I go to the PO today to send a letter that I just found out had to be sent today. It needed todays postmark on it. I ship it priority, they stick the postage label on it with todays date, then proceed to tell me AFTER they get my money that it won't be postmarked until the 2nd. Will the shipping label date count as a postmark date? Anyone know? Nice they told me that after they got my $10 just to ship a friggin piece of paper. Sorry, had to rant to someone, this has me slightly pissed.

wiki..

"A postmark is a postal marking made on a letter, package, postcard or the like indicating the (more or less precise) date and time that the item was delivered into the care of the postal service"

According to THAT definition, it should have been postmarked when they received it. Call and bitch!

Just tried that andy. Funny how the office closes at 1 but I was there after 1 to drop that off. Could not get anyone on the phone.

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3. Author: tonyt722 Date: 12/31/2008 04:04 PM Reply

Just tried that andy. Funny how the office closes at 1 but I was there after 1 to drop that off.

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Do they have a later mail collection though? If so, it'll get (it should) postmarked with today's date.

Having a fair amount of experience working with the federal government, I'm going to hazard a guess that it has something to do with metrics/statistics. I would bet that some in the USPS world are being judged on delivery times calculated from 'postmark-to-delivery'. If 'someone' in the organization thinks that they can improve their stats by not postmarking mail until it is ready to move from their facility, you can bet that 'someone' will try it (wikipedia be damned).

-dave

Dropped another copy off in the regular mail that said the last pick up was 5pm so hopefully it will get marked today

In dealing with the IRS, if you have a receipt showing delivery to the post office today, that is considered mailed as of today. in most cases, proof of delivery to the post office on a given date is all you need to proof something was mailed that day. It has nothing to do with when the PO actually processes the outgoing mail.

... sounds like he's mailing in an appearance for a traffic violation ...

No traffic violation here.