The financially ailing U.S. Postal Service this week won the Postal Rate Commission’s permission to withdraw from consideration a proposal to charge a fee for its experimental manual delivery confirmation service.
The USPS had asked the PRC to endorse its plan to charge parcel shippers fees ranging from 12 cents to 50 cents for each written or electronic delivery confirmation notice. The fee would be in addition to the postage on the mail piece.
The new cost would hit catalogers and direct marketers.
But citing the events of Sept. 11, the recent anthrax scare, services, postal officials said they felt “that the most prudent course at this challenging time” would be to withdraw the request.
They also cited the postal service’s current program of re-evaluating its retail and post office window services.
The PRC said in a unanimous decision that it approved the withdrawal “in light of the circumstances and assessments cited by the USPS.”
Postal officials had proposed to charge a fee of 12 cents for each electronic confirmation notice for items sent by regular and nonprofit Standard Mail, media, library and bound printed mail in addition to Parcel Post.
They also proposed a 50 cent fee for a requested written confirmation for Parcel Post, bound printed matter, library and media mail and a 40 cent charge for manual confirmation that a piece of Priority Mail had been received by the addressee. However, it did propose to waive the 40-cent fee on Priority Mail items between Dec. 1 and 16.
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