Being in West Virginia at the time of my appointed court date, and confident I could put my case in writing, and certain that I would lose it, I opted for the “hearing by mail” option on my subway ticket. I got it postmarked by July 10th, which I thought was enough time to make it by the July 28th deadline. Of course it wasn’t, and I received word from the Transit Adjudication Bureau that they were adding a 50% penalty to my $50 fine because I did not respond to my ticket within 30 days. I was annoyed, as you might imagine, especially because I put my trust in the system and did not register the piece of mail. Well, the post office finally got around to returning my mail on August 9th (you can see that the second postmark, August 4th, in the photo). I presumed that my stamps, which had no indicated monetary value but merely said “First Class USA,” were good for first-class mail within the U.S. I was aware that the post office had started these “forever stamps” and frequently omitted monetary designations. I presumed a “first-class” stamp was like this. This is, unfortunately, untrue. I went to the post office to figure out this whole mess. The woman working there had no idea what the value of my stamp was. But she pulled out a big folio sheet of pictures of postage stamps without denominations, and after a few minutes we found out that my stamp was worth 39 cents. Hence I was five cents short of postage. For these five cents of inadvertence I would, in all likelihood, lose another twenty-five dollars.
Good Lord, did the Bush administration do anything right? Can anyone tell me what pressing need there is in the post office to issue stamps with defined values but no indication of their values? All it does is create more confusion and work later on. The post office has to print up, at some cost, I imagine, these big keys so that postal employees can figure out what these stamps are worth. How many wasted hours does this cause, for the system and for those who attempt to use it? There is a good reason for a “forever stamp” – a stamp with no indication of value because it has no defined value. But these stamps which are worth 39 cents, but are not labeled appropriately because of a hesitant leadership, are ridiculous.
On my ticket it specifically states that the MTA will not grant any leniency for postal delays.
I sent it off again today, and we’ll see what happens next.
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