The Post Office strikes again

The South African Post Office has surpassed themselves again.

Whenever postage rates go up, people joke that the increase is to pay for more room for storage - delivery times are usually good, but can be horrendous at times.

Two and a half (2.5) months ago, I sent some papers through to my parents.

This week I got the letter back - marked for return to sender, with a stamp saying "Box closed."  The stamp was signed by Hugo on either 12/6 [i.e. 12 June] or 12/8 [i.e. 12 August] (not very clearly written,) so they must have used their extra storage for this letter either before or after stamping, as it only arrived back this week - 25 August.

One wonders if the delivery to the PO Box was attempted from the outside of the Post Office, because obviously from that side it is closed, so that the general public can't scratch through other people's post.

The PO Box in question still works, and has received letters sent since that date.

A scanned copy of this stamp can be seen below.

An aside: they have currently got the most peculiar postage rates.  In previous years, things were usually a multiple of 5 cents to make change easier.  Now, for a standard domestic letter, the cost is R1.77.

International airmail prices are still logical amounts - R4.25 for a standard size/weight letter to countries outside Southern Africa.  But how to come up with that by adding postage stamps together is something they never thought of.  Two standard stamps - R1.77+R1.77 - comes to R3.54.  And they don't seem to produce a 71c stamp.