ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 8, 1996 TAG: 9605080042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
WASHINGTON
Postage due may be done.
The Postal Service may end the practice of delivering underpaid mail ``postage due.'' Instead, mail with insufficient postage would be returned to sender, just like mail with no postage at all.
Currently, while mail with no postage is sent back, items with postage - but not enough - are marked ``postage due'' and sent to the intended recipient. The letter carrier then tries to collect the shortage.
But with more and more two-earner families and apartment living, letter carriers often cannot find someone at home to pay the overdue postage.
An end of postage-due mail is likely to attract little notice from individuals, for whom such letters are relatively rare, or even small business that receive larger volumes in the post.
``We do get it, maybe two or three times a month,'' said Ginger Oehrlein, a medical receptionist in Mount Vernon, Va. ``We just pay it'' and forget it, she said.
Michelle Black said the Washington dental office where works gets ``hardly any'' postage-due mail, and receptionist Vicki Ammann she sees little if any such mail at her Washington opthalmologist's office.
``Surprisingly, we often see stamps come through not even canceled,'' she said. ``Most things we receive only require a 32-cent stamp.''
Angelo Wider, manager of revenue assurance for the post office, says the change could benefit both the post office and people who send mail.
``There is a cost associated with each attempt to deliver,'' he noted.
``Sometimes they leave the letter with a note asking for the money due, especially in areas that have a down-home mentality and everybody knows everybody,'' he said. ``Sometimes the carrier pays out of his own pocket.''
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