We love those postal additions!

Returned mail with two stickers from USA...

now I know that "NIXIES" really exist!

@Stripygoose: so this was a postal diminution (instead of an addition)!.... Or have you been able to prevent the postal scissors from altering the mail artwork?

@Katerina :-) tmho a postal 'Nixie' is the Word of the Year!

Want to show the addition to Heleen's package:
aha! image icon now working:

'Hope there was nothing missing :-)
see blog:
A Hippo and a Giraffe from Heleen ...not damaged :-

Thank you for posting, Katerina! It seems the Hippopotamus has traveled very safe, with this added soft cover!

Did I say I love postal additions?

Sometimes it is not that easy to embrace additions. For instance the postal sticker added by a private post transport company to this work of art, sent by Erni Bär:
Where has the Haptic Werewolf gone?!??

However, those private postal companies normally don't deliver to post boxes ( 'postbus' in Dutch), so the good news is that the SpongeBär at least has landed and arrived in the correct place!

Have I mentioned that mail art that I sent to Heleen was returned to Greece? Duh...maybe I have to remember to put the post box number on it? I hope the new sending arrives ok :-(

It's a nice addition (fortunately not sticked to the beautiful stamp) and this time it arrived safe and sound! (Thanks to the other envelope :-) )

Thank you very much, Katerina!

Thanks, Heleen, soooo glad that this all arrived

safely to you...i think it was first mailed in November! 

Yes, it was signed november!..

Beautiful Japanese postal addition on a "tube" that arrived from Ryosuke

Inside was a wonderful surprise!

Silhouette portrait by Ryosuke Cohen of Japan

The post added this sticker to my mail for Ti Ar, and had this mail art travel twice, so far!

I'll send it again to Ti Ar, to the new address (to the postbox, because the present mailman seems to not know where Ti Ar's house is) so this mail art will finally jave been travelling three times for the postage of two :-)

It is not the first time that the Dutch mail company PostNL checked Ruud Janssen's colourful envelope. I think I've received one or two more times checked envelopes. You can trace this control's traces by the stamp PostNL added: 'frankering gecontroleerd' = 'postage checked':

Heleen, I have received some from you with the addition 'frankering gecontroleerd'.

That's great, Eva! That means that Real People have had this mail in Real Hands and have seen it with Real Eyes, instead of the postal machines only :-) 

So this way of sending mail provides Real People of a paid (I hope for them) job!

I've seen one on your blog, indeed. And am curious to know what other kinds of mail have been treated manually, too! If it were only because of different stamp combinations, or also because the stamps were 'hidden' among colours, like on Ruud's envelopes?

Got a card postage due from PostNL and complained. This is what I got as a reply (in Dutch:)

Geachte heer Janssen,
 
Uit uw e-mail begrijp ik dat u een portokaart heeft ontvangen voor een poststuk dat voldoende was gefrankeerd. Ik kan mij voorstellen dat dit vragen bij u oproept, omdat deze verzendkosten ten onrechte in rekening zijn gebracht. Tot mijn spijt kon ik u hier telefonisch niet over bereiken, daarom reageer ik nu graag per e-mail.
 
Aan de hand van de door u opgegeven betaalcode heb ik de gegevens in ons bestand gecontroleerd. Hieruit blijkt dat uw zending voldoende was gefrankeerd en de portokosten dus onterecht in rekening zijn gebracht. Hiervoor bied ik u dan ook mijn excuses aan.
 
Om ervoor te zorgen dat het proces stopt en ter voorkoming van een herinnering, adviseer ik u het volgende te doen: verwijder de sticker met de adresgegevens van de portokaart. Vervolgens schrijft u op de kaart: \'Afgeboekt in overleg met KS\' plus de datum van vandaag. De kaart kunt u daarna naar ons terugsturen door die ongefrankeerd in de oranje brievenbus te posten.


Bedankt voor de moeite die u hebt genomen om contact met ons op te nemen, ik ga er vanuit u met dit antwoord van voldoende informatie te hebben voorzien. Als u naar aanleiding van mijn reactie nog vragen heeft, dan kunt u gebruik maken van antwoordformulier.

Met vriendelijke groet,

A Terpstra
PostNL Klantenservice
www.postnl.nl

Hahaha, I have received three letters like this already.

One for a letter I received from you, Ruud, they mistook it for 'insufficient postage' but the - sufficient postage - stamps seemed to be 'hidden' in the colourful painted envelope.

One for a sent letter to Switzerland, the PostNL controller didn't know the stamp of Vermeer's painting 'the girl with the pearl' was meant, and sufficient, for international mail. A stamp issued by PostNL themselves! :-)

By the way, I couldn't find an emailaddress, so I typed a letter and sent it by snail mail (which, oh irony, costed me 3 stamps :-) ). One of the three times they sent me some postcards to say sorry, the other two times it was just the letter.

For the non-Dutch readers who didn't consult google.translate.com: it is mail from the Dutch mail company as a reply to a complain about a 'port incident', an accusation by the mail company that there wasn't sufficient postage paid for the sent or received mail. A result of their postage checking (see previous picture of the stamp print 'grankering gecontroleerd' = 'postage checked').

