Tag: North America

Congressman Steve King Monday urged the U.S. Postal Service to carefully consider a forthcoming study on the Area Mail Processing process.

The AMP process is used by the Postal Service to identify mail processing centers across the country, like the one in Sioux City, for possible consolidation, a press release issued by King explained.

King, the Postal Service, the Siouxland community and Iowa’s senators have been involved in a long process of review and discussion to clarify the question of whether to maintain or close the Sioux City center.

“Some believe that study after study equals action. Well, the Government Accountability Office spent the last year and half studying the Postal Service evaluation process and I expect that they’ll tell us exactly what we knew when all this started a year and a half ago. In their upcoming report, they will almost certainly tell us that the USPS process of evaluating its operations and finding opportunities for consolidation is flawed,” said King.

The GAO office, the investigative arm of Congress, is set to issue a report next month on the process used by the Postal Service to identify possible consolidation opportunities within its mail processing system. The potential departure of Sioux City’s mail processing center to Sioux Falls could increase costs for local businesses and cause delays to mail delivery throughout the Siouxland, the release issued by King stated.

As of Aug. 1, the U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Point Validation (DPV) requirements will impact service providers’ mailing budgets. Under DPV standards, only exact addresses that can be confirmed as accurate will be assigned a ZIP + 4 code and thus be eligible for presort discounts.

DPV software will identify addresses that are invalid and undeliverable according to the USPS, assign them a regular five-digit ZIP code, and thus make them ineligible for discounts. This change to a more stringent set of rules will increase telecom service providers’ mailing expenses significantly if their mailing processes cannot conform to the DPV requirements. Using addresses the USPS deems invalid will also slow invoice delivery and payment.

Most telecom operators that invoice end-customers directly handle their invoice distribution in-house or choose to outsource it to a bill presentment provider. Regardless of how or where processing takes place, address matching software is critical for ensuring that address databases are accurate, to qualify mailings for maximum postage discounts. Today addresses must conform only to the USPS Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) standards. Addresses that match the defined criteria receive ZIP + 4 codes that mark them as eligible for the maximum presort discount.

DPV will work similarly, but it is far more precise. Under the current CASS system, as long as an address falls within a valid address range, the mail piece will be deemed eligible for a presort discount. However, when the rules change to DPV on Aug. 1, the USPS will no longer accept addresses that merely fall within a valid range.