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| {{for|the album by R.E.M.|Dead Letter Office (album)}} | |||
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| The ] started a '''dead letter office''' in 1825 to deal with ]. 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.<ref name="usps-mrc">{{cite web | title=2006 Comprehensive Statement | publisher =] | date =2006 | url=http://www.usps.com/strategicplanning/cs06/chp2_005.html | accessdate = 2009-03-25 }}</ref> Such items of value, which cannot be returned, are sold at auction. Except for pornography and firearms, everything that can be lost in the mail is included at auction. The auctions also occasionally include items seized by postal inspectors and property being retired from postal service. | |||
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| 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 ] and ].<ref name="usps-mrc"/> An MRC in ] was closed on September 13, 2002.<ref> (retrieved 10 May 2007)</ref> 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. | |||
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| ⚫ | ] | ||
| The Canadian equivalent of the dead letter office is located in ]. | |||
| ==In culture== | |||
| ]]] | |||
| *One famous fictional alleged employee of the dead letter office is Bartleby, the ]ous character of Herman Melville's "]". | |||
| *Alternative rock band ] released a compilation of B-sides and rarities entitled '']''. | |||
| *In the 1947 film '']'', two mail sorters handle a letter addressed to "]" at the ] courthouse, and decide to deliver all the ] mail now in the dead letter office to the courthouse, where a man calling himself Kris Kringle is facing a mental competency hearing. The man's ] uses the huge volume of mail as evidence that the federal government recognizes his client as "the one-and-only Santa Claus." | |||
| *The term "dead letter office" may be used in non-postal offices, in reference to any room of disused materials resembling a dead letter office. | |||
| *Horror writer Clive Barker's book '']'' features segments centered around the dead letter office at ]. | |||
| *In '']'' episode "]," ] visits their local Post Office and are treated to a piece of undeliverable mail from the dead letter office as a ]. | |||
| *The 1996 comedy film '']'', in which a character played by ], working in a post office, responds to letters written to ] | |||
| *In Australia, the postal authority (Australia Post) has renamed the "Dead Letter Office" the "Mail Redirection Centre" although documentation as recent as September 2007 still refers to it as the "Dead Letter Office". | |||
| *In ]'s book '']'', the Postmaster Moist finds Lord Vetinari, the Patrician and ruler of the city, wandering around the Blind Letter office of the Ankh-Morpork post office. Vetinari is able to work out that a letter addressed "Duzbuns Hopsit pfarmerrsc" is intended for a baker on Pigsty Hill who "does those rather good curly buns". | |||
| ==References== | |||
| <div class="references-small"> | |||
| <references/> | |||
| </div> | |||
| ==External links== | |||
| * Smithsonian Arago — People, Postage and the Post | |||
| * ] | |||
| * "" (''Smithsonian'' magazine, July 2000) | |||
| * | |||
| * | |||
| ⚫ | ] | ||
| ] | ] | ||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||
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