I noted that the original poster is in the US. I've had excellent luck with letters, but the names were unusual. Some people do back off, especially if elderly, from understandable fear of giving out too much information or worse. IRC coupons are sold at the post office in the US, but they are only good for certain countries and the last time I checked, the UK was not one of them. There are also international business reply envelopes available, but I don't know about them and couldn't find out more on the USPS website. Best regards, Carol B in NY On Mar 27, 2009, at 11:14 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Message: 10 > Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:07:24 -0500 > From: "Irene Marlborough" <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [DUR-NBL] Writing to possible relatives > To: "Nancy M. Lyons" <[email protected]>, <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; > reply-type=original > > The other answers mentioned SAEs (stamped addressed envelopes) but > you can't > do that from overseas. You need to send two international reply > coupons with > each envelope. You can buy these at the post office but it makes it > quite > expensive and so much more difficult to do a large scale enquiry > this way. > > Best wishes, Irene >