DEFICIENT POSTAGE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19759, 13 October 1938, Page 10

DEFICIENT POSTAGE

OVERSEAS MAIL PROBLEM EFFECT OF RECENT CHANGE The large number of overseas letter.-, .nicn are being dispatched from New marked with deficiency surmarge which must bo collected fron. ne recipient indicates that a section j! the public still fails to realise tha. here has been an important change .n postage rates.

The Empire air-mail scheme with its .hree halfpence "all-up" charge to all Empire countries, except Australia (which remains temporarily at a penny), has not yet meant the abandonment by some letter writers of the old universal penny postage, for they still pay a penny, leaving the recipient of their letters to meet a deficiency charge of another penny, this being double the short payment. Fur:her checks on the position have been taken within the last few days oy the Post Office, which found that in Auckland where, at the moment, a larger volume of correspondence wrf being handled for overseas, short-paid letters which should carry the threeHalfpenny rate totalled 9 per cent in respect to the United Kingdom, 20 pei .-ent for Canada, 30 per cent for Fiji, and 10 per ctmt for Tonga. In Wellington, where the check included South Island overseas mails 10 per cent of the United Kingdom .etters, 7 per cent of t,<e Canadian, and 7 per cent of the Fijian ana I'ongan letters were short-paid. The change from Id to 2|d in the rate to U.S.A. seems hardest to completely achieve, for the Auckland check showed 10 per cent of deficient postage and Wellington 32 per cent In respect to other foreign countries, the proportion of letters which failed to carry the 2id stamp were 8 per cent in Auckland and 1 per cent in Wellington.