General Forum

So earlier this week I mailed a check out to a local little league organization (about 45 minutes north of me - have a good buddy who runs it) to pay the registration fee for a youth whose family cannot afford it, if there is one. As I always do when mailing a check or a PWE of cards, I used a generous amount of tape along the label seam. The two end pieces wrapped around the edges and covered my return address and stamp.

Today, I received it back with a RTS stamp saying "Stamps Void When Covered". I'll post a picture from my phone shortly, but apparently having tape over a stamp is a no-no. This is the first time I recall having an issue with this - anyone else?

Guess I'll be putting the stamp on after the tape from here on out...

Yes, I have heard this before. I have heard 2 reasons for this.

1 - The machines that scanf or the correct postage cannot read the stamps when they are cobered.

2 - It could mean that the stamp(s0 missed being cancelled the first use and they were are being re-used.

Interesting. I should clarify that when I said "as I always do" I didn't just mean using the tape - I meant putting the tape over the stamp. I don't know why that's always been a thing that I do, it just has been. That said, there are always post office differences too, as has been discussed before, and this one was mailed in South Bend, Indiana, whereas many others (if not all of them) are mailed from Three Oaks, Michigan, where I live.

Regardless, if others are in the dark, well, here's your PSA.

I've always been told nothing can cover or obstruct the stamp, so it doesn't surprise me, even though they can obviously read it.

When we were kids, back when letter writing was our means of communicating, we used to tape over stamps so we could resuse them.  The cancellation ink could be cleaned off the tape.

Lot easier in the old days, before, self-adhesive, to soak the stamps off and reuse if they happen to miss being canceled.

yeh.. i had that happen to me.. the stamp i guess was either old or in a bad spot to the point the glue was no longer good, so i used tape. and when i went to the PO they said NOPE

Kinda the same but not really. You know how the stamps are supposed to be marked my postal staff in some manner. I would say that at least 50% of my mail comes with nothing at all on the stamps. I guess they feel that because they are self adhesing they no longer have to. I wish I coud figure out how to get em off just to shove it in thier noses.