The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Misc
 postage paid bricks




From: jspinner
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: F to Ft or T in the AFU FAQ
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 19:02:30 -0600

Ugh 2400+ messages....I'm going to post this and check on the responses but, geez, is the list always this thick? Is there a less chatty list I can lurk on or should I just poll the web page for new stuff?

I've wandered into a.f.u to respond to something in the FAQ on the web page (which I've been giving serious study). I don't know what the criteria is for changing the ratings on some of that stuff or even how long its been since any of that was changed (I notice that a number of links have expired) but I'm adding a personal anecdote that is something that I saw with my own eyes and not something that happened to my girlfriend's sister-in-law's cousin.

The FAQ lists:

F. Sticking one of those "Postage Paid" reply cards on a heavy object (e.g., a brick) will cost the addressee the postage. [Nope, USPS tosses it.]

I currently work at the UMKC School of Law. Previous to this I worked at the local chapter of Planned Parenthood. Which, as you can imagine, gets lots of mail strangeness. Anti-choice activists signed up on our mailing lists and got our newsletters to "keep up on us" not realizing that this means they got on our "request for donations" list too. A (very) low percentage of our "Postage Paid" material came back with curses and epithets scrawled all over it. Especially the "Postage Paid" envelopes. They came packed with anti-choice literature, newspaper articles, and often just thick wads of paper junk. These thick envelopes did cost us extra money and the USPS did not toss them. Even though some of them were weirdly thick and obviously contained more than just paper. Fortunately the money we raised by this form of fundraising was orders of magnitude above the postage cost of dealing with that junk. I should think that alone should warrant a Ft for this UL but there's more...

Now, we did get one brick with a "Postage Paid" card glued to it. I'm not kidding. I saw it with my own eyes. This may have been a self-fulfilling UL coupled with an insider at the post office. At least, when we confronted the post office they said that obviously one of their people screwed up and it should not have happened and they would investigate it and so on. We never heard back from them about it though.

So I think that UL should get at least a Ft. It isn't supposed to happen but, with a little collaboration with someone at the PO, it could and in my experience has.

Jon

Jon Spinner



http://tafkac.org/