Fim A But No Intelligent Mail Barcode

In recent years I've been seeing more and more courtesy reply envelopes with a FIM A but without an Intelligent Mail Barcode on either the envelope or enclosure. What happens to these covers at USPS? Do they wind up rejected by the initial sorter? I would think that would cause processing delay.

hand sorted & delayed if not through automation. Clear address though should be capable of reader ID.

Like a birthday card sent to your aunt Nellie, or many ebay lots, every mail piece will rapidly get a barcode so it can get trayed-up for delivery sequence by the carrier. "Rejected" is probably too string a term, but perhaps rather briefly "diverted" for barcoding then returned to the normal stream.

These mismarked business courtesy reply envelopes are often designed to hold payments. If the business properly coordinated the bar codes per USPS recommendations, it would avoid delaying its receipt of funds.

Please show us an example.

I don't see this as a big problem when the FIM gets the envelopes faced and the subsequent machines can quickly read printed/typed addresses, etc., and apply barcodes.

Why have any pre-printed barcodes then? Are they outdated?

Somewhat related, I sent myself a test letter to hopefully get a piece of modern postal history with some good aux markings. I had a charity reply envelope that was pre-stamped with a Forever stamp, the charity's pre-printed address and Intelligent Mail Barcode. I put a mailing label with my address on top of the charity's address but I did not cover the old IM barcode.

I mailed it on July 2nd and it finally arrived today July 28th. The incorrect barcode was scratched out with a heavy black marker and a new correct barcode sprayed on underneath. Unfortunately there were no other postmarks or aux markings to identify what happened or where it turned up. Honestly after a couple of weeks I had given up and assumed it got lost forever, so I was happy to see it arrive nearly 4 weeks after I had mailed it, even if the result was not as interesting as I had hoped. I'd post a picture but there is really nothing to see after redacting all of my personal information. I may try again to a different location for better results, I have a couple more of these envelopes from different charities.

I used to work for a non-profit which had barcoded return envelopes as zebraman describes. Yep, we got back quite a few each year where our clients tried to be cheap and reuse them for personal purposes, but forgot to obliterate the barcode. When we got these, we crossed out the barcode and handed them back to the carrier for a second try at getting them to where the sender intended. I could see the charity "sitting" on your mail for a week or two as a quiet lesson before remailing it.

With today's high degree of mechanization, very little mail is ever seen by a human, so there is little chance of obtaining any auxiliary markings, even on underpaid, missent, damaged, or otherwise messed-up mail. Good luck with your other test pieces.