Pre-paid Envelopes

JP08

Get a lot less of them than I used to due to being careful what I tick to reject marketing blurb etc and being mainly direct debit for bills, but still the odd pre-paid envelope appears in junk mail / bills.

I've not actually tried it myself*, but s there anything legally wrong with sticking a label over the original return address and using them for your own postal purposes? Not too interested in the moral aspect (after all, wasting the money of a company that junk mail advertises is a public service), just the legal.

*When I used to get quite a few of them, though, I used to take great delight in taking the advertising bumph from one company and stuffing it into the envelope of the other then posting them off ...

Goldiegirl

I would think it's probably fraudulent, using postage paid by someone else for your own purposes

JP08

Possibly, though I think that, in sending it to me without any preconditions, the envelope had been gifted to me.

Goldiegirl

No, I'd say it's been sent to you for the sole reason of sending it back to the person who paid the postage

JP08

Hmmm - but where is their loss? They've already paid ... whether I bin the envelope or repurpose it. If I'd deliberately requested their direct mailing in order to obtain the envelopes then I could see their loss / being defrauded. Otherwise, no.

I do love a pointless hypothetical debate :O)

Goldiegirl

Put it this way, since I've been on MSE, I've seen lots of quite outlandish ways to save money, ranging from weird to borderline illegal. And this one is borderline legal, IMO, if not totally illegal.

RAS

My understanding is that the provider of the envelopes only pays for mail that is returned to them; they have not paid for a stamp as such?

torbrex

I always swap the junk over and send them back after all it would be bad manners to send back an empty envelope :rotfl:

JP08

RAS. Interesting. Hadn't occurred to me that it might work that way. I sort of assumed that they just bought in bulk at a discount rate based on the fact that only a % got used.

But a quick search comes up with http://tradeprintinguk.com/prepaid-envelopes.html.

The relevant paragraph : "After you have your licence from the Royal Mail, you then pay a price per single response [i.e. you pay Royal Mail directly - on a monthly account basis - for EACH returned pre-paid envelope a customer sends you back] for all items up to 100g (e.g. under the PLUS licences for DL + C5 "Letter" sizes - 1st Class: 44p; 2nd Class: 31p; under the STANDARD licences for DL + C5 "Letter" sizes - 1st Class: 50p; 2nd Class: 37p; "Large Letter" such as C4 and above are more expensive [up to 100gsm weight] e.g. C4 1st class - 66p; 2nd Class: 54.5p because they are hand sorted by humans) and of course this depends whether you use a Royal Mail 1st Class or 2nd Class Indicia mark on your custom prepaid envelopes. C4 envelopes are NOT available as part of the "PLUS" licence, only DL and C5 sizes."

So, yes, they only pay on usage.

So, yes, there would then be a quantifiable loss and it would be fraudulent.

LameWolf

RAS wrote: »

My understanding is that the provider of the envelopes only pays for mail that is returned to them; they have not paid for a stamp as such?

That is correct. It is monitored by Royal Mail and they are charged for the post that actually gets sent.

Goldiegirl

Actually, thinking about this more, as the issuer of the envelope only pays when the envelope is returned to them, and them alone

If a person took a prepaid envelope and stuck their own label on it, the person receiving that letter would end up paying for the postage and the additional £1 that is levied when a letter doesn't have valid postage on it. Therefore, it wouldn't be a good idea to do this, unless you wanted to make the recipients of your letters very cross indeed!