Howdy! Hypothetically, if i wrote:
from blah blah and address
on the back of an envelope and on the front wrote my own.address…….and without a stamp threw it into a post box……….would Australia post be legally bound to send this unpaid for item back to whence it came…..ie could i send items for free by paradoxically interpolating the object as subject thereby deconstructing the very foundation of our postal system and throwing into question the consolations of a reductive binary system that constructs the subjectivities of sender and recipient through the signifier STAMP.
Free postage?
melgibson on 11/09/2014 - 21:44
Comments
They may not be legally required, but they will send the envelope SOMEWHERE. There is no giant incinerator, purgatory or hell for the unstamped. I suspect their is a sub department that zealously pursues the stampless. The integrity of the system requires that sender and recipient be bound by a stamped copula. If both sender and recipient plead ignorant of the copula, the question, WHO SHALL PAY will issue as a sibilant, snaking its way through the halls of Australia Post like worms in a wound.
AS pointed out below, if it's a parcel, they "send it" to the post office nearest the address on the front, then invite the person it's addressed to to come and claim it if they want it, after paying for the postage. If the recipient doesn't want to pay the postage due on it, the item gets auctioned in one of those auctions you hear about periodically of unclaimed recovered stolen goods, unclaimed AusPost parcels etc. I suppose the same would happen in the case you describe (i.e. an unstamped letter addressed to yourself), but instead of auctioning it if you didn't claim it/pay postage, they would simply shred it.
They will just send an invoice to pay it.
I've heard of this when someone posted an item for under $2 and they were 50 cents short or so. They had to go in to the post office and pay it or get the stamp and put it on and repost it.
Yep, they will send it to the 'return' address with a letter telling you to not do this again and an invoice.
Hope Australia Post has figured this out since they exist for N years.
Once, a couple of years ago at work we were doing a big mail out and addressed a whole heap of envelopes without stamps and completely empty, unsealed. Someone posted them accidentally and Australia Post miraculously delivered them. We received hundreds of phone calls from people wondering why they were mailed an empty envelope. It was all rather weird. Point is, they did deliver them!!! Someone in a mail room somewhere probably had a nice laugh at that one.
You'll not only be hit for the postage cost, but also an underpaid item tax. It was around $2.60 a few years ago.
The neighbours' son sent them a gift card in a letters only express envelope. Some officious individual in Aust Post decided it didn't qualify as a letter and sent a bill . It included what had supposedly been underpaid, plus the $2.60.
Far out man, that's harsh!
If it has no stamp, OzPost is not legally obliged to do anything with it. If it has a stamp, and they cannot deliver it to the address on the front (for whatever reason), then instead, given that postage has been paid for, they return it to the sender.
As an aside, a mate once sent me a memory-stick to copy some stuff onto. As a cheeky experiment, I opened the envelope carefully and copied the stuff onto it, sealed up the envelope, crossed out my name/address on the front of the envelope and wrote "R.T.S.", and "posted" it.
It worked a treat, but I don't recommend doing it… afterwoods, I genuinely felt really guilty about it!