Today's Postal Bulletin, the first in an even-numbered month, includes changes to 10 of the Labeling Lists. These changes will be incorporated into the May directories, well in advance of the 17 June 2010 "required by" date.
Other than that, there is little or nothing that should affect Presort. There are a few other DMM items, but they are not Presort-related (for example, things like which customs declaration form is the correct one to use). Perhaps of interest to some will be the issue of a new $0.44 Katharine Hepburn stamp (who can forget her and Bogart in The African Queen?). Interestingly (to me at least), there is also a 64-cent butterfly stamp. Why 64? Because that's the postage required for a non-machinable greeting card; evidently some will have an imprint of a butterfly in the stamp area, as a suggestion to customers about what stamp to use. There's some trivia you can use to "impress" (aggravate? irritate? frustrate?) your friends the next time you see a butterfly image!
And just a reminder that Presort 8.00c SP05 will be available in advance of the 26 May 2010 required date for use of March 2010 postage statements and all the associated BMC-to-NDC changes.
One other thing to mention here, related to the upcoming PAVE testing cycle. In the announcement of the cycle from the PAVE department, we received a "clarification" about how reduced overflow (ROFL) trays can be qualified. Our understanding since this option was implemented, based on USPS presentations, was that any mail being dropped to the next level could be counted with the mail at that level to determine whether the 150 piece minimum was met.
For example, if a 5DG area had 20 pieces more than a full tray and the rest of the 3DG area had only 130 pieces, short of the 150 needed to qualify to make a 3DG tray, those 20 extra pieces could be added to the 130 to qualify the tray, and the 20 pieces would still get 5DG price. The updated interpretation says there must already be 150 pieces at that next level before the additional mail can be dropped to that level and retain its price.
In the situation just described, there would no longer be a 3DG tray with some 5DG mail dropped into it; EITHER you would have to create an overflow tray to retain the 5DG price and drop all the 3DG pieces to AADC level (or worse), OR the mail could be dropped together with the 3DG pieces to make a 3DG tray but you would pay 3DG price for everything in the tray.
We have asked about publication of a clarification of this rule interpretation, so everyone will be alerted to the change, but so far there has been nothing except the announcement from the National Customer Support Center (NCSC).
