Analyzing A Postage Meter Used On A Piece Of Junk Mail

Normally, I don't look too closely at such junk mail, but in this case I did and it prompts some postal-related questions:



The piece is actually an oversized postcard from a local real estate firm a few towns away and an address label applied to the addressee area shown to be: "Our Neighbors At ..."

Normally, a local piece of mail coming from ZIP 02081 to 02038 would not be out of the ordinary, but what I do find interesting is the Pitney Bowes postage meter imprint refers to it being "Mailed from ZIP Code 23320". According to the USPS, that ZIP Code is assigned to Chesapeake, VA, which even in the best of times, would hardly rate an overnight delivery to Massachusetts, even by first class mail standards.

How does this sort of thing happen? The only thing I can imagine is that the out-of-state meter is being used locally, which I wouldn't think would be legal. Either that or the postage was applied to stacks of blank cards and they have to carefully monitor on a daily basis which ones are being sent out in order to accurately mail them on the date of the meter imprint.

Given that it's clearly a piece of junk mail on an oversized postcard, with no specific name of the addressee, I am quite surprised to see a $0.45 postage meter imprint, as one would think that if these pieces are being sent in bulk that it would rate some sort of a postage discount for a high volume mailer.

It just seems like this is an expensive way of doing business, when so many cheaper delivery alternatives are being promoted all the time by the USPS.

I am going to take a stab at a possible scenario.
The postage is correct for first class large post card. The sender may not have a sufficiently large enough quantity to qualify for bulk particularly if the mailing was targeting one local area. The printer of the card is in VA and the sender is in MA. It would have been an additional cost to ship the cards to MA to mail them from there. Or the mailing service company in VA charged less per piece than did a MA mailing service. Regardless of where the card was posted, the sender, who paid the bill, is still indicated by their home address.

This sort of thing is quite common. When we ("we" meaning whoever) go on vacation or any reason for travel, we mail cards or letters from a location that is not our home area, yet we write our true home area address as the sender. I receive mail from a number of locations in the US in which the Mailed From Zip postmarks are often large distances from the sender's address. I even have mail sent to me in Guatemala by IRS and USPS that were posted in a foreign country (Sweden, Norway and France come to mind as frequently used posting countries). Also, for 25+ years I have been mailing letters to US addresses hand carried to the US by friends that were posted from their home towns but had my Stateside home address as the sender.

Thanks for the comment. I do understand that the postage rate is correct, but it does seem like an expensive mailer (for the advertiser) at $0.45 per piece.

I also understand the idea of a postmark on the mailing being sent from another location. As you indicated, the most likely scenario is that the card was direct mailed from a mailing house in Virginia (the ZIP Code used in the meter) to my address in Massachusetts. However, I was taken by surprise that such a mailer would reach me in only 24 hours. That's a distance of 580 miles, which is quite a trek for a piece of mail to travel in one day's time. I send mail lesser distances to New York or Pennsylvania that takes two or three days, so it seems strange that this piece arrived as quickly as it did. Although, I suppose it may be that the geographical areas involved (i.e. Washington, DC metro area to Boston, MA metro area) would have allowed this piece to have been included on a direct path for delivery more readily than a piece to a small town in a closer State.

I guess I should be impressed that the USPS was able to deliver the mail in one day's time. With USPS cuts looming, it's not likely going to be the case very much longer.