The U.S. Postal Service will begin checking the accuracy of barcodes on high volume mailings beginning Jan.1 through an updated version of its MERLIN (Mail Evaluation Readability Lookup Instrument) system at its acceptance units.
The updated equipment will now be able to detect such errors as ZIP codes with 0000 or 9999 in the ZIP+4 portion of a mailing address. It will also identify sequential strings of numbers in the last six digits of the ZIP code that would indicate an address programming error. Mailings with an error rate of more than 1% will not be eligible for automation discounts.
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