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Have a post office mail tub? Time to bring it back
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Post office mail tub, Jan. 11, 2010
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Sean Nash/Flickr (Creative Commons-licensed)
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They’re fabulous for toting dirty laundry, stacks of books — oh, and mail. But now the U.S. Postal Service is asking you to bring its white plastic mail tubs back, no questions asked. The amnesty period ends just after Thanksgiving.
Each mail tub costs the Postal Service $4. Patrons have also “borrowed” mail trays and $20 wooden pallets.
The agency spent close to $50 million last year replacing the items. The Postal Service reminds patrons it’s in a financial crisis and can’t afford to lose so much property.
Stealing it, by the way, is a federal crime: Violators could spend up three years in prison and/or pay up to a quarter of a million dollars in fines. Postal inspectors found 7,500 valued at more than $200,000 at a recycling company in California. Prosecution is pending.
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But the Postal Service is now offering two weeks of amnesty, no questions asked. It’ll even pick up larger stashes of waylaid postal property. The offer ends on Nov. 26.
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