Mobile Barcode Incentive (Postage Statement Clarification)

As we told you in an earlier E-tip, the Postal Service™ is again offering the Mobile Barcode Incentive program, although this time it is called the Mobile Commerce and Personalization Promotion. The incentive period began on July 1, 2012 and runs through August 31, 2012. This incentive is for mailers who include mobile (2-dimensional) barcodes or equivalent print technology in or on certain mailpieces. The incentive and the regulations have changed a bit since last year's incentive, so mailers need to pay close attention to the changes. One of the significant changes is how the incentive appears on postage statements - both hard-copy and on PostalOne! - and those changes are causing quite a bit of confusion in the mailing industry.

Hard-Copy Postage Statements

In 2012, the United States Postal Service® (USPS®) made some changes to the format of the postage statements to accommodate incentive and discount programs. The reason for this is that they plan to offer more types of promotions in the future, and wish to have a more generic method of reporting these on the postage statement forms. The USPS plans to offer both flat rate incentives/discounts and "percentage off" discounts in these future promotions. The postage statement forms now have Lines 3 and 4 on the first page to accommodate the future flat rate incentives and fees. The percentage off discounts, such as the Mobile Commerce and Personalization Promotion, are NOT populated on Line 3 on the first page of the postage statements. Rather, these percentage off discounts are populated in the Discounts columns on the subsequent pages of the hard copy postage statements. This is causing confusion, as most mailers were expecting to see the discount reported on the first page of the statements, as it was in 2011.

PostalOne! Postage Statements

To add to the confusion, the PostalOne! dashboard does not display the Mobile Commerce and Personalization Promotion discount until the postage statements are finalized by the USPS. This is an unfortunate change in that there is no way for mailers to know whether the discount has been correctly applied until after the statements are finalized. This makes it even more difficult to make any corrections if there are problems with the discount because the statements are already finalized. Plus, it added a great deal of research and trouble-shooting to a time-strapped industry, only to discover that the discount was never intended to be displayed until statement finalization.

PostalOne! TEM

This issue is even more problematic in the Testing Environment for Mailers (TEM) side of PostalOne! In TEM, the Mobile Barcode incentive does not appear on the dashboard or the statements at all, even if mailers ask PostalOne! to finalize their test statements. This shortcoming makes it almost impossible for mailers to test their files in advance of mailings that are claiming the incentive, or to try to trouble-shoot any issues they may have with trying to claim the discounts.

Future Revisions

These concerns regarding the postage statements and PostalOne! issues have been shared by the mailing industry with the USPS in the MTAC PostalOne! User Group, and it is likely that the USPS will be making some revisions to these processes in the future to try to eliminate some of the confusion. We will keep you posted as to the progress of these efforts.

The requirements for the Mobile Commerce and Personalization Promotion were published in the May 3, 2012 Postal Bulletin. For more details, consult the USPS Mobile Barcode Promotion area on RIBBS, or the USPS 2012 Mobile Commerce and Personalization Promotion Program Requirements Guide. Mailers may also send concepts and mailpiece mock-ups via email to MobileBarcode@usps.gov.

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