Minor (hopefully) invitation snafu?

[ts44]

I gratefully gave FI a giant box of invites to take to the post office yesterday and mail out. I''d used my office''s postage scale to make sure that they were under the weight limit for .44 cent stamps, and they were a normal size (A7), so I figured all my bases were covered.

Today, my grandmother called me (we have the return address as their address, since we''re looking for a house and weren''t sure if we''d still be at the same address when it came time to mail these) and said she got 20ish invites returned in the mail and couldn''t figure out why. There was nothing stamped on them, no return to sender, or insufficient postage, or no such address, or anything! I was quietly hyperventilating and she said oh hey, there''s the post man, give me a second, and ran out to talk to him about it.

The postman told her there was nothing wrong with the envelopes, addresses, or postage and that sometimes when letters go through the sorting machine upside down, if there''s a return address on the back of the envelope it will send it to that address instead of the correct address. WHAT? Really? I have never heard of this before, is it true? He took them all from her and said he would make sure they "went through the sorter correctly this time." The return label on the back of my envelopes is like, an inch wide and 3/4ths inch tall. I just can''t believe that a government entity would have any machine with computer vision software intelligent enough to detect such a diverse array of text as you''ll find on an envelope.

Has anybody else experienced something like this?

 

[LAG2010]

i actually had that happen to me with a thank you note. i hand wrote my return address on the back of the envelope, and it got sent to me, not the person it was intended to go to! they even cancelled the back, despte the fact that the stamp was on the front.

 

[lulu66]

you now have me scared to death. LOL. my return is going on the back too! we shall see...

 

[Rock_of_Love]

This happened to me several times and I was so confused! Luckily, I did give them to my postman and he sent them back through for re-delivery. But I did think it was very strange!

 

[ts44]

Well Lulu, if this is the only bad thing that happens during the process, that's not really so bad at all! Although I am thankful the post office did not actually cancel the back of the envelope like what happened to LAG2010, because I would have had to reprint those envelopes.

And if I had splurged on calligraphy or special envelopes I would have been totally steamed if they'd cancelled the back of the envelope. UGH.

I haven't received any more so fingers crossed that's the only time it happens. Also, I was at a party this weekend that a lot of the invitees were at and I was able to relate the story and explain why their invite was late coming, which made me feel better about it. It is kind of embarassing for one member of a family to receive their invite and the other member of the family at the same address to not receive theirs on the same day...