Which envelopes dont need a stamp

You can also choose the standard of postage that you require your Prepaid Envelopes to be sent with. This is either First Class or Second Class , much like standard mail you would send in the post.

The key difference between a Prepaid Envelope and a Business Reply Envelope is that Prepaid Envelopes can be purchased just as you would any other envelope. Business Reply Envelopes however, require you to purchase a licence from the Royal Mail.

Further studies and meta analyses of patient responses to mail surveys via stamped versus pre-paid envelopes are needed with sufficient power to detect response gains of this magnitude in a patient population. Peer Review reports. Mail surveys are widely used both in the general population and specifically with patients to assess patient satisfaction and as part of clinical studies.

This has advantages to surveying the patients at the hospital as patients are less likely to be influenced by the setting and may require less staff time [ 1 ]. Disadvantages include limitation to the complexity of the questions that can be included and potentially lower response rate [ 2 ]. Maximising responses is crucial to reducing response bias and to help ensure the validity and reliability of the study [ 3 ]. One suggested method of increasing response rates is the inclusion of stamped addressed envelopes rather than pre-paid envelopes to return the survey.

The increased cost of stamps as postage is paid for questionnaires that are not returned may be offset by a greater response rate [ 4 ]. A Cochrane review identified 21 trials comparing response rates from postal surveys enclosing stamped envelopes versus pre-paid envelopes [ 5 , 6 ].

This may be explained by the variation in trial populations and limit the generalisability of the results of specific populations [ 6 ]. The majority of the studies included in the Cochrane review were published in the market research or educational research journals and those studies focusing on health research are mainly limited to surveys of health professionals or the general population. Similarly, McColl et al's review identified six studies comparing stamps to pre-paid returns 8. Three of these studies concerned health topics, all of which surveyed health professionals or the general population rather than patients [ 8 ].

Responses to patient surveys may differ from other surveys due to adverse treatment outcome [ 9 ], interest in or salience of the topic [ 6 , 8 , 10 ] as well as recent and ongoing involvement with the service surveying them [ 11 ]. The relevance of the results of more general reviews to patient surveys may therefore be limited, and the need for specific reviews of influences on responses to patient postal surveys has been highlighted [ 10 ].

One such systematic review has demonstrated that more intensive follow up strategies and shorter questionnaires improved response rates to patient surveys [ 10 ]. However, no randomised trials of patient surveys comparing stamped with pre-paid response envelopes were identified and the authors highlight the need for future research to test such methods of improving response rates in patient populations. Balancing the respective costs of stamps versus pre-paid returns against potential increases in response is of particular interest within the context of the resource limitations of contemporary health services.

A meta-analysis undertaken in presented evidence that stamped envelopes produce a greater and more cost effective response than pre-paid [ 12 ]. However, the studies included in this latter review are mainly market research and date from to Hence their generalisability to current health care settings is limited. Two additional studies of mail surveys of health professionals undertaken in the USA report that using pre-paid envelopes was more expensive than stamps per item returned [ 13 , 14 ].

However, caution in drawing conclusions from these studies is required as they include different items in the costs and postal payment systems differ between countries. Moreover, no identified research has compared costs of pre-paid versus stamped returns specifically for a patient survey. The present study therefore investigates whether inclusion of a stamped addressed envelope as opposed to a pre-paid reply envelope increases responses to survey reminders in a UK-based patient population.

Differences in costs per item returned are also examined. A randomised-controlled trial RCT was undertaken to determine whether postage stamps versus pre-paid envelopes increases patient response rates to a reminder mail survey. As the study reported here was nested within our main study, the sample size was constrained by the sample size needed to achieve the main studies objectives.

These were included with the letter informing them of their first appointment at the breast clinic and a first class stamped addressed envelope for return of questionnaires. As these letters were sent out from the 11 different hospitals in the study, an RCT of the first posting of the survey was not feasible as random allocation would have to have been undertaken at each of the 11 sites by appointments staff.

Each survey was assigned a unique identifier. Hospital staff responsible for mailing surveys to patients kept a log book linking patients to survey identifiers. Surveys were returned to the University of Manchester where random allocation of non-responders could be undertaken.

The patients who had not returned the survey within 3 weeks were entered into the trial. The unique identifiers of these non-responders were randomly assigned, using SPSS The random allocation for each non-responder's unique identifier was returned to the hospitals from where, each non-responder was sent a reminder covering letter along with another copy of the questionnaire and either a stamped or pre-paid response envelope.

Of the women, were randomised to the group receiving the stamped envelope and to the group receiving the pre-paid envelope Figure 1. Offer standard DL, C5, C4 and non-standard sized envelopes to suit the different mail formats e.

Officially licensed to print the very unique 1st or 2nd class postage paid stamps along with phosphor bars to validate the value and delivery service of your mail.

Print the correct format e. Even convert customer supplied material! Provide high quality 1 to 4 colour printing litho, flexo and digital to give your envelopes that eye-catching appeal. Similar to regular stamp affixed envelopes, prepaid envelopes can only be used with traditional Royal Mail collection services e.

Due to the monetary value of the printed postage stamp, upfront payment must be made directly to Royal Mail before envelopes can be dispatched. But if you want to send a letter without a stamp , at Eurosender, we have the right solution for you, and you never have to worry if you forgot to stamp a letter, or how many stamps you need! With our Express Envelope service, the courier will pick up the envelope from your house and deliver it to the address within 72h, worldwide and stamp-free!

After you place the letter in the mail collection box, it goes to a post office department where it gets sorted using automated equipment. If there is no stamp on your envelope, a special scanner will detect it , and the letter will be attributed to a separate category of mail.

It will then be sent to a dedicated employee who also checks for the missing postage stamps. The price the receiver will have to pay depends on the post office. In most cases, the receiver will pay a fee that equals the price of the stamp, but it can also happen that they need to pay a surcharge for insufficient postage for the unstamped letter.

If the receiver refuses to pay, the letter will be returned to you as sender. You, as the initial sender, will then have to cover the required fees.

The length of delivery back to the sender depends on the destination. Usually, it may take up to a couple of days for the unstamped envelope to be returned to the sender. There is no guarantee that the matter will be solved with success, but you can explain the situation to either of the suggested and ask them to return the letter to you so you can put a stamp on it.

Generally, there is no law forbidding you from sending unstamped letters.