Return mail from Belgium

As a collector in the digital age, I send and receive stamps from all over the world. This works genrally speaking, very well. Unfortunately sometimes not and mail disappears without a trace. As far as I am concerned, Russia in particular is notorious: three quarters of all letters sent "disappear". That is why I no longer sell or buy to collectors in Russia... 

Within the Netherlands, only one postal item has disappeared without a trace in the past twenty years. Within Europe unfortunately a handful during the same two decades. It is therefore not so bad with the reliability of the postal services. But it's still very frustrating when it happens. 

As a seller, I let buyers know in advance that I cannot guarantee that the mail will actually arrive and I send them an image of the shipped item. This is to avoid as much discussion as possible. But even then things can go wrong. 

On May 18 I sent a letter and it was delayed. The buyer, by now rightly became impatient and mailed
me. He discovered from the picture of the letter I sent him that I had sent the stamps to the wrong country! This has never happened to me before. Fortunately, the buyer understood my omission. We agreed to wait a little longer and see if Belgian Mail discovered that the vollage was located in France and would forward the letter itself or return it to sender. Unfortunately, after two weeks of waiting, the buyer had still not received anything and I received nothing in return. I transferred the purchase amount back to the buyer . 

To my very pleasant surprise I found my letter returned in my letterbox today. Six weeks after I shipped it. Because something like this rarely happens to me, I have now received an interesting piece of mail as a bonus. 

There is nothing special to see at the front; just a pen line through the address. But on the back is a sticker from Bpost with Address Incomplete/Incorrect International ROE in two languages. What ROE means in this, I don't know. When I look it up, I come to Return of Equity, in other words financial profitability. I don't think that's the correct meaning of the abbreviation. Does a reader know what ROE stands for? 

Also on the back is an extra sticker with barcode and below that another barcode. Printed RETURN over it with a code unknown to me. 

What also struck me is that my house number is handwritten. Apparently my handwriting wasn't clear enough for the postman to decipher the number in one go...

 

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