Tag: USA

U.S. New homeowners decry cluster boxes

Posted by | Jun 17, 2007 | |

Across the nation, the U.S. Postal Service increasingly is delivering mail to communal cluster boxes as a way to keep pace with booming residential growth while controlling labor costs. The new strategy, aimed at new developments in fast-growing areas such as Clarksburg, Leesburg and Waldorf, saves the postal service time and money.

“Instead of going from door to door, from lawn to lawn, from driveway to driveway, we have a central location,” said Luvenia Hyson, a postal service regional spokeswoman.

But many residents and developers say cluster boxes, traditionally reserved for apartments and townhouses, not single-family homes, are impersonal, inconvenient and downright ugly.

The communal delivery system’s detractors include the National Association of Home Builders, which is lobbying against it. A.J. Holliday, a lawyer for the Washington-based interest group, called the new postal strategy “discrimination” against people buying new homes.

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New FedEx distribution center

Posted by | Jun 16, 2007 | |

The South Brunswick Planning Board approved what will soon become a new Federal Express distribution center last week.

The owner of the property, Matrix Development Group, will now begin construction on a 213,000-square-foot distribution center for the delivery company. Currently, the property is the site of a small office building that will be demolished when the tenant’s lease runs out in 2011, which will prompt Phase II of the development, adding 52,000 additional square feet of space.

An application for a 407,400-square-foot warehouse on the tract was approved in July. The plan proposed last week will shrink the already approved warehouse by almost 200,000 square feet to meet FedEx’s needs.

A principal with Matrix, Kenneth Griffin, said that after approval, the company began seeking tenants for the building and eventually struck a deal with FedEx. The delivery company needed a new distribution facility, which has different design needs than an ordinary warehouse, and plans for a new application were created. Griffin said the location was ideal for the company due to its proximity of Exit 8A on the New Jersey Turnpike.

In the first phase, the facility will employ 344 people, 111 of which will be van drivers. The second phase will bring 183 extra employees. The building will use porous pavement in a little less than 10 percent of its employee parking lot in order to control stormwater.

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Marketers can seal the deal with new high-tech envelopes

Posted by | Jun 15, 2007 | |

According to the Intelligent Document Task Force, created by the Envelope Manufacturers Association Foundation and the U.S. Postal Service, high-speed inkjet technology could allow for more information to be encoded onto mail pieces. This may allow envelopes to one day become an extension of a Web site, communicating information through a bar code, read by a bar code reader for the home. The bar code could direct a consumer to a Web site, making it easier to shop online or return merchandise.

Recently, the USPS expanded its Intelligent Mail bar code system to include flat mail. The system provides the ability to use a single bar code to store more information on individual pieces of mail. This allows for better tracking of mail pieces, which facilitates better sequencing of marketing efforts. For example, if a marketer knows consumers in a particular city or region will receive a direct marketing piece on a certain day, it could buy advertising time in the local television market timed to correspond to the “mail moment” closely.

An exciting area of research and development is intelligent stamps. There are many potential uses for stamps featuring wireless technology. Perhaps one day a stamp will communicate with a cell phone and call up a Web site about a product or service or issue a missing child alert. This technology could also be used on the envelope itself.

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Mailing groups ask USPS for rate relief

Posted by | Jun 15, 2007 | |

Mailing groups, including the Direct Marketing Association and the Mail Order Association of America, are calling on the U.S. Postal Service’s Governors to quickly implement the rate reductions recommended by the Postal Regulatory Commission for Standard Mail flats. They are also asking that the temporary rate relief be extended beyond the Sept. 29 deadline recommended by the PRC.

The PRC’s “Second Opinion and Recommended Decision on Reconsideration,” issued May 25, establishes a transitional temporary rate reduction of 3 cents for all Standard Mail Regular flats and 2 cents for Standard Regular nonprofit flats. In its reconsideration proposal, the USPS suggested the same reduction until the next postal change, likely to be in mid-2008, under the new procedures established by the postal reform law signed by President Bush on Dec. 20.

In a June 4 letter to the Governors, the DMA asked them to approve the rate reduction without the deadline. In the letter, the DMA noted that the PRC “responded positively to the Governors’ and the mailers’ concerns regarding the excessive increases initially recommended for Standard Regular flats. Now it is the Governors’ responsibility to implement the revised rates, and the DMA urges the Governors to approve the commission’s recommendation and provide mailers just as soon as possible with the rate relief recommended by the commission.”

Mailers had until June 4 to supply comments to the Governors. At press time no date had been scheduled for a vote.

Some mailers have also been discussing the possibility of synching the timing of the change with the implementation of new periodical rates on July 15. Even though, generally, everyone would want them changed as soon as possible, some mailers said this approach would give everyone enough time to modify postage statements and software so manual calculations would not have to be done, which would be costly and time consuming.

The DMA also cautioned that the temporary discounts offered to flat mailers would only postpone substantial cuts in mailing volumes and a further decrease in revenue for the USPS.

The Mail Order Association of America, a trade group representing mail-order catalogers, agreed with the DMA.

The PRC suggested that lower rates be implemented in the form of rebates. However, the MOAA said “adjusting the rate schedules as appropriate would be a much simpler means of implementing the recommended decision.”

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U.S. Postal Service offers workshops, solutions and a

Posted by | Jun 15, 2007 | |

Workshops on ways eBay entrepreneurs can use the new rate structure to their advantage and how improvements are making shipping easier highlight this year’s eBay Live! conference for the U.S. Postal Service.

eBay Live!, the annual gathering of the eBay community, exhibitors, guest speakers and employees, is set for June 14 to 16 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The event is expected to draw thousands of eBay members from around the world. Attendees will network, discover new strategies and share new solutions to more effectively buy and sell on eBay.

Workshops to explain the rate structure that began last month are planned for all three conference days. Changes to domestic rates and international mail took effect last month. The Postal Service simplified its eight main international products into four: Global Express Guaranteed, Express Mail International, Priority Mail International and First-Class Mail International. New packaging will allow mailers to use the same Priority Mail and Express Mail packaging for shipping within the United States and to other countries.

And shipping domestically or internationally also has gotten easier for eBay sellers. The PayPal MultiOrder Shipping Solution now lets customers manage all eBay and PayPal shipments in one place, print multiple Postal Service domestic shipping labels with one click, and link shipments to the newly launched Shipment Confirmation Acceptance Notice (SCAN). SCAN forms contain Intelligent Mail barcodes that hold information on all shipping labels and packages in the same shipment.

Improvements also now allow customers to import shipping information for eBay and PayPal transactions, create shipping presets to ship similar items using the same service type, track packages in the shipping history section, and combine multiple items to be shipped together in one package.

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