Not that remarkable as there was a label on there when it entered the processing machine which franks a barcode on to the letter (the red mark) its then sorted by a machine to the relevant street, the postman only has to maybe knock a few doors and if he is the regular postie will probably remember a foreign card from last year
Does depend; I handle a very large amount of mail usually at work, and we do get mis-directed mail, which is to be expected, however it’s also not unusual to have letters returned after they’ve been given back to the post office, often multiple times, even after the red barcode has been obscured! The irony is that the main sorting office, which also picks up huge amounts of mail from us, is about 100 yards along the road, so one might think they’d know who we are.
The best one was a large, bright pink envelope, addressed to someone in Mumbai, and posted in Essex, that was repeatedly delivered to us in Chippenham seven times over the course of a fortnight.
I still fail to understand just how that could have been possible.
I’ve even had letters returned after I’ve written on the envelope to be delivered to the address on the front, not our address, with the barcode obscured as well.
Seems sometimes you just can’t get the staff… 😉