Pre paid envelopes

Legacy_user

Can i use the pre paid postage envelopes that come with the junk mail if i cover the return address.

David_Brent

I remember reading a post exactly about this! If you search the forum "pre paid envelopes" they should pop up! From what I remember 9/10 times it will actually work. But... It is a fraud...but then again a company aren't gonna take you to court over the price of a stamp so they would just discard it.

Woby_Tide

As reported in last weeks Sunday Times


CUSTOMERS are taking advantage of incompetence at the Royal Mail by sending letters free of charge to residential addresses across Britain by simply marking them “Freepost” — normally used by businesses that have paid for a licence.

The scam is thought to be used by a growing number of people and could be costing the postal service thousands of pounds a year in lost revenue.

Checks are so lax at Royal Mail sorting offices that some customers are even abusing the system to send out dozens of Christmas cards without a stamp every year.

Last week The Sunday Times posted 10 letters — unstamped but with the word “Freepost” either typed or handwritten on the envelopes — from two post boxes in London to residential addresses across the country, including Inverness and Bristol.

Nine arrived at their destinations the following day — the delivery target for all first-class post, which costs 28p for a standard letter. The tenth letter arrived two days later.

Last Thursday, a further 90 letters were posted to destinations across Britain from seven towns and cities, including Chichester, Liverpool, Reading and Newcastle. They all bore the recipient’s name and address and the word “Freepost” written below. Again, no stamp was used.

By yesterday afternoon 59 of the letters — almost two-thirds — had been delivered. Many of them arrived within 24 hours.

One customer in her twenties, who did not want to be named, said: “I have done this for ages. Why pay the price of a stamp when you can just write the word ‘Freepost’? I receive so much Freepost mail I figured nobody will notice a little more.”

Royal Mail said it would investigate our findings. “Any deliberate attempt to send mail without the proper postage is an abuse of the postal system and is akin to fare-dodging,” said a spokeswoman. “Our message is clear: don’t do it.”

The Freepost system is mainly used by Royal Mail’s business customers, such as banks and utilities companies. Firms pay a one-off licence fee and deposit, up to the value of £207, for each address they use.

The companies are charged 28p or 21p, depending on whether the service is for first or second-class post, for each letter they receive from their customers. They can also be charged an additional handling fee of 0.5p for each item sent.

Freepost items are supposed to go through separate channels in sorting offices to ensure that this money is deducted from a business customer’s account.

When items are posted without a stamp of the appropriate value or with no stamp at all, Royal Mail can force the recipient to pay a hefty surcharge to take delivery of the item. Last year 19.6m wrongly stamped letters were held, the bulk of which were released after a surcharge had been paid.

However, none of the people who received letters during the The Sunday Times investigation was asked to pay a fee.

The existence of the Freepost scam will do little to restore public faith in Royal Mail, which recently admitted that more than 1m items of post were stolen last year. A further 16m items were lost.

Next month Postcomm, the industry regulatory, is expected to fine Royal Mail at least £80m after it failed to meet any of its 15 service targets last year.

Last night Postwatch, the consumer watchdog, described the scam as “appalling” and warned it could force up costs for the majority of honest customers.

klondyke

Can i use the pre paid postage envelopes that come with the junk mail if i cover the return address.

Yes, provided you add the correct postage. It can save a fortune in envelopes.

Woby_Tide

ok not 'freepost' but 2p instead....

THE inability of Royal Mail franking machines to tell one stamp from another is allowing customers to send letters to addresses across Britain by using two 1p stamps.

The machines at sorting offices cannot tell the value of the stamps and lets them pass after wrongly registering that enough postage has been paid.

Royal Mail claims manual checkers spot if postal charges are being abused, but last week about 60% of a sample of 80 letters with two 1p stamps reached their destinations in a trial of the system by The Sunday Times.

The letters were posted to addresses throughout Britain, including Aberystwyth, Glasgow, Birmingham, Taunton, Liverpool and Newcastle. Each envelope bore the recipient’s name and address with two 1p stamps in the top right-hand corner.

