The U.S. Postal Service Tuesday asked the Postal Rate Commission to endorse a plan that would extend for three years its current market test of Mailing Online, an experimental electronic service for national small-to-medium direct marketers and nonprofit mailers.
The current test is set to expire at month’s end. Postal officials have been testing the service for just over one year in five major east coast markets, Boston, Hartford, CT, New York City, Philadelphia, and Tampa, FL.
Mailers involved in the test can send a prepared document through USPS Web sites that print and mail the document to a minimum 5,000 names at a cost of one cent per page, plus postage.
At the same time postal officials asked the PRC to endorse a plan to make its experimental weight-averaged, non-letter size business reply mail service permanent.
Under the service, which the USPS has been offering on an experimental basis since June 1997, consumers can send rolls of film to film and photo finishing companies for processing. In addition, doctors and law enforcement authorities can use the service to send a variety of specimens to laboratories for testing and examination.
Mailers providing the service, with rates based on weight averaging instead of a piece-by-piece basis, must pay a fee of between one cent and three cents per piece and maintain a monthly postage account with the USPS of at least $600.
Previously the service was endorsed by the Advertising Mail Marketing Association, District Photo, Mystic, Seattle, Time Warner and York Photo in addition to Brooklyn Union Gas Co., Key-Span East Corp., the Long Island, NY, Power Authority, and the PRC’s Office of Consumer Affairs.
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