mail mystery

August 10, 2020 8:41 PM

The rent check we were expecting, said to have been sent on 7-28 from elsewhere in town, arrived today. Envelope was carefully cut open along top, but envelope was stapled shut in the middle top, (so check wouldn't fall out I guess). No other damage to envelope. Envelope was stamped 8-4 from Oklahoma City. (letter sender, and i live in Arizona). Any ideas on how to explain this? Thanks Metafilter!
posted by hollyanderbody to Law & Government (6 answers total)

That the check was said to have been sent doesnt necessarily mean it was on said day. Were the contents of the letter still inside? You never said. At any point there have been several snail mail snafus in the wake of Covid 19 and mail service was never stellar to begin with. If you got your mail thank the Gods and move past it. It's not worth the stress
posted by The_imp_inimpossible at 8:44 PM on August 10, 2020

Response by poster: to answer your question, nothing missing.
not stressed just curious, yeah I get that it may have been sent late, its the condition of the envelope and the Oklahoma City part that i'm curious about, thanks.
posted by hollyanderbody at 8:48 PM on August 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Possibly it got sent to the wrong person (someone in Oklahoma City), they opened it and realized it wasn’t for them, stapled it and put it back in the mailbox?
posted by brook horse at 8:52 PM on August 10, 2020 [12 favorites]

I presume the only postmark is from Oklahoma City? I'd bet that the envelope got stuck to another envelope that was addressed to someone in Oklahoma City, and the person who got it opened all the envelopes at once (without looking at the address/sender), then sat down to go through them. Once they got to your envelope and pulled out the check, they realized the mistake, stapled it shut, and dropped it back in the mail. Since it was stuck to another envelope on the way to Oklahoma City, the stamp was never cancelled the first time, so it got postmarked and delivered just like a normal envelope the second time.

The thing that makes this feel the most likely is that it was slit open across the top. That's probably someone using a letter opener, which would be consistent with a person/company that gets a lot of mail and just goes down the stack opening all the envelopes before coming back to process them.
posted by yuwtze at 9:22 PM on August 10, 2020 [23 favorites]

I open mail for an office and the exact thing yuwtze describes has happened. In our case, we received an invitation addressed to someone in our office and stuck to it was an additional invitation addressed to someone else.
posted by entropyiswinning at 9:34 PM on August 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Make sure the sender knows the envelope has been opened before it got to you, the check routing & account numbers could have been copied and duplicated.
posted by TheAdamist at 6:03 AM on August 11, 2020 [6 favorites]