Mail Service Providers (MSP's) spend a lot of time and money making sure that mailings are addressed and presorted properly. They also check that their mailing facilities have bundled and trayed/sacked the mail according to postal regulations. Finally, MSP's understand the need to be sure mail is palletized properly, all the tray/sack/pallet tags are correct, and that mail was shipped to the correct entry points. Or was it?!
You don't need to look very far these days to see reports regarding disasters impacting thousands of people here in the United States. Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, the many fires devouring acres of land in the upper Northwest. Our thoughts are with the many people impacted by these disasters, as well as the emergency responders and volunteers providing assistance.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) offers the Mail Anywhere program as an added benefit for Full-Service® customers, allowing them to use a single permit to present Full-Service or mixed Full-Service mailings at any Business Mail Acceptance site. Not only does this greatly simplify permit management, but it also saves permit application and renewal fees for customers who mail at numerous locations. We continue to receive a lot of questions regarding participation and mail preparation under this program, so thought it appropriate to provide a Mail Anywhere primer as this week’s e-Tip.
Ack! The dreaded message comes in: PostalOne! is down! Do the people in your mailing operation know what to do? It has been a while since there has been an extended PostalOne! outage like there was earlier this week. As such, it is likely that this recent PostalOne! outage caught you off-guard. Were you wondering how you were going to process your mailings and not lose Full-Service discounts? Did you struggle trying to figure out how to properly process your mailings without being able to upload files to PostalOne!? If so, you are not alone. In fact, even your Business Mail Entry Unit (BMEU) or Detached Mail Unit (DMU) may not understand how to correctly handle acceptance of mailings when PostalOne! is down. This type of situation can occur not just when there is a PostalOne! outage, but when your own systems may not be operating as expected.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is issuing a mandatory software update for the PostalOne! production system this weekend. This update will be implemented on Sunday, August 20, 2017. The PostalOne! Production (PROD) system will not be available during this update process, on Sunday morning August 20, 2017. PostalOne! will then be updating the Test Environment for Mailers (TEM) on Monday, August 21, 2017 and TEM will be unavailable during that update period.
One of the areas that we often receive questions on is the management of the uniqueness of the Intelligent Mail® barcodes on the tags for trays, sacks and pallets. Managing the uniqueness for these barcodes can be a challenge, particularly if you have a number of different mail processing workflows. Two keys to success with managing this uniqueness is to remember that:
The United States Postal Service® (USPS®) 2017 promotion and incentives program is offering another promotion, this one running from August 1 through December 31, 2017. The Mobile Shopping Promotion is designed to encourage mailers to integrate mobile technology with direct mail to create a convenient method for consumers to do their shopping. Eligible mailings will receive an upfront 2% postage discount. Register now!
The United States Postal Service® (USPS®) recently re-opened the Seamless Acceptance program to new participants. Seamless Acceptance is designed to streamline the verification, acceptance, payment and induction of mail. This program has benefits for both mailers and the USPS.
The United States Postal Service® (USPS®) filed a request with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) on June 30, 2017, for Move Update price and classification changes. The proposed implementation date for these changes is January 21, 2018. The proposal would increase the Move Update postage assessment for non-compliance from $0.07 to $0.08 per piece, change the Move Update verification method, correct erroneous information subjecting USPS Marketing Parcels to the Move Update requirement, and extend Full-Service® Address Change Service (ACS) to certain non-Full-Service mailpieces.
Just another gentle reminder that the United States Postal Service® (USPS®) is eliminating the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) method for transmitting package shipment files to comply with recent audit findings, and to provide more secure data transmissions. FTP is currently one of the acceptable transmission methods for submitting shipment files to the Product Tracking and Reporting (PTR) and Electronic Verification System (eVS) systems, but this option will no longer be available effective August 31, 2017.