Royal Mail

My dear friend Alina went to UK for holidays in June this year. She happily asked me for my address to send me a postcard from there. I sort of forgot about that postcard till today...

I received the postcard today on 9th September 2009 (auspicious day!)

Take note of the dark blue note from Royal Mail. It's not part of the postcard.

Take note of the pink box showing the date the postcard was written. Sorry for unclear picture.
I simply took a pic of it with handphone under bad lighting.

As seen in the picture above, Royal Mail wrote: "The sender of this item applied insufficient Airmail postage, so we diverted it to an alternative service. This may have caused delay."

Wow.... at least, it arrived. But this made me wonder what alternative service would take 3 months - send by train? Ship? Pigeon? :D But thank you, Royal Mail - at least it arrive! :) Tempted to write "no thanks to the insufficient postage" but the sender might slaughter me. Ha!

Anyway, to sum my thoughts, I've actually wrote this in my status in Facebook. Here are the responses I got from my friends:

"Not bad still boleh sampai..."

"Bah! Everyone else I sent it too got it ages ago! Don't blame the sender... standard postage wan! Bah." (It's obvious who wrote this comment. :P)

"haha yup... i wonder what kind of alternative service is that? cheaper but so many many days difference... by ship?"

"Probably surface mail, or by sea.."

"ha..mine is from italy...nearer from uk...that's why arrive much earlier!"

"yes...favouritism against D only! we all so normal...only you are so special! ha...actually....u r the 1st person who have that stamp on the postcard that i know of..."

Any of you experienced this before?