Sometimes You Just Can't Win

One of my little quirky sidelines is servicing covers from Vermont Post Offices on significant anniversaries: 50, 75, 100, 125, ……, 200. I have been doing this for about 20 years now and usually have no problem. I send 5 covers to the Post Office about 10 before the anniversary date and explain what I'm doing and that I would like the covers cancelled on the anniversary date if possible. (I know that the USPS regulations say that the Post Office should cancel the covers the day that they are received, but in all of the cases except the one I'm going to describe, the covers have been cancelled on the anniversary or, if a Sunday, either Saturday or Monday.)

One Vermont Post office was 200 years old on April 24 so I sent the covers to the Post Office around April 15. By May 4, I had not received the covers and called the Post Office. The person I talked to said, "Oh yes, I have them right here". I asked why he still had them and he said that on the day that I wanted them to be cancelled there was a medical emergency and nobody was available to cancel them. He also said, that his post office was understaffed and they didn't have time to cancel them. That's when I asked him how much time would it take to cancel 5 covers and to place them in the return envelope that I had supplied. Then I got a little angry and said, "It's only FIVE covers, now much work could that be?"

Then I told him to return the covers postmarked on May 4 since I knew that he couldn't back date the covers. Today, May 6, I received the covers, cancelled May 4. 3 of the covers were cancelled well enough to be put in my collection. One was so-so, but one was completely ruined.

Oh well, 1 out of about 175 Post Offices is not a bad record.

It sounds like 1 out of 175 is an incredibly great percentage of people who bent over backwards to break their own regulations to help you out. Find me another profession that has that kind percentage of people willing to go far beyond their jobs to help a customer.

Some smaller post offices (such as the one in my hometown in Iowa) are only open a few hours a day and only have one person there at those times. I could easily see something like that being forgotten or overlooked. It's too bad it didn't work out for you, but their main job is moving the mail and things like this are always going to be a low priority for them.

I'm with Kimo. 174/175 is batting 0.994, in a world where batting 0.300 makes you a star.

This year I resurrected my New Jersey postmark / cover collection that I started back in the early 1970s when I was a teen. I put it all in two pocket pages, in alphabetical order. I have been buying covers on ebay and other means, and friends have been donating cancels I need. I do have a spread sheet to keep track.

Back in the day, I'd do post office road rallies, seeing how many places I could hit in a day to obtain postmarks over the counter. This is even more important today since you no longer get town cancels in your mail.

I set a course of 24 post offices along the Delaware River that I didn't have already. I thought this would be fun using modern devices like Google and GPS. It started out fine in Florence, NJ with the clerk quickly giving me a cancel on my cover. The next stop was an issue. In Roebling, NJ the clerk refused to give me a cancel, stating that cancels were only for mail! She agreed to hand cancel my cover if I addressed it and had put it through the mails. I thought this would be a fluke, but I got the same response at many post offices! I had never had an issue back in the 1970s. Many of the clerks thought I wanted the dated cancel on an unaddressed cover for illegal purposes.

At lunch I searched the USPS website for help. I found regulation 9-2.2 which when read alone, explains it's okay to give collectors cancellations over the counter. It is part of a document on pictorial cancels. I did better in the afternoon showing my phone to the doubting postal clerks. Most of them then complied and gave me a postmark. There was one office that still refused. They called their postmaster and put me on the phone with him. He said he wasn't in a position to look up the regulation, but would the next day. He said to leave the cover with the clerk and if I was correct, they'd send it back to me inside a USPS paid envelope. I guess I was right, it arrived in the mail in a few days!

I didn't anticipate any issues. It made for a long frustrating day, so I don't think I'll attempt this again. I sent an inquiry into the USPS website, several weeks ago and haven't received a reply. Of the 24 post offices on my list I only was able to hit 14 of them since some offices took over a half hour to convince the clerk. Of those, 11 gave me my cover and 3 sent them through the mails. I was concerned that the ones sent through the mails would receive a nasty smudge of a cancel over the town cancel at the regional sorting center, but all three came back okay. So I did get 14 hard won cancels to add to my collection.