The U.S. Postal Service withdrew its request for a Postal Rate Commission endorsement for Mailing Online, an experimental electronic service for expediting the mailing process, but reserved the right to file the request again.
In the legal papers with formally withdrew the matter from consideration, the USPS said it would reopen the matter in the future, but did not indicated when.
According to those papers a new request would include “an updated explanation of the system’s operation and revisions of certain estimated information systems costs in order to present an accurate picture” of the service with data collected from a year-long five-city market test scheduled to end this coming October 30.
The USPS added that it wants to hold back so it can “consolidate its Internet presence with one Web site, USPS.com, in order to avoid unnecessary redundancies and costs and to manage efficiently the issue of Year 2000 compatibility.”
Earlier, the USPS reported that between last October 30 and April 9 of this year, 178 mailers used the service, sending a total of 38,492 pieces. Mailing Online income for the period totaled $14,600.37.
Mailers using the service create a document on a personal computer, access a USPS Web site, select printing finishing and payment options and provide a mailing list of at least 5,000 names for standardization, before sending an electronic version of the document to a dedicated USPS Web site for patching, printing and traditional paper mailing. The service is geared to small-to-medium direct marketers and nonprofit mailers.
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