U.S. Postal Service officials and mailing industry representatives are scheduled to resume talks Friday on a possible negotiated agreement to raise postal rates next year without going through the customary rate case process.
Industry and postal representatives, began discussing this possibility Oct. 30 on the recommendation of Postal Rate Commission’s vice chairman George Omas.
Although industry groups such as the Direct Marketing Association, Association for Postal Commerce, Mailers Council, and the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers have been participating in the discussions, none of their officials would comment on either the progress or any tentative agreements that may have been reached.
In a related development the PRC has temporarily suspended further proceedings in a challenge to the postal service’s experimental Post Electronic Courier Service (Post E.C.S), an Internet-based document service for direct marketers, until after the pending rate case is over.
Atlanta-based United Parcel Service (UPS) and the Coalition Against Unfair USPS Competition (CAUUC) are contesting the legality of the service which the USPS, in partnership with Canada Post and France’s La Poste, began offering in July 1999, alleging that the experimental service was never authorized by the postal service’s governing board.
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