You should super-glue a penny to the bottom of your mailbox.

Meh. I get these from my box clerk from my PO box every so often. If they didn't collect on every piece of mail that is still being sent with a 41¢ stamp, they'd be out money.

Postal employees are offered overtime, so your estimate of 10 hrs a day at $15.83/hr is incorrect. They can receive both "time-and-a-half" and "double-time" depending on how many hours of OT they work during the day/week (So, it probably cost them more than the 26¢ as well....)

@cashmerewhore:

All that said, I almost charged my first one out of spite. And lack of change in my wallet...

unlike a normal gov't agency, the post office get all it's funding from stamp revenue. So technically, it did cost the government anything.

Since USPS runs more like a business, I'm surprised they even wasted the time. it could have been one of the situations where they did all of the envelopes at once. Just a thought.

My local Wal-mart once had a few candy bars on clearance for $0.25. Got 1 @ $0.25 and paid with a debit card. It never posted to my account. Apparently, they ate the cost rather then paying the transaction fees associated with such a small purchase.

Moral of the story? Ask them if you can pay it with plastic. Penny saved is a penny earned, right?

If you want to get picayune about it, .01 cent is 1/100 of a cent. Seems you would round down to the nearest cent, meaning zero.

Sometimes you have to do this, though, just to show that you can, because if the word gets around "hey, you can still use the old $0.41 stamps," then the revenue losses will far exceed the incremental expense of writing an occasional postage due form.

Did he really make a special trip to do this? Wouldn't it just be part of his ordinary route?

Oh, and we should be praising the post office. Any other company would have sent it to collections with another $50 worth of fees attached.

@ClayS: I came here to say this.

On the envelope it says 1¢, but on the notice it says .01¢, which is it? I don't think that gas stations calculate that accurately...

The postal carrier simply wants to be refunded money they put out of their own pocket (not the postal service) for the postage due on a letter they delivered.

I bet it's more of a 'fyi' - they want the person to know that the rates went up a penny.

"Loyal Consumerists know that many people are confused about dollars and decimals."

What really pisses me off is when people pronounce $153,255.65 or a similar number as:

One-hundred fifty-three thousand and two-hundred and fifty-five dollars and sixty-five cents.

And means decimal point DAMNIT!

For our wedding invites we had rsvp post cards to send back. Somehow one of them got mangled in the processing on the way back, it was still legible, but it was now a little smaller than the standard postcard size. USPS took the liberty to stick the postcard in the envelope, write the address on it, and take the postcard stamp off the postcard and stick it on the envelope. So when it came it was postage due of like 17 cents. So their machine messed up the postcard and I had to pay for it! It wasn't worth my 17 cents to make a phone call though.

I'm sure they paid a nice shiny nickel for the fancy envelope too!

how do you give 1/100th of a penny? I would walk in and for teh same principle as they seem to have, literally give them a sliver of a penny.

@ryan89: In general when the post office messes up post card style mail they poly bag it with a stock apology, and do not charge you any extra.

My guess is your guest did something odd, or someone dropped the ball policy wise.

Two dollars. I want my two dollars!

Funny because I sent 10 postcards recently and forgot to put stamps on any of them. So I e-mailed the recipients and 9 out of 10 got them with no request for moneys. The 10th disappeared somewhere.

I thought the cost of postage was always the sender's responsibility. I've had mail returned to me because I didn't have enough postage on it originally. And because it was returned, I had to put the whole amount on over again, putting me out several cents.

praktisk is correct. The postal carrier is out that money if you don't hand it over. I got one for $.21, I originally considered putting a quarter in the envelope and submitting him a bill for $.04. But then I remembered those people probably put up with a lot of crap, so I didn't.

Still, funny.

@ RunawayJim

It IS the responsibility of the sender. But, in cases where the post person thinks it's an invitation or something special that you probably want on time, he/she will deliver it anyway as a courtesy to you, expecting you to reimburse them because they DO get charged that money. Add up $.05 over time, it's a lot of money.

Aren't grocery coupons worth fractions of a penny?

I just had an envelope sent back to me with a box stamped on it saying I need to add $.01 postage. I did use a $.41 stamp, so it was my fault I was just surprised the sent it back becuase of a penny. They had even ripped the envelope for me so I had to tape it all back together. The check was still in it though.

Think of it this way, If 1 Million people send mail with a 41 cent stamp, that is $10,000 the post office lost.

Pennies add up fast.

@praktisk: I think you are right. When I've been asked to pay a few cents to make up for deficient postage, the invoice actually said the carrier had paid it and was asking to be reimbursed. One more reason to appreciate the carrier who works my neighborhood.

@RunawayJim: Usually that is the case, but since the original sender did not include a return address on the envelope (as shown in the picture and described in the story), the USPS will collect postage due from the reciever.

I can understand the post office doing that.

Otherwise, the person who does not know that the price went up will continue to use the old $.41 stamps and would continue to cheat the post office.

