I'll use this moment as a reminder (yet another one) that rate changes from the
USPS, along with a number of other significant sortation rule changes, are set
to take effect 22 Jan 2012. Under current rules, the USPS is obligated to give
at least 45 days notice of any changes, which if our
math is right works out to be 8 Dec 2011 - next Thursday - as the deadline
for publication of changes.
Today's PB has a
few changes, and we know there is another Federal Register Notice (FRN) that's
supposed to come out before the deadline. That FRN will have the rules for the
new competitive product, Parcel Select Light Weight (PSLW - another acronym to
know!) Parcels, that essentially replaces STD mail parcels that are NOT used
for marketing. We're told the sort should be much the same as it was before,
but I can't really say because we haven't seen any detail about it yet.
The latest word is that we should expect it
Given that Thursday is the deadline, I suppose that makes sense.
Back to today's PB - and the three winners are:
Combined Mailings of Standard Mail and Periodicals Flats Clarification
Eligibility for Destination Entry Prices per NDC and ASF Labeling Lists Copalletized,
Combined, or Mixed-Price Level Palletized Mailings Correction
The first item fixes some omissions in the 28 June "final" rule. Specifically, some of the
language from the preamble text about which bundle prices apply for PER mail in
a mixed class comail pool did not actually appear in
the DMM language (now 15.1.9c & d - ADC bundles on MNDC get ADC on ADC
price, mixed ASF/NDC pallets get MADC pallet charge). This article also
corrects places that were still assuming only AUTO mail could be included with
the Carrier Route mail as was proposed in the 24 March draft, so the line 2
(contents line) for various pallets were updated to say BC or
NBC or BC/NBC.
One item that did NOT go in this article is what to do about (PER) CR mail placed on an
MNDC pallet - since there is no bundle charge price for CR bundles on an MADC
pallet in Periodicals, what should be done for that case? The answer we got
back from the USPS is they should get the bundle charge of a 5DG bundle on an
MADC pallet. Timing may not allow that even to make it into the USPS 22 January
DMM changes, but that's what it's going to be, at least until the day when they
change the sort rules to allow Periodical CR mail on an MADC pallet
The item on eligibility for dest entry prices seems a sensible way to try to keep
that eligibility in line with the rapidly changing Label List tables. While
they had eligibility tables in the sortation rules separate from the
corresponding facility tables, it just seemed inevitable there would be differences!
See the article to find which tables are removed and how the exceptional cases
(cough Puerto Rico cough) were worked into the footnotes.
Finally, the last item is a brief
correction, I believe just to add exclusion text to say that when STD
letter mailings are combined, the presort level shown may not be the finest
level possible. Unless I'm missing something, this situation would only
arise if you were consolidating other mailings that were already presorted
separately. If you're using a product like our Presort to create your
mailing job from input data sets, this would not be a
problem.
Be watching for that final FRN of rate
case changes (at least we hope it's the final one!) sometime next week. By our
calculations, we'll have roughly 96 actual calendar hours to read
and analyze it, then design, review and code the changes before we
have to get to "code complete" in time to get software out just a few
weeks prior to 22 Jan. Wish us luck, won't you?
