A PBS member recently sent me a BoB swap in an old used priority mail box not realizing that was a no-no. It was mailed using PBS postage so the post office didn't catch it. When it was delivered to my house I wasn't home so it was sent back to my local post office as undeliverable because there was an $11.55 postage due (because of the priority mail box) even though it had the PBS label on it with media mail on it and postage paid. It was several days late so I contacted the sender to get the tracking #, found out what happened and went to the post office to pick it up, not knowing why it was undeliverable.  Well, needless to say,  I refused it as I didn't want to pay the amount due. It was subsequently sent back to the PBS member and she had to pay the $11.55 to get her own books back!! She has since resent the box (I haven't got it yet) , but it ended up costing her a lot of money. So lesson learned!! DON'T USE OLD USED PRIORITY MAIL BOXES for BoB swaps.

Thanks for the reminder Shirley. I want to add, don't even use the mailers inside out or as 'filler' or packing, stuffing, etc. for any swaps unless you want to pay the higher rates.  Media mail can be inspected so even putting an old wrapper as padding inside another container would warrant the priority postage if it were discovered. Any use of priority materials at all.

I'm pretty sure it's illegal too, so be careful out there!

I used an old priority bubble mailer to send a book because it was the right size. After I sealed it up and affixed the media mail paperwork to the outside. I took a black magic marker to scribble off all scan tags, QR tags, names, and logos and sent it out with just the red border. The book was refused. After all, they still wanted more money from the recipient because they said it was priority mail even though I crossed out everything about that. What is weird is that I did that before several times and it was never an issue. My postal dept sent it as media mail because it took 9 days to arrive at its location. But when refused it took 3 days to get back to me. And they charged me $5.73 to get it back. The postal service is so petty with these nonsense things. I could understand if it was an untouched mailer and then getting hit with the extra charge. But to sit there and cross off everything and then say that the red border is telling them that it's priority mail is nonsense. But who else are we going to use in sending out mail? They have a monopoly on this and they know it.

My understanding from a good friend who has worked for USPS till retirement (28yrs) is; the Sorting Station where all the 'reader' computer machines are, are programmed to spot certain things about priority packaging and if 'tossed' off the belt for an error/questionable reason, then a person looks it over and determines where it goes after that. USPS is so under staffed since 2020 which contributes to the longer mail recieved days.