QSL'ing Tips & Tricks - Hint #4 - Bypassing Postal Thieves

 A series of "Tips and Tricks" for obtaining a QSL when normal means fail.

If you need to acquire a QSL from a DX station via the postal service, this method can have its own risks.  Mail delivery in foreign countries is not always the best of services and those who handle the mail are not always the most trustworthy.

Your envelope could just never get delivered - go missing in transit - or the contents of your envelope may not arrive.  Some nefarious person can "tamper" with your envelope and
     A.  Remove the money you included
     B.  Remove the SAE you included.
     C.  Or, just "take" the entire envelope for themselves.

It seems that when a foreign ham gets a lot of mail from overseas, the "bad guys" in the postal system will begin to recognize that these mailings many times contain U.S. dollars.  Thus they actively look for those envelopes and take the contents (or the entire envelope) for themselves.  Being aware of this you can take steps to "disguise" your envelope and prevent pilferage.

Never put callsigns on the envelope.  This is a dead giveaway!  Personally I like to print my envelopes so the text can be as clear as possible to the machines and people who sort the mail along the way.  I also like to capitalize the name of the country to make it stand out.  (You can click on any image here to see it in a larger size.)

For my SAE (Return Envelope) I like to spell out my country AND put in the normal abbreviation for it:

VERY IMPORTANT:  Never allow your dollars to be seen through the envelope even if it is held up to a strong light.  I like to fold my dollars in half and insert one end of them in the Return Envelope and then slide my QSL up under the Return Envelope flap over the dollars to further conceal the money.  I also press the folds down well to make the envelope as thin as possible.  HINT:  Use the nicest bills you can find.  Torn, dirty, or even heavily wrinkled bills can not be exchanged in some countries.  I have even purchased 100 Brand New bills from my bank for this purpose. 

However, all those tricks may just not be enough.  If you find a DX station who posts that his mail is being stolen or that envelopes arrive without money, there is another step that has been proven to work several times.  Make the envelope look like it is a business communication which contains a "bill" and not money.  I created a fake invoice in Microsoft Word with the word "INVOICE" large and Bold so that it would show through the envelope.  I inserted it in a business size envelope from my defunct business to make it appear even more real.  In every instance where I have used this trick - it has worked.  The money and QSL's arrived at the DX station and I received my return QSL from him.

If even the "Fake Invoice" trick fails, you can still ask the DX station for a PayPal address where you can send him the money to pay for him sending you a QSL.  LoTW has helped immensely to remove the problems of getting paper QSL's by mail but sometimes this is what you need to do in order to obtain that elusive confirmation!