The U.S. Postal Service said that it will penalize customers who use counterfeit postage stamps by treating mail bearing such adhesives as “abandoned,” the Washington Times reports. Customers who mail mortgage payments or job applications with fake adhesives could end up missing critical deadlines as a result.
The USPS declared its intention in a Federal Register filing proposing changes to the mailing standards listed in the “Domestic Mail Manual,” a rulebook governing postal operations.
Under the proposed change, “articles found in the mails with counterfeit postage will be considered abandoned and may be opened and disposed of at the Postal Service’s discretion,” the USPS said in a news release announcing the move.
“As the most trusted government agency in the nation, we will continue to work together with other law enforcement and government agencies to protect the sanctity of the mail,” said Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale in a statement.
It is nearly impossible to truly detect the counterfeit from the genuine.
Additionally, penalizing the person sending the letter while logical, is to an extent victim blaming.
There are so many legitimate ways to buy stamps online (not directly from the USPS, they take too long to get it to you) where you truly have way to know if they are counterfeit (getting back to the near impossibility to detect the difference).
Furthermore, I know people who remove stamps from return card envelopes that they are not returning and adhese them to other mail. Would these genuine stamps suffer the same fate due to the adhesive?
I have always bought stamps at a post office.
You win a prize.
So much of the mail doesn’t get delivered already that wouldn’t stop anyone because if the mail wasn’t delivered it would just appear to be the USPS once again failing to deliver.