LetterAgent
Mail physical letters by just asking your AI assistant.
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No: you cannot buy postal insurance for a regular stamped letter. Postal insurance is sold for parcels, not plain letters, because a letter has no declared value or tracking chain to base a claim on. If the contents matter, Registered Mail is the answer: it includes coverage up to a declared-value ceiling.
Insurance needs two things a plain letter does not have: a declared value and a documented chain of custody. When you insure a parcel, you state what it is worth, and every scan along the way proves where it was. A stamped letter has neither. Nobody recorded what was inside it, and nobody scanned it at each handoff, so there is nothing to value and nothing to investigate if it goes missing. That is why the postal services simply do not sell the product for letters. It is not an oversight; the math of an insurance claim cannot work without those two inputs.
Registered Mail is the postal system's answer to "this letter is valuable." Every registered piece is logged at each point in its journey, kept separate from ordinary mail, and signed for at delivery. Coverage against loss is built into the service rather than sold separately, and the payout is tied to the value you declare when you mail it, up to a maximum the postal service sets. It is slower than regular mail because of all that handling, and it costs more, but it is the only way to put a dollar figure of protection on a letter.
| Regular letter | Registered Mail | |
|---|---|---|
| Insurance available | No | Coverage included, tied to declared value |
| Tracking | None | Logged at every handoff |
| Proof of delivery | No | Signature required |
| Speed | Normal | Slower, due to secure handling |
You file with the mailing receipt and proof of the declared value, such as a receipt or appraisal for the item inside. The postal service investigates using its own logs, which is exactly why the chain of custody matters: it can usually pinpoint where the piece went missing. One thing coverage does not do is compensate for delay. If a registered letter arrives late but intact, there is no claim, because nothing of value was lost. And some things cannot be mailed registered at all, like cash in certain cases, so check the rules before you send anything irreplaceable.
The same structure applies. Canada Post's registered letter service covers letters sent within Canada and to the US, with coverage tied to the declared value and a signature on delivery. For documents rather than goods, registration is almost always the right call over trying to insure something: a contract, a certificate, or an original legal document is worth more than its paper, and registration protects the irreplaceable part by making loss vanishingly unlikely in the first place.
If the letter matters enough to protect, send it the protected way. Ready to mail it? Send your letter with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and it is printed and mailed.
LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
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