Avi K.
Do you have a good source for that story about the Chafetz Chaim? I have a feeling it never happened. It makes no sense.
Tearing up a stamp when sending a letter by messenger is not a chumra in gezel, it is pure bal tashchis. If you haven’t used the service, there is no need to pay for it. R’ Aharon Kotler in the OP was worried that the bus would fill up while he was asleep and lose a paying passenger due to his occupying two seats, but in the Chafetz Chaim story there is no loss involved.
If he had intended to send a letter but then changed his mind, would he have torn up a stamp too? After all, why should the post office lose out just because he changed his mind!
(It is possible that the government at the time had a law forbidding the sending of letters by private messengers, but I doubt it.)
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