"weatherall" wrote in message
...

Terry Palmersheim Wrote:
I've tried to buy IRC's (International Reply Coupons) at the local P.O.,

even though they have them, they won't sell them! Their screen says:
"Not
For Sale" when they are scanned.
This has happened at the main Helena, MT P.O. and Tuesday at the
Missoula,
MT P.O.
Anyone else experiencing this problem? BTW, these are the new ones good

until 2009.


--
Terry Palmersheim, KC7LDP
Helena, MT

Terry:
That's very interesting. I was trying to buy IRCs just before the new
ones were issued last fall, but I haven't tried to buy any since then.
Sorry to hear about the difficulty!

The IRCs are often useless to the recipient. I recall in 1963 when I
answered over 100 reception reports of HJED in Cali, Colombia, that the
engineers had hundreds of IRCs, unused. They said that it was hard or
impossible to exchange them, so they just stuffed them in an envelope.

In Ecuador, where stamps were sold at private Kiosks outside th epost
office, it was essentially impossible to do an exchange for postage.

It's probably better to send nothing than an IRC except to established
international broadcasters who know how to deal with them.