I have received several times underpaid postcards from the USA (and even from Germany). They have arrived normally without any problems. I don’t think we have to pay for underpaid mail in Finland, or at least I’ve never heard of it.
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Some time mid last year, I sent out about 50 postcards with the wrong postage: I was using the previous postage rate for both US and international postcards. I got quite nervous about it and posted on a few threads here about my slip up. And guess what - virtually all of them arrived!
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Good afternoon.
May I respond to your inquiry re ‘not enough stamp value’?
If you recorded a return address on the postcard and mailed the postcard from within the United States, one of two actions is likely:
- the postcard would be returned to you for additional postage, or;
- the postcard would be delivered to the destination with with a ‘postage due’ request and state the amount of ‘postage due’. These actions apply for ‘insufficient postage’ matters tendered within this country and destined to a domestic location.
Insufficient postage matters in foreign countries are addressed by each country per their regulations for handling.
That said, as it is probably the case with your possible mistake, your postcard did not have a return address for the Digital Processing System to read and redirect your postcard back to you for additional postage. The postcard is now in route to its destination. The collection of ‘postage due’ monies will be directed by the rules and regulations of that country.
I hope this helps.
Much Aloha
P.S. From a practical viewpoint and with some experience with this very matter, the Letter Carrier often will pay the postage due to the Cage Clerk and leave a receipt, for reimbursement, in the appropriate post box…or not. That’s the Letter Carrier’s discretion.
AND, sometimes…there is no indication, on the mail piece, that insufficient postage has been applied.
In that case, the mail piece is delivered without incident or issue.
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I have received postage due a number of times here in the USA. I buy sports cards on ebay and ebay has a specific barcode to be printed on envelopes for these cards. They usually are for .53 or .73 cents it has to do with if its a ridgid envelope. Anyway, once or twice ive recived postage due from my mail carrier for .20 cents and I just put it in my mailbox the next day.
I recently had a Christmas card arrive with no stamp from a family friend, they forgot to put it on. In its place it said “paid by you’re carrier Larry” so the next day .60 is put in the mailbox lol
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I don’t write my address on the Postcard so we’ll see.
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I have received a postcard from Australia with only these two stamps and now I’m curious to know if it’s enough to send a postcard overseas.
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The card from Australia is underpaid, it should have at least three dollars in international stamps on it. I suggest that, if it is an official card, you contact the Postcrossing team before you register it .
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Thank you!
In Chile, if the cost of the stamps are not enough, the recipient will have to pay the doble of the difference that missed of the actual value. And if there no stamp at all (weird), the recipient will have to pay the doble of the total value that costs shipping that postcard.
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Does this card also have a stamp on the front side?
In Australia they do a lot with prepaid cards and PO made maxicards. These stamps could be purely for decoration if the postage has been prepaid.
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No, it doesn’t. It’s not an Australian postal service postcard and these are the only stamps on it.
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Worse than just being very very underpaid (less than 10% of the required postage), it also looks like they are used stamps since they both appear to have partial cancellations on them. So really I don’t think it has any valid postage.
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Here are two a little similar topics:
Lately I’ve been receiving many underpaid from USA, so I wonder if there would be a need for a special reminder to this country members.
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A few months ago I received a card from Australia with only the left stamp twice as postage (coincidence? the same postcrosser?). I reported the card since it was terribly underpaid and the support adviced me not to register it. They informed me that they’re going to contact the member and requested an explanation about the underpaid postage. I think you’d better report your card, too, if you haven’t already done that.
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Can someone help with this one? It has one Forever stamp on it. It doesn’t say Global Forever, so I’m not sure if this is sufficient postage for US-UK. I was about to register it, but in light of this thread, thought I would check first.
That stamp is worth 66 cents (domestic letter rate). One of those by itself is less than half the required postage.
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Thanks John. I’ll contact admin then and see what they say.
Hmm. This is a very interesting topic.
I sent yesterday 10 postcards abroad from Germany and I have been asked for 7€. It seems I underpaid, as mostly I got stamps in 95 cents value.
I brought it to the post office to avoid such trouble. And how I am supposed to know tariff abroad? I hope they will be delivered anyway.
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70 cent is for domestic inside Germany
You are right, it should be 95
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Sadly some employees at the post office really don’t know their own tariffs. This is often discussed in the German language topics.
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