After US mailers endured much suspense and curiosity regarding possible extensions or rescheduling, they found that the USPS did officially launch the next wave of Classification Reform on July 1st as scheduled.

The new changes strongly reflect the USPS' ongoing thrust to keep costs down, improve service and reduce delivery time through increased automation efforts and implementation.

In a friendly way, the USPS is making it very clear that business mailers have two very clear choices, which could actually be viewed one of two ways. Mailers will either play by the new USPS rules regarding topics such as address hygiene, barcoding and database maintenance, or they won't.

Here's where the results could be viewed differently;

If mailers play by the rules and provide automated (delivery point barcoded mail), they will be rewarded by the privileges of mailing at substantially discounted rates and their mail will be given the best and fastest delivery service possible by the USPS.

Another way to say it is that if they don't play by the rules and provide non-automated/non-barcoded mail (especially as the rules keep getting harder and harder to conform to), they will be "penalized" by having to pay higher prices. In addition, their non-automated mail may unknowingly fall prey to additional delivery delays and costs, playing second fiddle to the automated mail submitted to the USPS by more efficient companies.

Among all of the different "Mail Processing Categories" and "Classes" of mail, there are currently two basic types of mail. Pre-barcoded or automation compatible mail which may be processed on automation (which we like to call good mail), versus non-automated or non-automation compatible mail (referred to as bad mail) which must still be processed manually (by hand) just like they did in the old days.

While the USPS does in fact give every bit of mail it must deliver the best service possible based on the actual mail and addresses provided, to fully understand the situation we must look at the overall big picture. When our consultants take mailers for live custom tours through USPS P&D (Processing & Distribution) Facilities, they are always amazed by what they see and learn. They get to see that the inside of a USPS facility is very much like any other automated production facility, except that the product being moved and handled is mail. They also learn many ways that they can make their mail go through the USPS system better, faster and cheaper.

Huge machines, conveyors and computers perform a myriad of tasks in harmony together in order to move the huge volumes of mail each day. Machines such as the Culling Units, which separate the 1/4 inch or thinner mail for automated/high speed processing from the thicker mail which must be sorted slowly/manually. As well as the MLOCRs (Multiline Optical Character Readers) which read the machine readable addresses on envelopes and then look-up and apply the correct 11-digit delivery point barcodes. Plus the BCSs (Barcode Sorters) which read the barcodes on letters and quickly sort and route them in the right direction. And let's not forget the all-important DBCSs (Delivery Point Barcode Sorters) which again read the 11-digit postnet barcodes on each letter and literally place the mail into each mail carriers walking sequence order for faster delivery.

After realizing and understanding the machines and systems used by the USPS to process the mail, it is then important to remember that the USPS has been under increasing external pressure and has internally sincerely desired the ability to run more like a hungry business, and less like a bureaucratic government agency.

With this in mind, let's break it down to true reality. A USPS P&D Plant Manager must constantly review the expected and received incoming as well as outgoing mail volumes and plan their attack. They must continuously prioritize, schedule, encounter, review, reprioritize, etc. in order to keep the huge volumes of mail flowing through the system and avoid bottlenecks and delays as much as possible. If they have two masses of mail to process, one which conforms to the rules and will quickly sail through the automated equipment and happily go on about its way and another which doesn't comply, and will require time consuming manual handling and sorting, they will usually work on the good mail first and get it out as the top-priority. Then, they will go back to the bad mail and toil through the dreaded task of manually processing each piece, one at a time until finally, it's all gone and out. The worst part of manual mail is that it must be manually handled and sorted on the sending end, and then at least one more time on the receiving end due to the lack of a barcode.

The USPS is rapidly doing away with their old Letter Sorting Machines which were previously used to sort and route mail which wouldn't run on the high speed equipment. The LSMs were much faster than hand sorting but they were expensive to maintain and they were real space consuming huge machines. The USPS decided that they were not worth keeping so they are being done away with in many facilities to make room for new high speed sorters and barcode readers. This is good news for mailers submitting automated mail, bad news for mailers submitted handwritten or otherwise non-machinable mail. Again, mailers who play by the suggested rules win, rule breakers loose! It's actually very fair and I give the USPS credit for taking a strong stand and enforcing the "proper" way.

Needless to say, the automated mailstream is where you want your mail to be. The USPS and it's customers all benefit by each piece of mail being made and addressed in a fashion which allows the mail to be quickly and efficiently delivered right the first time, every time.

Each and every day, massive quantities of mail are submitted to the USPS by mailers who have applied the wrong address due to people moving to new addresses (different than the address still on file and used by the senders). This has been causing the USPS to loose great deals of money and time needed to re-route and re-deliver mail, often several times before it finally reaches the recipient. Bottom line; the USPS is tired of fixing other peoples mistakes, and rightfully so. If a business or individual moves and doesn't go through the proper channels to inform their utility companies, patronized vendors, customers and other mail senders of their new address, the USPS should no longer have to suffer because of selfish or uneducated mailer's neglect or oversights. Equally, all of the USPS customers who DO follow the rules, update their lists and report their address changes correctly have been absorbing much of those wasted costs. Plain and simple, the more the USPS must spend/absorb to operate, the higher postage rates will be!

This is why the latest Classification Reform changes implemented primarily relate to database maintenance, updating and address corrections. In order to continue to earn postage discounts on automated mailings, US mailers must now use one of the following services or endorsements to show their active attempts to maintain accurate recipient addresses.

The options which all fall under the umbrella of "Move update Services" are:

Address Change Service (ACS), which is basically an automated way for mailers to get "move update"/address change information back from the USPS electronically or magnetically in order to then update their databases.

National Change of Address (NCOA) which is a process whereby mailers submit their mailing list to an authorized USPS NCOA vendor, it is cross referenced and matched against the National Change of Address file and the list is updated accordingly.

"FASTforward" is the option for businesses whose mail goes through MLOCRs for barcoding and sorting. While each piece of mail travels through the machine, addresses with recent changes are caught and the pieces are automatically routed to their new address. This applies to mailers who use their own MLOCR or their Presort Bureau's.

The last options are an assortment of "Ancillary Service Endorsements" which indicate a mailer's preference for a mailpiece's disposition. The endorsement choices are; "Address Service Requested", "Forwarding Service Requested", "Return Service Requested" and "Change Service Requested" (which works hand in hand with ACS).

Many of these services require fees to be paid by the mailer and choosing the right option(s) for any particular mailer, mailstream or product can be a very tedious, yet highly worth while process. The wrong decisions or choices can be disastrous and extremely costly!

The other major change implemented is that the tray tags for automated mailings must now display the proper tray tag barcode which enables faster, more accurate routing and scheduling of the full trays and tubs of automated mail.

USPS sources all confirmed that the implementation went extremely smoothly (which was somewhat of a pleasant surprise for a change, due to the common nature of a major change). The biggest complaint or problem discovered was that some mailers were still not prepared (even though they have had plenty of time) and were calling in, asking, pleading or in some cases begging for extensions and extra time to conform to the rules. In some cases their inability to be ready on time was related to the need to choose, acquire and implement software or machinery but most of the mailers "missing the boat" were simply victims of poor planning or unjustified expectations of an implementation date extension or grace period.

For more information on USPS Classification reform and what's happening in the US, watch future issues as there will be a long string of changes and updates to come as "ReClass" resumes.....