The United States Postal Service started a dead letter office in 1825 to deal with undeliverable mail. In 2006 approximately 90 million undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) items ended up in this office; where the rightful owners cannot be identified, the correspondence is destroyed to protect customer privacy, and enclosed items of value are removed. Items of value that cannot be returned are sold at auction, except for pornography and firearms. The auctions also occasionally include items seized by postal inspectors and property being retired from postal service.
These facilities are now known as mail recovery centers (MRC). Other former names include dead letter branch and dead parcel branch. These facilities are not unique to the US Postal Service, and go by different names in other countries. The USPS mail recovery centers are located in Atlanta, Georgia and Saint Paul, Minnesota. An MRC in San Francisco, California was closed on September 13, 2002. Since 2004, the postal auctions have been held only in Atlanta. These auctions include not only material lost in the U.S. but also material from other national postal authorities who consign them to the USPS for auction.
The Canadian equivalent, the Undeliverable Mail Office (NUMO) located in Mississauga, Ontario.
In the UK, undeliverable mail without an external address are processed in National Returns Centre, located in Belfast.
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Famous quotes containing the words dead, letter and/or office:
“The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter but do not admit the excuses except in courtesy, as when a man treads on your toes and begs your pardon—the pardon is granted, but the joint aches, especially if there is a corn upon it.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honourable, than that of teaching?”
—Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)