I was wondering what would happen if I wrote the wrong address on a letter and forgot to add my return address to the envelope. So I went in search of answers...
If you Google what happens to undeliverable mail, this is what pops up.
"The Mail Recovery Center (MRC) is the U.S. Postal Service's official "lost and found" department for undeliverable and non-returnable mail. Undeliverable mailpieces are letters, flats or parcels that cannot be delivered as addressed nor returned to the sender."
And if you go to the "What is the USPS Mail Recovery Center" page. It says this...
*Click on image to enlarge*
So apparently if they can't deliver the mail for whatever reason they open it to see if the contents are worth more than $25.00 ($20.00 for mailpieces containing cash), and they hold it for 30-60 days. If no one claims it within that time, they sometimes auction off the contents of lost mail, donate it or just throw it away. You can find the auctioned items for sale at the United States Postal Service Auctions page.
I didn't even know this was a thing! They have all kinds of products available to buy.
So if you're wondering how to file a missing mail request or if you could just go to the post office and have them look for a piece of mail that was missing. Well, they make it very hard to file a request if you're missing a piece of mail. I know, because I've done this several times before with no results. The way I was told to do it was to make an Informed Delivery account on the USPS website, click on 'support' and then on the right hand side click on 'missing mail' and fill out the missing mail report form.
I've done this several times because my mail has gone missing more times than I care to admit. Either the mailperson puts it into someone else's mailbox slot, doesn't deliver it at all or it goes missing. And since mail carriers have been caught on video disposing of large amounts of mail into dumpsters behind company buildings, it could have ended up in a dumpster for all I know.
Each time I waited 2-3 months for them to write me back, just to tell me that the 'missing mail' was not found and the report was now closed. Yep, very helpful, not!
So if you've ever wondered about what happens to missing mail, undeliverable mail or lost mail, now you know.
