Hey guys, happy holidays.
Im a 30 year old male and i started using WAP about 4-5 years ago in high school. After about two years i kinda phased it out cause life got in the way, more or less.I saved every single letter from back then and i found it truly unique to connect to people this way, so i bought some stamps and wrote a couple of mails through jpay to get back into it. One guy, young hispanic male advertised that he had access to a tablet and could exchange mail rather rapidly cause of it. Also WAP told me he was "needing mail" so i figured i would try(him amongst others). He did indeed mail me back very quickly. Firstly i felt like he is either illiterate or very rapidly scanned my mail since he got several things wrong. Example, i told him that i study social work at Uni after dropping out of law school, and that i had a long time girlfriend and a small dog. Somehow he thinks i study law and have wife and child lol.
In the end of the mail he asks if i can send a prepaid email back with my reply so he can reply etc. This kinda left a sour taste in my mouth, first mail and you are already asking for handouts. I understand jpay stamps are chump change for ordinary people(myself included) but there is still something about asking in first mail that seems kinda off. The positive side of me says that "Maybe he needs it, and technically he is asking so he can continue correspondence".
But i dont know, what do you guys think?
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Glad I'm not the only one that noticed that.....
Glad I'm not the only one that noticed that.....
That's fair enough. Understood, accepted, all good!
I enjoy you being here, I read some of your other stuff also. I'm not here to be rude to you or treat you badly. We're all here to (try to) help each other through these tough and sometimes confusing situations. I'll summarise... I'm an empath, which is one reason why I do this and write to people in less fortunate circumstances than my own. I just wanted to say something along the lines of:
"If I had nothing, and I was in a bad situation, I would hope someone would want to help me also."
All of this is confusing and understanding the reasons why people lash out is also confusing... Sometimes people including me just want to see the best in people. Maybe that makes people like me naive. I'm sorry if I rubbed you up the wrong way.
As far as the Jpay stamps go: If you add someone from WA to your list, you can get 60 stamps for 10 dollars. They're the cheapest.
Yeah, Frankie, I jumped on you too hard, my bad. We really differ on that issue. It just really rubbed me wrong at that time, but yeah, agree to disagree I guess. I'm not normally one to go off like that, something hit a nerve but I could've handled that better. Sorry. I do enjoy seeing what you have to say here though.
But yeah, I think Danny May was confused about the age and timelines just thinking it didn't add up. I was kinda like what when I read that too, lol.
Lots of people do Adult Continuing Education and did not finish high school, that's not a crime either.
"I'm a 30 year old male and I started using WAP about 4-5 years ago in high school"
WHAT ?
It’s also cheap to buy jpay stamps. When I buy them with my Ohio PP selected on jpay it costs $12 for 60 stamps. That’s 20 cents a stamp. 16 pence in English money. From my limited experience writing prison pen pals, it’s polite to provide a return postage. Why? So the inmate doesn’t have to worry about costs when they’re just replying to us talking about the weather or some other very mundane topic. From our point of view an email every few days can lift their spirits. From their point of view it can cost them so much in replies.
My MWI got into a drug problem at the age of 14, so school wasn't her thing. But, she uses language better than most people I know. People put too much weight in typos or misspelling words here or there. But with the Internet and spell check it’s become almost criminal to have bad spelling. I mean I’m lucky to have spell check so I don’t have to worry about things. But whatever, some people have literacy issues. Literacy issues are not a failing of character or intelligence they just are what they are.
When I was using jpay I sent prepaid replies because I could afford it and felt that it was the right thing to do. What you think is the right thing to do is your issue. I wont delve into this because last time I did I basically got slandered for it.
i'm from Indiana, the Delay is because IA (Internal affairs) grabs random letters an checks them. yours probaly was chosen ;] takes a month for them to get around to checking them all. then they start over next month.
@IL PPP: I've had it only once. And no, I didn't discover what happened to that letter to take 8 weeks to arrive. No difficult content, no missing postage, no mistake in the address, I have no clue.
At the moment, it's just seasonal. They all got more mail, both incoming and outgoing. But back in May? No idea.
As far as i know, nobody will be able to see your adress unless you actually give it to them.
@Kirsten: so you’ve seen delays out of Illinois with snail mail too? Did you ever find out why it was so delayed?
I just made myself a profile, could just anyone see my address on it?? I added someone as my favorite inmate, can they see that?? Thanks
It depends. I've got a pp in Illinois, whom I email with through CN (connectnetwork). He was the first one who replied to me, so he's the one I correspond the longest with. For longer conversations we use snailmail, but there usually also is an email or two back & forth per week. Sometimes I do send him "credit points" (that's the way CN calls it, but it's the same as a stamp on jpay), sometimes I don't. But this had npo influence on him replying to me or not. He once or twice told me "My credit points are low" or "I've got just one credit point left, could you please send me some?", yes. But that never was a problem. He also uses the email to write to his sister and his brother so both sometimes her, sometimes them add on a few credit points for him. But it never felt like a obligation, just like doing it to ease communication.
Besides, the first few months we did only write via snail mail. Just after one letter (of his) got terribly delayed and I wrote him another to see if he was ok, and he was like "arrgh, I thought you wouldn't write any more, my last letter was sent almost two months ago." - "I haven't got that letter I worried you stopped writing." we decided to switch to email and we always inform each other when we sent a letter. (Needless to say, about three or four days after switching to email, the "missing" letter arrived...).
As for dropping after you don't click immediately, personally, I wouldn't. One pp of mine (my Texan one) is a very quiet, almost reserved person. At first, writing to him reminded me of taming a half-wild kitten afraid of humans. It took many letters for him to trust & I'm pretty sure I still don't know all that is there to get to know.
He's a man of many layers who learned to hide most of them. And maybe I'll never get to know them all. But honestly, right now, I'd reget it, had I not given him the time he needed. I'd have missed out on a lot of things. Of course, I wouldn't have known this, so the question is: "Could I regret sth. I wouldn't have known?"
Honestly; I don't know. Go with your gut feeling. If it does not feel ok to you, write him a goodbye letter and leave it to that. If you feel ok with it, write on.
But I wouldn't say as a general rule, you have to hit it off from letter one. Some ppl are more introverted than others, some ppl carry a lot of pain and are on guards at first. You never know. Go with your guts.
As for illiteration: yes, some guys are. One of my pps (not the same as those mentioned above) took a while to tell me he learned how to read and write only after coming to prison. He still has an interesting handwriting & sometimes I've got to read a few things out aloud phonetically to understand them, so it can take a while to decipher a letter. Being a non-native speaker doesn't help me in this respect, either. But anyway, at least he writes those letters, and sometimes there are really interesting thoughts, no matter in what spelling they're being written.
Just go with your guts.
I mean I can’t speak for everyone who can use jpay email, I can only speak for my one experience. I haven’t heard from the guy since mid-November, and I know it doesn’t take a month to send an email. Mail mail maybe.... but email? Nah.
So basically what you are saying is that they have no intend to write back unless you pay for it?
I’d find someone else if you don’t click from the first letter. I had a jpay email pal for about 2 letters until I forgot to send return postage with the 3rd. I never heard back.