LOST LETTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 180, 1 August 1935, Page 9

LOST LETTERS.

AN AMERICAN PRECAUTION. 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 (says the Post and Telegraph Department) is to be commended, both in the interests cf 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 has to deal every year •with over 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 an address as "Bessie, the writer of a letter to Jack." A' "Teat number of postal packets, particularly small Christmas gifts and Christmas numbers of New Zealand publications, fail in delivery and are unrcturnable because of the absence of any clue to the sender's address, and the Postal Department does not object to the inclusion in these packets of the name and address of the sender. The American practice of writing the sender's address on the outside of the envelope (for domestic correspondence this should appear on the back) Jias 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. The adoption of the American idea (though without the postal, surcharge) ■would substantially reduce the number of undelivered letters destroyed every ■year owing to the sender's address being unknown and the addressee impossible to trace. Last year 22,382 letters met that fate.