it.... 21st century Postal Cancellations
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this post
re: Another Anti-Philatalist
"While the current pen cancels and big ugly markers might not look great, are they not a part of postal history? "
"hmmm let's call it.... 21st century Postal Cancellations Thumbs Down"
Do you think Scott will list all the colors??
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
I've seen Michael's selling bandoleers in the "stamping" section of their stores.....
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09:53:11am
re: Another Anti-Philatalist
"You just want to reuse stamps!"
I'm not supporting that postal clerk's bad attitude towards a customer, but her comment makes me think that perhaps she did not know that older stamps were still valid for postage (if they had not gone through the mail stream before). Once in a while when I see a new/different clerk at a counter, I get the question, "Can you still use those old stamps?"
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
Interesting observations. A couple more thoughts...
I recently sent Michael###'s a package which he posted here as being similarly abused. But he said the next package arrived without any cancellations.
I have had a number of (mostly U.S. and Australia) members mention that my packages (almost always with 3-8 different commemorative stamps) arrived uncancelled.
And I have never received a package from an SoR member similarly/deliberately vandalized (one exception in 40 - from the U.S.).
My hypothesis is therefore: there is a segment of USPS employees who take it upon themselves to be sharpie-vigilantes for some reason.
If members are interested in tracking this, I'd be happy to receive their submissions via email and report back occasionally on findings (point of origin, destination, etc).
Dave.
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
Perhaps it isn't apparent in the scan, but the stamps were all lightly hand canceled by the clerk in the Sharon Springs post office, which was very thoughtful. I assume that the sharpie wielder was a bit closer to Brooklyn. That said, I receive several "philatelic" pieces of mail every week, along with dozens of pieces with uncanceled stamps, and have never had any history of this before.
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
Here is the imperf pane I mentioned in my post above.
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
I'm sure there are some who philatelists; however, I think the "marker monkey" problem stems from insufficient instruction being provided to the letter carriers.
This is taken from the City Delivery Carriers Duties and Responsibilities handbook (M41):
"131.14 Do not remove stamps from mail or throw away or improperly dispose of mail. Line through uncanceled stamps (except on philatelic mail) to prevent re-use. Delivery Point Sequence mail may contain uncanceled stamps that will not be identified until the mail is being readied while performing street duties. These stamps should also be lined through (except on philatelic mail) to prevent re-use."
The parenthetical instructs carriers to not line through uncanceled stamps on philatelic mail but the handbook doesn't tell them how to treat those stamps or even how to determine what constitutes philatelic mail.
Looking at Don's image in the previous post, I'd be hard-pressed to consider that as being philatelic mail...
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
28 Apr 2017
09:46:00am
re: Another Anti-Philatalist
It is their job to protect the USPS revenue source. That is part of the job. Some do, some don't and a few seem to relish the opportunity to take out their unresolved sexual and emotional issues on a helpless envelope. But I'd like someone to explain in what way multiple strikes on an envelope from Britain that had some very nice Machin panes that clearly displayed circular date stamp cancellations protected the USPS revenue stream.
I've never tried to use a stamp bearing Queen Elizabeth's image to frank US mail, but were I to have done so I suspect that it would be returned for US postage.
Years ago, one of my grand daughters tried to mail a birthday card to me using a well cancelled UK X-mas stamp and some glue stick.
I am not sure whether it was the cancelled UK Xmas stamp, ( still firmly attached to its original torn envelope.) or her addressing it to "Grampa" and the house number in her six year old penmanship, that caused the mail man to leave it in the street side mail box ( My daughter and grand daughter lived with us at the time so it was more or less addressed to where she mailed it.) but she was thrilled to find it the next day's mail after school and bring it to me. But nonetheless it failed to transit the mail system.
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
"These stamps should also be lined through (except on philatelic mail) to prevent re-use."
I think many USPS employees are listening, probably why I get a large number of philatelic envelopes and parcels with no cancellations. Those with a smattering of old stamps would be better off nicely cancelled rather than being face unused but without gum.
Someone else said that for envelopes, when using old stamps, you should use one low value recent stamp because that has the coating that the cancelling machine looks for... could that be why I get a lot of machinable pieces with no cancel?
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
Then there is always the possibility that USPS has a lot of unbalanced people in their ranks. We've all heard the jokes bout 'going Postal' etc. It may be a stereotype but having worked as a Temp for them a couple Summers while in college, I can attest that there are an awful lot of crazies working there.
My visit to my local PO alluded to earlier was due to concerns about a carrier we had who took it upon himself to vandalize my mail. More than once I walked past him sitting in his van going through letters and defacing stamps. He also had some obsession about how our curbside box was not the 'right height' and was threatening to stop making deliveries. This sounds extreme but he was one factor in our deciding to move eventually, my wife was afraid of him.
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
Snick, your story reminds me of my own from several years ago.
We live on a busy 2-lane thoroughfare that once was a country road. It now cuts through an old residential area. To the east of us are retail, a school and apartments. To the west are several blocks of residential lots where homes were built from the late '30s to the '50s. Of all the residential blocks, ours (possibly the oldest) is the only one where any residents needed to cross that busy street to get the mail from our mailboxes. Out of a few dozen homes, we're talking about four homes where we had to risk crossing that street six days a week to get our mail. It had probably been like this since our home was built in '39.
Two of our new neighbors decided to send a petition to the PO to get these four mailboxes moved to our side of the street. All four affected homeowners signed the petition, and the individual at USPS quickly responded with a rejection letter.
I had gotten to know our carrier and asked him about the situation. The petition authors had never talked to the carrier about the problem and he said he had always wondered why our four mailboxes were on the "wrong" side of the street.
I asked why he thought the request was rejected. He said it was simply a matter of having sent the request to the wrong individual. The rejection letter had come from someone who had nothing to do with such matters. The carrier gave me the name of the correct individual to contact. I sent that individual a letter and got a quick response saying they'd need to do an evaluation of the situation including the effect on the relevant route or routes. The carrier said it should be a slam dunk because it wouldn't materially affect his route, the only route that would be affected. He was right. The USPS did their study and a few weeks later they authorized all four homeowners to move our mailboxes to our side of the street.
The moral of the story: do a little research before contacting USPS and don't assume the response you get is from someone who cares or knows anything about the matter in question.
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08:08:46pm
re: Another Anti-Philatalist
keesindy,
I find it mind boggling that the USPS delivers your mail where they decide to deliver, whether that is where you live, or not.
Equally mind boggling; you couldn't just pull up your mailbox and plunk it down on your side of the road?!?
If you hadn't spoken to the carrier and gotten the right name to apply to, you could have just moved your houses across the street, so that the USPS would then be delivering the mail to where you live.
Isn't that what the payment for the stamp is for? To deliver to the address on the envelope, and not to the other side of the street?
But; yes I've seen the rural roads, secondary highways, etc with mailboxes on one side and houses on the other. I do understand their reasons.
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
A question that also begs to be asked... when does USPS decide if your box is at the curb or mounted on your house. I live in a development and the boxes are at the curb. Last house I lived in... in fact the last two, the boxes were mounted on the wall outside the front door.
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re: Another Anti-Philatalist
We live at the end of a paved dead end county road and our mailbox is a mile up the road on the main highway. I asked for an application at the P.O. to request being able to move it to our front driveway. The Postmaster said I could submit it, but there was virtually no chance of it being approved. Actually, she said there wasn't a chance in hell, so I never have submitted it. I never put out going mail in the box, I always take it up to the P.O. window. The only other option is to get a box at the P.O.
WB
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