The U.S. Postal Service has dropped an online bill payment service that it had offered through CheckFree Corp. until last week. Without explanation, USPS officials said they would end the service May 1.
Customers were told they could continue paying their bills online through CheckFree’s secure WebPay service for the same fee and level of service.
Read MoreThe House Government Reform Committee began circulating a draft Monday night of the postal overhaul bill it will mark up Thursday, but some commercial mailers say the bill is too weak to save the beleaguered Postal Service. The 126-page draft includes many provisions recommended by the President’s Commission on the Postal Service last July, including mandated transparency regarding the agency’s finances, costs and operations. Like the commission’s recommendations, the bill would restructure the agency’s rate-setting process, establishing an inflationary rate increase cap and creating a strong regulator to monitor rates. But the bill would not give the Postal Service nearly the level of rate-setting freedom recommended by the commission, instead imposing price controls on competitive postal products. Some in the mailing industry, however, believe the committee is so eager to maintain coalition support that it has produced a fatally weak bill. “This is a horrible, horrible disappointment,” said Association for Postal Commerce President Gene Del Polito, who represents large commercial mailers such as Time, Capital One and RR Donnelly. “We have made clear there are two things that have to be done to reform the Postal Service: Give them new methods for cost determination and give them the authority to withdraw excess costs and needless services, such as facility consolidation,” he said. “There are no such provisions in the draft at all.”
Read MoreAnchor Computer have been awarded the first *NCOALink™ Full Service Provider license issued by the USPS. Using secure data store technology the “Full Service Provider” NCOALink™ database provides mailers with more change-of-address moves, since it uses 48 months of up-to-date address information, versus the “Limited Service Provider” database that provides only 18 months of address information. National Change of Address (NCOA) identifies customers who have moved, improving mail deliverability and reducing the cost and time required to forward mail. The existing NCOA program will be replaced by NCOALink™ on September 30th 2004.
Read MoreGlobal Business Services, Inc.’s subsidiary, Postal Connections of America (PCA), a rapidly growing network of franchise postal, business and communication services stores, reports more than doubling its franchise retail network with 67 stores sold or open compared to 29 in April 2003–a 131percent increase. The company also added five area franchises in the past 12 months taking its total to eight with the recent addition of the Grand Rapids, Michigan, seven-county territory to Doublevision Partners, LLP.
Read MoreHouse and Senate sources said Wednesday postal restructuring bills probably would not be introduced until next week.
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., and Senate Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, originally had planned to introduce postal legislation by the end of April. But Collins acknowledged she would wait until next week to introduce her bill with Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del.
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