Comment by andrewhillman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewhillman | Hacker News Reader

"These days they have streamlined online applications for writing to them, but I suggest that you only send them paper letters. This is a really weird thing for a technologist to suggest, but when you send paper letters, you can establish and own a “paper trail.” When you type words into their godawful web applications and hit submit, you will likely fail to retain a copy of those words and fail to retain records about what they told you (exactly) and when. This will complicate your resolution with them. Communicate with them only over postal mail. Keep a log of every mail you send (including what you said) and when it was sent; keep a copy of every letter they send to you and when it was sent. You don’t need physical copies; digital is fine. I like organizing all of mine on a per-incident basis in Dropbox."

YOU SHOULD ALWAYS SEND LETTERS WITH 'USPS RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED.' (It's the green card you get at the post office and once the recipient receives your letter, you will get a green card in the mail serving as proof of delivery and acceptance.) This is the lowest costing form of legal proof for a paper trail. Well worth it. I use it all the time and I learned this from my dad who has spent his life practicing law.

> YOU SHOULD ALWAYS SEND LETTERS WITH 'USPS RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED.' (It's the green card you get at the post office and once the recipient receives your letter, you will get a green card in the mail serving as proof of delivery and acceptance.)

Also: 1) Get the actual green-card form beforehand; 2) type the green-card serial number above the inside address of the letter; and 3) keep a photocopy. Otherwise the recipient could claim that the signed green card, confirming receipt of the mailing, was for some other letter, not the one you sent. As a baby lawyer filling in for a more-senior associate at a court hearing, I had an opposing counsel make just such a claim to a judge; the judge gave the opposing counsel the benefit of the doubt. (The opposing counsel was later disbarred for unrelated reasons.)

Example of such an inside address:

--begin--

   VIA CERTIFIED MAIL NO. 123456789

   Evil Corporation
   9876 Main Street
   Anytown, Anystate  54321-9876

   Attention: Department of Fobbing People Off

   To whom it may concern:

   [etc.]

--end--

Curious, can you not ask them to produce the other letter then? As they signed the green card.

Is the date that the green card was bought recorded by USPS? Basically, how exactly does writing the tracking number within the letter prove that the letter was mailed with that envelope?

Under civil law in the United States, the legal burden is not "irrefutable proof", but "preponderance of evidence".

If you produce copies of a letter with a given return receipt number indicated on it, the return receipt stub, and the received receipt, and the opposing party claims that "this could have been faked", then, unless your credibility is otherwise impeached, you have established a preponderance of evidence for your claim.

It sounds like several of you know more than I do about this, so I'm curious... I'm in the habit of using Priority Mail for things like this, because I can print out a mailing label at home and get a tracking number with delivery information.

Assuming I put the tracking number in the letter as you suggest, is there still an advantage to using certified mail and a green return receipt instead? Or is Priority Mail equally good?

Priority Mail AFAIK doesn't require a signature for receipt. It does provide tracking, but that's less rigorous proof than the actual return receipt.

Thanks. Priority Mail does have a signature-required option, which makes me curious whether that is as good as a return receipt.

Yep, for important written communications (e.g. CRAs, the IRS, debt collectors, etc.) I always use certified mail and request a return receipt. For any clueless millennials such as myself who are unfamiliar with the post office, this is a good video that shows exactly how to fill out the forms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLQLWdV1MZE

Thanks for the video. Curious why they say never to sign the letter.

You don't sign the letter because signatures have a way of magically[0] teleporting themselves onto documents that you've never seen.

0 - Using such fancy Merlin's wands of "Photoshop" or "scanning and then MS Paint copy/paste" or just "photocopy, cut with scissors, paste with tape, photocopy again."

I have always wanted a stamp that physically cuts out a complicated pattern as a signature.

That is highly illegal. The FCRA and related laws are enforced by the FTC, CFPB, and debtors' lawyers. However, forgery is a felony in all 50 states. If they forge your signature and mail it to you from another state, it becomes a federal crime. A creditor would have to be really stupid to try something like that.

There are court documents I've read that say, to this effect, that in absence of any returned mail, it is assumed that it was delivered as intended.

That's from the prosecution.

Yep ( http://federalevidence.com/node/784 ) ; mail properly addressed is assumed to be delivered. For related reasons, any mail sent to a business is assumed to have been read. This is a rebuttable presumption.

Even knowing this, many lawyers (and other savvy people) send certified mail with a return receipt. It strengthens your case in the event that the other party tries to disavow receipt of the mail, and it says (rather loudly) that there is a folder on your desk labeled Evidence and that every additional action the other party takes will join that folder.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com