Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

The Postal Service’s request for “exigent” rate increases on “Market-Dominant” mail is “an unsustainable business model which can only lead to continued postal deficits and more requests to exceed the rate cap,” UPS wrote in a filing last week with the Postal Regulatory Commission. Market-Dominant mail includes such classes as First-Class, Standard, and Periodicals, where USPS’s mailbox monopoly is a huge barrier to competition.

By contrast, “Competitive” services include expedited and parcel delivery, where USPS tends to compete head on with UPS, FedEx, and other private businesses.

This week, Structural Graphics takes a fun and unique twist on a holiday card! Pharmaceutical agency, HCB Health, incorporated a QR code into its mailer that when scanned, launches a video of a fire burning with holiday music being played in the background emulating a real fireplace!

Legislation to overhaul the Postal Service has hit yet another roadblock, with the agency’s oversight committee once again delaying its markup of the reform bill.

The markup—which gives Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members an opportunity to offer and vote on amendments to the bill, and ultimately decide whether to move it to the full Senate—was originally scheduled for November 6, but was delayed indefinitely due to a lack of support from Democrats.

Aides said the committee would vote on the bill—the 2013 Postal Reform Act—before Thanksgiving, and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., rescheduled a markup for Wednesday. But Carper, who

And here we are again with a little hope. The package business is growing at double digits, retailers are competing on service, and the USPS wants to grab a share of the game. It could even be the right business decision to make, but I’m tasked with offering the perspective of the printer, and here it is.

In the Postal Points newsletter for the Association of Marketing Service Providers, postal commentator Leo Raymond, recently wrote about "an ongoing oxymoron that Congress, in its meddling ineptitude, continues to perpetuate: the Postal Service cannot be cast as a public service, with a 'universal service obligation,' while concurrently being told to be businesslike in its operations."

The universal service obligation means USPS has to provide roughly the same level of service to everyone at the same price, regardless of the agency's costs to serve a particular customer.

Amazon's move to start to sending Sunday deliveries through the United States Postal Service (USPS) will generate it some serious revenue. It will also likely improve the agency's employment picture, as the Postal Service had only limited Sunday operations in the past.

Amazon's a leader, and it wouldn't be a surprise if smaller Web-based retailers have little choice but to also team up with the Postal Service to keep up.

Amazon and the Postal Service aren't disclosing the costs or the length of the contract. They also are not disclosing volume projections. Los Angeles and New York City will begin offering

Orders from Amazon.com will soon be arriving on doorsteps not just six days a week, but seven. The online megastore announced a deal on Monday with the The United States Postal Service (USPS). Amazon said the first Sunday deliveries would be made this coming weekend.

USPS spokeswoman Sue Brennan called the expanded delivery a "win/win" for Amazon and added that the postal service is interested in forming similar agreements with other retailers.

The deal comes ahead of the busy holiday shopping season. The USPS annually delivers packages on some Sundays in December.

A whistleblower is claiming that his former employer, Northrop Grumman, defrauded the U.S. Postal Service by providing it false information about the Flats Sequencing System. The ex-employee “alleges that the company violated the False Claims Act in a number of ways with respect to the FSS contract [and] alleges damage to the USPS in an amount of at least approximately $179 million annually,” Northrop Grumman stated in its recent quarterly financial report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The ex-employee also “alleges he or she was improperly discharged in retaliation.” The Washington Post has identified the whistleblower as

No discussion of the Postal Reform Act (PRA) took place at the meeting of the Senate's Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, complicating Chairman Tom Carper's original mission to pass legislation this year. Carper (D-DE) said the bill would be discussed at the committee's November 20 meeting instead, giving Ranking Member Tom Coburn's (R-OK) absence as part of the reason.

But reasons for the delay run much deeper. The three major stakeholders in U.S. Postal Service policy—Postal Service management, unions, and mailers—remain at odds over details of the proposed Senate legislation.

Postal officials claim that the vast majority of USPS’s revenue losses in recent years were caused by the economic recession of 2007-2009—an “exigent” circumstance that could justify rate increases exceeding the rate of inflation.

But trade associations from several mail-dependent industries contend that the losses came primarily from “electronic diversion and other trends that do not qualify as extraordinary or exceptional circumstances” that would allow the cap on price hikes to be breached. And the associations point to none other than the Postal Service’s own statements to prove their point.