This way, not only will he pay the extra $.01 now - but will hopefully from now on start to use the correct postage.

... so an easy way to fix the problem now instead of letting it drag on. Good job post office

@BlueTraveler: The envelope is folded in half - so it got returned to sender - not to the destination.

My girlfriend recently sent me a card and the carrier came to the door demanding 18 cents (I gave it to him). When you think about the time it takes to collect such a small amount of money, it seems like a waste, but when you add up each small amount it really adds up.

I don't see what's so crazy about this. I've gotten these notices before--usually for 20 cents or so. Just put the damn penny in the envelope and be done with it.

@praktisk: Yes, my postal carrier told me that she paid the money from her pocket and I am rembursing her for the postage due.

And if you don't pay the penny, it will turn into at least $100 by the time the collections agency calls.

People who only mail out bills and the occasional letter or card should not buy postage with a dollar value on it. Always buy "first class" stamps to avoid this kind of nonsense and the inevitable need for 1 penny stamps when the rates rise.

Not all mail delivery people are making the big bucks. Out here in the hinterland (aka boondocks) they can be private contractors who bid on the job. They supply their own vehicles and gas, and get paid whatever they bid, no matter how costs rise. And after they invest in a roomy vehicle (to carry all the packages we country folk order) they can be underbid a couple of years later by somebody else. Then it can take six months or so before the new guy learns the route reliably and we stop getting other people's mail. Of course it would help if the township would assign us street addresses to replace the crazy box number system, like they are supposed to, but I digress.

It's interesting that these contractors don't seem to have to pass any kind of test or undergo any scrutiny that I know of. The one we have now is great, but we once had a guy who could not read. I'm not exaggerating; after there were numerous complaints to the postmaster, he admitted he couldn't read, and quit.

Back on topic, the mail person may have been hammered with a bunch of postage due stuff and just got fed up.

one cent makes no sense

0.01¢ is actually 1/100 of a penny. They f'd up. bad.

It's my understanding that Canada Post's official policy is that anything less than 3 cents worth of insufficient postage is not collected, with the number specifically chosen to allow for the usual 1 or 2 cent increases in the cost of mailing a letter.

I suspect the cost of printing and then selling a zillion one cent stamps every time you raise the postage by a penny is probably not much less than the cost of just eating the loss from people sending their mail 1 cent short on postage for a month or two until they run out of old stamps and have to buy new ones.

Over here in the UK the Post Office simply sells first class stamps with no prices on them. When they decide to increase the cost only the price changes not the stamp. If you had hundreds of them socked away, they would all still cover the first class postage.

I don't know what the big deal is. If anything, it was kind of the postal worker to deliver the piece of mail at all, with insufficient postage.

@vladthepaler: The big deal is that it cost the post office more money to demand their $0.01 than it would have to eat the cost and continue delivering mail.

I had this happen to me. Grandma sent a birthday card with an old 37 cent stamp. Instead of being dicks and sending it back to her they put the little envelope in my mailbox and I gladly put a nickel in it and gave it back. I would rather do this and have my kid's stuff arrive on time rather than do the insufficient postage hustle.

I used to work in the proof department of a large bank. If a deposit was out of balance by $2 or less, we let it go through. In other words, you could deposit checks totaling $98 with a deposit slip for $100 and get away with it. Of course the opposite was true too, so if you shorted yourself $2, we'd let it slide. Over time, debits and credits all pretty much canceled each other out and it was more cost efficient to just let $2 or lower mistakes go through.

We get these quite often at work. The delivery person gets quite annoyed by it - but its not our fault!

What happened to Forever Stamps? I couldn't find them online when I was buying stamps for my company, and when my husband went to the PO to buy some stamps he came back with regulars rather than forevers. Weren't they supposed to be selling those to make all this postage change crap easier to deal with?

I've read about a rather simple minded scheme/scam to get free postage; assuming the party that you are trying to mail something to lives in or near the same town as you, you simply put your address as the destination and your friend/family/dealer's address as the return address. Then, drop it in a public box and it gets returned to the destination with "postage due". Of course, considering the amount of things that could go wrong, it seems rather pointless to try to scam the USPS out of $.42 (or whatever it is now) but some people still do it. Also, no one has mentioned the new(ish) "Forever Stamps". The don't have a amount, and are good no matter what the PO rate was when you bought the stamp.

whoops...samurailynn posted before I refreshed. They were prolly just out of the forevers when your husband went to buy the stamps...although it would seem strange that with the forevers they would even bother printing the regular stamps anymore.

@temporaryerror: I'm thinking that you must have to specifically request them or something. And actually, I just checked online and you can buy sheets of 20 Forever Stamps, but not rolls of 100 - of which we use about 5 per month, so having to deal with sheets of 20 would be kind of annoying.

@samurailynn: Actually, the last few times I've gone to get stamps, they've given me Forever stamps without my having asked for them. I guess every place is different, though.