What happens if you mail a letter without a ZIP code?
Oct 5, 2007 at 2:48 AM Post #5 of 14
It really depends on the people at the local post office. But I'm betting it should be deliverable.
 
Oct 5, 2007 at 4:16 AM Post #6 of 14
Your piece of mail will probably be sent through a PARS machine in which the OCR software will try to read it from a B&W image taken of it. If it cannot make out the address from "Dallas, TX", it will be sent to a keyer at a "Remote Encoding Center" where it will ask for the the details of the piece to be read by a person manning a computer terminal. That keyer will key "Dal TX" and it will be recognized by the software as "Dallas, TX". It will then be sent from the PD&C it is currently at to a hub or directly on to the Dallas PD&C where it will be processed and sent along. (The information from the keyer will be printed out on a barcode sprayed onto the envelope, telling a scanner down the line where the mail should go.)

It will delay the piece getting to the destination by a couple days, probably a week tops, if everything else was correct.

Unless the keyer keyed it wrong. If the keyer keyed it wrong, they will probably keep doing the job over and over for a couple more years before they are downsized.

If the keyer keyed it right, they will probably be terminated eventually, or go on a shooting spree (the candy, of course), go insane, quit, something or other, b/c the job is incredibly boring, mind numbingly so.

**BRENT**
 
Oct 5, 2007 at 1:27 PM Post #9 of 14
It might go to the Dead Letter Office:

5.jpg


Once there, the boys from REM will write a song about it.
 
Oct 5, 2007 at 2:35 PM Post #10 of 14
There is a story (I think I am cribbing it from a Bill Bryson book) about a letter arriving wit the address as follows

Hill
John
Mass

Which (obviously) reads as John Under Hill And Over Mass....

John Underhill, Andover, Mass.

Easy Huh?!
 
Oct 5, 2007 at 2:46 PM Post #11 of 14
It will get there. They have people who sit there are read illegible writing when addresses cannot be read by the system. I am sure they have people there to add your zip for you, or at least direct it to the right zipcode/ post office that distributes the local area mail
 
Oct 5, 2007 at 2:59 PM Post #12 of 14
It's good that you sent your letter out to Santa well in advance of Christmas! No worries, I get these kinds of letters addressed to the North Pole all of the time. We don't actually have a zip code. It's a vast territory of pure whiteness until you reach Santa's Workshop and Elf Village up here, and it would be kind of hard (even for a postal worker) to mistake one for the other, if you know what I mean! Wink, wink...

Oh, now wait a minute... maybe you don't know about Elf Village. It's a (might I say) rather low income housing project that we put together several years ago to help offset the cost of operations of Santa's Village. They said they needed somewhere to go for the 4-6 hours per day when they're not working. And when I say "they said" I mean all of them, all at once, in a chorus of those tiny little nagging voices, nonstop, day after day! "We need a place to stay" one of them would say, then "Ya, and it ain't right that we have to sleep in the fire truck!" another would say. On and on it would go for days and months.

Sweatshop my fat bottom! They should thank their lucky stars that they're not circus performers in Siberia. In any case, I turned it into a business venture (as I always do, I'm still laughing about all the money I make every year off of those Americans, talk about taking the bait, hook, line and sinker). Where was I? Oh, business venture, ya... and the rental income adds up to quite a chunck when considering how many of them little elf buggers there are, always milling about the place, complaing about every little inconvenience like only being fed once per day and saying, "Look at fatso, I'll bet anything he's not using that treadmill Mrs. Claus conned us into building for him last year!"

So, ya... you're good. I should get your letter before Christmas, and may have received it already for all I know. Those little turds in the mailroom have really been messing things up of late though, so there's no telling where it might be. I think they've been screening most of the mail this year, and tossing out the more difficult requests. Hope you didn't ask for an X-Box 360. We're still backordered on those from last year.
 
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