I mean.. if it was enough to cover a stamp and I was the post office worker, I’d be a bro about it.
They’re to give to the boatman.
One time my uncle sent me a letter and couldn't remember the address of my place at the time, so he addressed it to, "White house a block away from the corner of [street] in [town, state]" and it made it here.
This was, obviously, well before you could just use Street View or whatever.
I attempted to find the article but search engines are terrible. They mentioned that advertising companies often have a book of mail tests; things they attempted to mail to see if they would be permitted. Some of the examples included:
A sock with an address written on it, partial addresses, wet paper, vague addresses like your example, local names like "sues bar", tom cruises house, a sandwich in a bag, poster board, flags. They get pretty creative and like a record of what might work for pitch meetings. Generally if it looks plausible, they attempt it.
"You know, the house next to the one that has that little cunt kid. You know the one. Always leaving his bike on the lawn, and being a real disrespectful little shit if you try to explain it's gonna get stolen in THIS neighborhood. The house next to that. The white one, not the blue one on the other side."
Mailman: "Oh. Yeah. I DO know that little fucker. Damn near tripped over his bike when it was covered in snow, and I didn't know it was there."
Yep, when we visited most of the houses had little names they would use for their address. Villa Bonita 200m S of xxx
Iceland, draw a map on it and the right name and that's all you really need.
At that point, why not write latitude and longitude and be done with it?
As long as the address is specific enough to get through the right distribution center and to the right ending post office... chances are the carriers it ends up with will absolutely figure out where it needs to go.
The postal service is one of those things that's amazing the fact that half the things arrive at their intended destination knowing what is involved in the logistics of the whole thing.
As a kid, I tried to mail a letter without a stamp by having the return address be the address I wanted to send it and my address as the destination address. They put the letter back in my own mail box, so technically I mailed a letter for free. 😌
Where I live, the mail would also be delivered, but the return address would get a request for payment letter by the postal service. At least that's what happened when my letter was 1g too heavy for the paid format.
Postal Secret Service has entered chat
Mail Fraud? You're in a lot of trouble, buddy.
If it works it ain’t stupid
So… This is stupid?
I havent seen it in years because of forever stamps and digital postage, but people used to actually do this to make up for a few cents postage for a heavy letter, et c. My mom is notoriously cheap though, so maybe it is just us.
When I was a kid and would send very stuffed letters, we just left a dollar paper clipped to it, they would leave the change the next day for heavier stuff.
When I was even younger I used to leave flowers in the mailbox for the mail person, and they got me a little flower statue for xmas and left it in the mailbox for me. That’s a memory I haven’t thought of in a long time so that was pleasant :)
Pff, two years. Used to do that shit all the time when I was a kid. It always worked.
Yeah, I'm old too. Setting letters in the mailbox with some change on top for postage wasn't uncommon.
I could strongly be wrong but I think that one is something you can sort of pull off IIRC.
Put the return address as the address you want to send it to, no stamp needed
Wha.....oh my god. How have I never realized this???
Now if you'l excuse me, I have to make a collect call to my parents. My name is Bob Adababyitzaboi.
May work a couple times in town, in the same ZIP Code; may come with free trip to federal penitentiary
