Poste Restante (was Questions)
 

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 06:25:33 +0200, "Pierre Courtiade"
wrote:

A.E. Gelat wrote :

Could someone please clarify what is Poste Restante? I thought it
was for mail to be picked up at a post office when no address is
known, and the postage is already prepaid. One example of Poste
Restante is to send mail to someone who would be visiting a city, and
would pick up any mail upon presentation of identification. Are any
other uses, and why is a fee collected?

Tony

Hi Tony,

I will answer only for France.

All what you say is right : if I travel with no precise time table, I
could ask my friends to write me "Poste Restante" at the main post
office of a given city.

My friend would just affix a stamp paying for the normal fee.
But this gives extra work to the post-office (keeping the mail for some
time, recording the arrival and the delivery) ; so there is an extra fee
to pay, not by the sender but by me (as it's me who decided to use this
process).
And when I pick the mail, I will pay this extra fee ; for accounting
purposes, the clerk will affix a special stamp (in that case a "Timbre
Taxe" or postage due stamp) on the cover and cancel it.

After some time, if the cover has not been picked, it is not keeped
locally.
I don't recall what happens then : sent back to the sender, sent so a
special cetral storage place, destroyed ???
May be Bruno could elaborate on that (and possibly correct me on the 1st
part of my answer ;-)

Pier

I agree with you.

Poste Restante used to be free (may be still be free in some places),
but most big administrations want money for everything.

I believe it is held for 2 weeks in Canada.

After that they try to return to sender at return address.
If no return address they often open it to try and find a
sender who it can be returned to.

If all else fails it goes to the dead letter office.

I have received some such interesting letters.

In an order for stamps, that was from the Yemen Philatelic Bureau,
I received a poste restante letter addressed to a French student
from her mother. I had to open the letter to get a return address
and then forwarded it all back to the young lady at her mother's
address with a covering letter in my not too perfect French. I was
even so bold to ask if she had any spare stamps from her trip that she
would like to trade or sell.

Eventually I got a nice reply from her thanking me. Unfortunately
she was not a philatelist and had no stamps from her trip.

During the Rhodesia Independence period (UDI) four countries did not
recognize their stamps (UK was one). I had letters sent to me at
Poste Restante in each of those countries (hoping to get rare postage
due markings etc..)

As I did not collect the letters, I had someone put my own return
address in Canada on the covers. They all came back to me eventually
(as undelivered) and I paid no postage due, even though some had
postage due markings.

Blair





Blair









-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----