The VFW has been putting a few stamps on their solicitation return envelopes for several years now. It's my impression that their marketing department thinks it increases returns.

The items top left are a little fuzzy, are they stamps or some of the stickers that sometimes come with the VFW solicitations. Maybe the recipient put those on the return envelope.

Just curious, what is it that you find abominable about the practice?

FF

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These are stickers of the Poppy - the VFW's Flower of Remembrance.

I see these often on peoples' automobile visors in my line of work.

Little imitation ones are given to people who donate a dollar or more to their fundraising.

 
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The benefit of stamps, or pseudo stamps, starts
when someone is sorting mail and dumping "junk"
into the dustbin, unopened and sometimes without
reading the sender's address. Seeing these stamps
or labels, the person is likely to not immediately
trash it.
Having passed that first hurdle, those surviving
envelopes are more likely to be curiously examined
and hopefully opened and read.
The losers at that first step are almost 100% unopened
and the sales message lost.
At one time in my speckled career I was sales manager
of the NY metro area for Gray Manufacturing and used
plain white 4"x 9" envelopes that had a simple hand
stamped return address under my name.
I constantly got better inquiry responses than when
I used the preprinted envelopes, similar to the one
shown above, that were provided by the Home Office.
Plus, since the companies master list had errors
where businesses were sold or closed, I received
the "Return to Sender" envelopes that I had franked
with the 50 state flags or 50 state bird stamps.
Eventually I had complete decently cancelled examples
of both issues, including both perfed sets.
Double Huzzar !!!
The trick, in my opinion was to keep my mail from
being trashed, unopened and of course, unread.

 
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