So glad you have a postal box number now, TiAr! Hopefully the returned mail will once again get to you!

No Time for "return to sender" :-)

I like to peel off these postal machine "additions",

usually on mail art from the USA, and recycle them into mail art...

but they have to be inside an envelope so as not to confuse the machine! 

lt would be a good experiment to try them at the outside of the envelope, Katerina, don't you think so? It would be good to know if the Post would send it to the address which is included in the code, or if they will deliver it at the wished place!

A great postal and customal addition to the matchbox art package I sent to Tomoe. Picture thanks to Tomoe.

You can see a Japanese customers sticker (they opened it, and then the postal workers had to close / repack it). And if you look close, you can see red stamped letters under the sticker: 'frankering gecontroleerd' = postage checked. So at least three Real Humans have helped this mail art on it's travel (and we helped them to keep their jobs): a Dutch postal worker, a Japanese custom person and a Japanese postal worker!

(the sad thing is that they made the cow stamp almost invisible...)

On Instagram I am following @ho.owl, and to my happy surprise I was honoured with a ginger ho.owlet when I posted my drawing of my favourite breakfast! However it took more time than expected, for the package (with the Owlet) to arrive from Spain to the Netherlands. But thanks to this personally stamped and handwritten Postal Addition we know what has been causing the delay!

See @ho.owl on Instagram and www.hoowlstory.com on the internet to learn more about this (to me still mysterious) little Owl.

So sad...did not make it to the Liverpool place :-(

address...no longer?

...on an envelope from Belgium...but arrived ok anyway :-)

the torn edge was taped up, and the report got TWO official signatures!

On this sent envelope the addition consists of a cancelation stamp / postmark added by Dutch Post to the faux postage stamp (all other stamps are mine).
However... they did deliver it to my own address instead of the addressee's address in Breda!
I don't understand why...

Fortunately Dutch Post didn't cancel the real stamps, so I'll have an other try.

Returning mail to the sender also happens in Japan. Ryosuke's Braincell took a little longer because it was returned to him for no obvious reason. Eventually with this little addition it arrived in Breda.....

for Heleen: The computer obviously read your zipcode from the stamp, and even printed it in code on the envelope itself. I wonder what happens at a 2nd attempt. Will be a georgious enveloppe enveloppe....!

NIXIE time...back to Greece, even with the correct address,

BUT it was written too LOW on the envelope

for the US Postal ROBOT to "read" :-(

Two returns :-(

correct address, but still the envelope gets returned. Maybe too colourful?

NIXIE at work...here too :-(

Mail art, created thanks to Postal Additions!

Created by Katerina (and several post companies :-) ) - thanks a lot, Katerina!

'Could not resist the postal barcode on a turquoise envelope, had to send to you, Heleen! And there were a few others on white, too. :-)

thanks for posting, good to see it arrived. xxx

The only good thing about getting this mail returned from Australia was the giant red nixie fist

Pity that your mail was returned, Alan, however I love that stamp!!

Would be a challenge to try to receive such a stamp, too! To which city did you send this mail?

I received this A5 size envelope and I became curious to see the stamps. When holding the unopened envelope against the light I saw a A6 size card and I could decipher FinnBadger's name. So I thought this envelope was from FinnBadger. 

However, the address wasn't the one I knew, and I missed FinnBadger's typical items - like beautiful postage stamps - on the envelope. FInnBadger going dada with this 'Cancelled stamps enclosed' sticker??

Just when I opened the envelope I realized that this envelope could be a Postal Addition!
Probably to protect both the stamps and this beautiful postmark (which FinnBadger had succeeded to have the Post Company add to his card).

The front side of the card I will post on my animals blog, somewhere in the coming weeks (alas not enough time at the moment to do so now), but for this moment I'm happy to share these two postal additions with you.

Thank you FinnBadger, and thank you, USPS!

Glad it made it Heleen. I had no idea they would send it like that - usually they just get put in the mail. Funny you thought I had gone dada :)

And I am so sorry I put one of the stamps upside down - it was not intentional. I love how nice the monkey postmark is, very cool to see it in person.

A suburb of Perth, Heleen. Are you thinking of sending deliberately undeliverable mail just to get it returned? It's an expensive way of stamp collecting!

@FinnBadger: I received it like Heleen. But the stamp wasn't upside down :)

This envelope to FinnBadger Phillip has the correct address (I've checked with him) but got returned by US Mail with a 'no such number' Nixie. I've forgotten what's inside now, he'll have to wait to see whether it gets delivered the second time. I suppose it depends whether it gets handled by the bloke who can read…

Other than having no zip code (which might slow down a little), it should have made it just fine, Alan, as it is perfectly clear. I love your painted envelope series, so i, too, hope it makes a second crossing.

adding the zip would fix the delivery problem, especially with the correct 9-digit zip code: 43206-2009

True, but not having it added should not make it undeliverable. I've had plenty of mail arrive without a zip code.

Well it took six weeks to travel 8000 miles there and back, it should be with you by Christmas.

I;ll save a space for it on the tree - it will look great there with its red and green border.

Sometimes it's worth the cost of a stamp to get something like this returned