LOST LETTERS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 246, 31 July 1935, Page 6

LOST LETTERS

AN AMERICAN PRECAUTION.

(Special to the “Guardian.”)

WELLINGTON, This Day,

Those who receive much, overseas correspondence, particularly from, the United States, have noticed that there is a general practice among business and private correspondents of writing on the outside of the envelope the name and address of the sender. This is to bo commended both in the interests of the public and of the Post Office, because it ensures that if correspondence cannot be delivered to the intended address it will at least be promptly returned to the sender. New Zealand’s Dead Letter Office in the General Post Office is a busy section. It has to deal every year with oyer a million postal packets defective in some respect. Insufficiently addressed letters frequently reach their correct destination because the. officials (who are of course under oath of secrecy) open them in the hope of discovering the essential information, otherwise there is no alternative but to return the letter to the sender, though absence of full signature frequently necessitates returning a letter with such and address as “Bessie, the writer of a letter to Jack.”

A great number of postal packets, particularly small Christmas gifts and Christmas numbers of New Zealand publications, fail in delivery and are unreturnable because of the absence of any clue to the. sender’s address, and the Posal Department does not object to including in these packages the name and address of the sendei. New Zealanders have not generally taken up the American practice of writing the sender’s address on the outside of the envelope (for domestic correspondence this should appeal on on the back) but the practice has distinct advantages, one of the most important being that immediately it fails in delivery a letter is returned unopened direct to the sender. When this is done in the United States, the postal administration makes a charge, recently increased from 3 cents to o cents. New Zealand makes no charge, and the adoption of- the American idea (though without the postal surcharge) would substantially reduce the number of undelivered letters destroyed every year owing to l the sender s address being unknown and the addressee impossible to trace. Last year 22,382 letters met that fate.