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Shaking Your Family Tree

August 20, 1998
	INTERNATIONAL REPLY COUPON AFFAIR by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G.
International Reply Coupons (IRCs) are issued by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in Bern, Switzerland, and one coupon can be exchanged in most post offices in the world for stamps sufficient to reply by airmail postage. When you write to others outside the United States, naturally you want to send them the cost of the postage to reply to you. You can't send U.S. stamps, as they are unacceptable for postage in other countries. Instead, genealogists use IRCs, which are available at most full-service U.S. post offices for $1.05 each. It is customary to send two or three IRCs when requesting information from cousins in other parts of the world. Horst A. Reschke, who writes on Germanic ancestry research, commented recently in an article in the e-zine Missing Links that the UPU had raised prices and curtailed the coupons' usefulness by canceling the privilege of exchanging the coupons for German postage stamps. Additionally, he said, the UPU is mandating that IRCs can only be applied against the cost of overseas postage and that acceptance has been restricted to one coupon per mailing. The cost of a Standardbrief (standard-weight air mail letter) from Germany is now DM 3.00. Two IRCs, exchanged at DM 2.00 each, use to be more than sufficient, with change in stamps for the DM 1.00 overage. However, according the Reschke, would-be correspondents in Germany now not only can't obtain any stamps in change, but have to pay DM 1.00 in order to come up with a total of DM 3.00 in postage. While Reschke blames the UPU in Switzerland, D.J. Weber responds by saying he believes the reason the IRC is now considered worthless in Germany is the German postal system. He says that in September 1996 it set up a revised interpretation of the usage of IRCs, and that these interpretations are not those of the UPU. The IRC situation is different in the United Kingdom. "My UK correspondents love getting IRCs,'' said Mark Howells, technology columnist for Ancestry magazine. "They cash them in at the royal mail with no problem. "Although one IRC is supposedly worth .5-ounce of international air mail in any country in the Postal Union, I always send at least two and sometimes three. A single sheet postage back from the UK is usually about 60 pence,'' Howells said. There are some alternatives for dealing with the IRC problem in Germany: -- Buy mint stamps from dealers. -- Amateur radio operators in the U.S. and some other countries seldom take the IRCs to the post office, but reuse them to send to other operators, or they use dollar bills -- "green stamps'' as they call them. They are universally accepted, except in Germany where it takes more than a dollar to post a letter. Reschke, who corresponds frequently with genealogists in Germany, suggests that: -- When writing to an official agency, such as an archive or government office, don't send money. In your initial inquiry, ask to be billed, and request that the cost of mailing and handling be included in the invoice. -- Use Ruesch International Monetary (800-424-2923), which has offices in Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. Ruesch will exchange your personal check in U.S. dollars for a check in the currency of any country for a fee of less than $5. This allows payees in other countries to avoid the high exchange rates for cashing a check, and provides you with an easy way to obtain the correct amount in another currency. (c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate Myra Vanderpool Gormley and Julie Case are co-editors of Missing Links, a free weekly genealogy e-zine. To subscribe, send your request to: Missing Links Newsletter Return to Myra Vanderpool Gormley Main Page Return to Columns Main Page
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