Postal Affairs Blog

At the recent MTAC meetings, the Postal Service announced they would be withdrawing the proposed changes to Move Update standards published in the July 12, 2011 Federal Register.

According to the formal announcement in a DMM Advisory issued yesterday, 8/29/11, the content of the proposed rule changes will be ”significantly revised”.  Also announced was that, based on industry feedback, the Moved Left No Address and PO Box Closed, No Forwarding Order (MLNA/BCNO) portions will be completely removed.  

The Postal Service expects that an entirely new proposed rule will be issued in the future.

If you wish to subscribe to the DMM Advisory, send an e-mail to dmmadvisory@usps.com. Type “subscribe” in the subject line.

This group was formed by the Mailers Technical Advisory Group (MTAC) to discuss and work through any FAST-related issues that were tabled and passed to it by MTAC 122 – as well as new issues that have come up since the announcement of this group forming.  The first meeting was held this past week on Wednesday afternoon.  If you are interested in joing this User Group, please contact the Industry Co-Chair Michelle Billman of ALG Worldwide Logistics at mbillman@algworldwide.com. 

Here are a few highlights from that initial meeting:

There is a “patch release” (14.3.0) coming out on August 15 (FAST is trying to follow the overall PostalOne! release schedule.)  Here is some helpful info from the latest DMM Advisory:

*** FAST Release 14.3.0 and Scheduled Outages (August 15-16, 2010): FAST^® Release 14.3.0 will deploy to the production environment on Sunday, August 15, 2010. Updated release notes for FAST 14.3.0 are available on RIBBS>Site Index A-Z>FAST/Surface Visibility>Important Links>FAST Release Notes. The FAST production system will not be available from 4 a.m. through 8 a.m. (CDT) on Sunday, August 15, 2010.

FAST Release 14.3.0 will deploy to the Test Environment for Mailers (TEM) on Monday, August 16, 2010. The FAST TEM system will not be available from 8 a.m. through 12 Noon (CDT) on Monday, August 16, 2010. ***

The pre-release notes available on RIBBS were updated to include information about the new Help Desk set up for FAST.  The industry seems a bit hesitant (I’m being nice here) about how helpful this will be.  They are concerned that if they have a truck full of mail at the dock that is not being accepted, they will more than likely still have to go through their current escalation routine to get the mail accepted as opposed to just calling the Help Desk for resolution.  The USPS says those calls will route to a Manager on Duty at that facility.  The problem there is that the normal escalation process inside the facility already includes contacting that manager, so that Help Desk routing could end up with a mailer saying “Hello Manager John – I need to complain about Manager John I was just talking to.”  (Could be a touchy situation!)

Last discussion item was about the open issues handed off from MTAC 122 and how to open new issues moving forward.  It was decided to table that until next meeting when Ed Wanta (USPS) would be on the call.

Summary:

Window Book releases its mailing software, DAT-MAIL, Post Master, Complete Postal Library, and Postal Business Companion, with the new July 19^th 2009 USPS High Density Standard Mail Flats prices.

 ————————————————

Window Book’s DAT-MAIL is updated with new USPS High Density Standard Mail Flats Prices

Window Book releases its mailing software, DAT-MAIL, Post Master, Complete Postal Library, and Postal Business Companion, with the new July 19^th 2009 USPS High Density Standard Mail Flats prices.

Effective July 19 pricing for Standard Mail (Regular and Nonprofit) Commercial Flats will be decreased by 0.1¢ per-piece.  For Flats weighing less than 3.3 oz, the per-piece rates are slightly lower.  For Flats greater than 3.3 oz, the per-piece rates are higher, but the per-pound rates are lower. 

This new incentive will allow High Density Flats mailers save on their mailing expenses especially during this tough economy.  For example, a mailing job of 1,000 pieces of flats which weigh .4lb/piece will now only cost $336.60 instead of $345.60.  For high volume mailers, the reduced rates will definitely yield a significant sum of savings.

“Window Book has built a set of technologies that enables mailers to update their software in advance of any postal rate change and allow them to see the difference in rates just by changing the date of mailing in the software. This enables companies to be prepared in advance and know exactly what is coming. Users can then tell their customers in advance. We are pleased to be able to offer efficient and fast rate-updates in advance of the actual effective dates for our clients,” said Jeffery Peoples, Window Book’s CEO.