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Late Postal Service
  (+5, -4)
(+5, -4) 		  [vote for,
against]

There should be a way of having a letter delivered, whereby you can choose to have the date on the post mark altered.
This would be great if you posted a birthday card late, and you could claim to have posted it on time, and blame the delay on the postal service!
Or you could just post stuff on time, but where's the fun in that?
—MikeOliver, Dec 13 2004

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       So the post-office get blamed for even more late letters when they are, in fact, innocent?!
—britboy, Dec 13 2004
   

       In my experience, the postal service are never innocent...
   

       But anyway, who cares!
—MikeOliver, Dec 13 2004
   

       Sorry, this idea redunds with one of [pluterday]'s, but it's still clever.
—phundug, Dec 13 2004
   

       [phundug], I don't think so . . . Mike is late and wants the postmark to reflect "on time." E.g. My Mom's birthday was Nov 30th. I take a card to the post office today (13 Dec) and then they stamp "November 29th" on it and when dear sweet mumsy gets the letter, she sings my praises but damns the post office.   

       Pluterday, for some reason, wants a massively-long archival and delivery service.
—contracts, Dec 13 2004
   

       All right, you got me with your legal mumbo-jumbo. Byebye.
—phundug, Dec 13 2004
   

       Bang on [contracts].
This would have gotten me out of some sticky soup with my Pa last week!
—MikeOliver, Dec 13 2004
   

       The trouble with this idea is that it only really works if I (or MikeOliver in his case) am the only person in the country who can use it, and no-one else knows about it. If it becomes widely available, then no-one will trust the post-marks anymore. Besides, aren't there legal ramifications to falsifying post-marks? Something tells me that a post-mark has a similar status to a legal document, and the Post Office could be conspiring in fraud by going along with this (for instance, one of the ways of ensuring copyright is to post a copy of the work to yourself by registered mail and keep the envelope unopened.)
—spacemoggy, Dec 13 2004
   

       If it was advertised on the internet, then my dad wouldn't know about it, and that's good enough for me!
—MikeOliver, Dec 14 2004
   

       [Mike] you could put a stamp on it, then hand deliver it (or arrange hand delivery), thus having no postmark at all. The victim would then either
(a) not notice the lack of a postmark
(b) notice the absence of the postmark, and muse at how this happens every now and then and aren't they lucky because now they can re-use the stamp
(c) think, "How odd that Mikey should deliver my card personally, late, with a stamp.. no.. that can't be right, he lives 300 miles away, why would he do that."
—neilp, Dec 14 2004
   

       If you live in Australia or New Zealand, you can send an Apple iCard one day late. Due to the 16hr time difference btw here and Apple, Inc. the postmark appears to be 'backdated' in the card's watermark.   

       :)
—not_only_but_also, Dec 15 2004
   

       hey [neilp]. that is a hell of a guess.
I actually live about 250 miles away from my dad!
—MikeOliver, Dec 15 2004
   

       I served on a ship with it's own post office that had thoroughly baked this system to work in reverse. The idea was called "Bribe the postmaster," and allowed you to give them the mail late, and have it postdated as if it had been recieved sooner.   

       I suspect the "Bribe the postmaster" idea was at least in part due to the rapid turnover rate in that post office... although the extremely annoying sailors who suspected everyone of stealing mail, and recieving it after months of not communicating with land by any means could have had something to do with it as well.   

       Typical post office conversation: "I saw a helicopter land, where's my mail?" "that was the ship's helicopter back from a recon mission. It never touched down anywhere else." "So they winched up the bag of mail that has my letters?" "No. All our letters come onboard from a different helicopter. We won't get any more mail for a month." "I've got bills to pay, and I'm expecting a package! Why are you hiding my mail?" "You're expecting a package?" "Damn skippy I'm expecting a package. Where is it?" "Oh, I've got a package for you right here..." "&#&$ Why won't you do something? Somebody''s stealing my mail!"
—ye_river_xiv, Jul 31 2006
   

       I served on a ship with it's own post office that had thoroughly baked this system to work in reverse. The idea was called "Bribe the postmaster," and allowed you to give them the mail late, and have it postdated as if it had been recieved sooner.   

       I suspect the "Bribe the postmaster" idea was at least in part due to the rapid turnover rate in that post office, although floating around without any source of new mail for months on end, and having the same 300 people ask if they've gotten any letters, complain that someone's been stealing their mail, and beg for the package they've been expecting could try most anyone's patience.   

       I ended up doing a stint in there myself, and I'm glad they don't give postmasters guns. I got a lot of mileage out of the line "You're expecting a package? Well I've got a package for you right here..."
—ye_river_xiv, Jul 31 2006
   


 

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