Postage on those letters that arrived the next day should have cost 28p, but in only three cases were recipients presented with a demand for the missing 26p, plus a penalty surcharge of £1.19 to release the letter.

This latest example of ineptitude will embarrass the company. Last weekend, this newspaper revealed how customers were sending letters free of charge to residential addresses across Britain by writing “Freepost” on the envelope — a practice reserved for businesses that have paid for a special licence.

In the 2p stamp scam, letters that reach sorting offices pass through machines which check whether they have the correct stamps before franking them. The machine detects the presence of a stamp by reading a small magnetic strip within it. Once it has found one stamp, it “assumes” the second will bring the total value up to the required amount, even if both stamps are only 1p.

The Royal Mail keeps back about 19m letters every year when postmen or sorting office staff spot that the full postage rate has not been paid. In theory, a card should then be put through the recipient’s letter box, asking them to pay a surcharge.

Last night Postwatch, the consumer watchdog, said the ease with which the system could be abused may result in costs being forced up for honest customers and that the Royal Mail had known about the loophole for some time.

Peter Carr, chairman of Postwatch, said: “Royal Mail must crack down on this immediately. The worry is that customers will feel they can do whatever they like. Honest customers will be subsidising those who are taking advantage of the system.

“Royal Mail must enforce the surcharge — it is up to them to protect their own business. But if they can’t get the rules right then it starts to break down very quickly.”

The scam, if widespread, could have a significant impact on Royal Mail’s business. In May 2003 a 1p increase in the price of a first-class stamp to 28p raised about £170m. A 1p rise in the price of a second-class stamp to 21p last April is expected to add a further £70m to profits.

In May, the company posted its first operating profit in four years but missed all its service quality targets.

A spokeswoman said Royal Mail carried out “regular and vigorous checks” of the postal system and did not believe significant abuse was occurring. “In the vast majority of cases, customers have made genuine mistakes,” she said.

The Sunday Times is sending a cheque to Royal Mail to cover the full postage cost of the letters delivered in the trial

v519djm

I recently heard some one on the radio saying they use the pre-paid envelopes you get sent by credit card, loan companies etc for them selves by sticking a new address label over the pre-printed address. I tried it and it does work, but I'm unsure if it's legal. Anyone know?

Benji

Definately NOT legal. The companies that send out these envelopes only pay for them if they are used, and they're not going to be too happy about paying for our personal mail!!!

Also, a lot of the business reply service envelopes have a licence number that is connected to the postcode, so although it may have worked to date, the person recieving your letters could end up having to pay over £1 to recieve the letter.

Sorry to be so negative

petenannie

A friend of mine uses these envelopes to dispose of junk mail. He uses the envelope from one company and fills it with mails from the next lot of junk mail through his door always keeping the pre paid envelope.

He feels particularly justified in repeating this pattern when companies have contacted him without his permission.

Personally I feel that if these companies are made to pay for sending junk mail they might not be so keen to waste so much valuable paper which harms our environment

spl2nh

i was just wondering if i was to stick a new address over the pre printed one on envolopes sent out with a free return stamp, would royal mail accept it and deliver it, and if so, would this be stealing/fraud since the purpose of the free stamped envolope would be for return of business and not for personal use?

Xbigman

As I understand it the black stripes and number (1 or 2) printed in the corner of the envelope mean very little. It is in fact the address you are sending to that denotes who pays for delivery. So, no, it won't work.

Is it legal? No idea but I suspect its immaterial.. You are simply re-using an old envelope that you didn't put a stamp on.
Regards



X

Becles

Some reply paid envelopes have a sort of bar code on them. That is machine read when the mail is sorted and the envelope sent onto the company who issued it.

When I worked for large utilities company I helped out when the post openers were short staffed. Anything that was found in a company envelope but wasn't addressed to us was put in the bin. If people had put their own stamp on, we did forward it to the correct person.

If you want your mail to go to the right person, cover all markings on the envelope and use a stamp.

I use reply paid envelopes to send money and notes into school with my two!