Arandell Corporation

Susan Pinter, Director of Postal Systems

Earlier this year, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced the implementation of revised deflection requirements, which went into effect on January 4^th, 2010.  As a follow up to this implementation, the industry met with the USPS early this week to further discuss the challenges ahead with the droop/deflection requirement.  The revised rule states: if a piece does not comply with the deflection 3 inch rule, the piece drops to the Non-Automated Rates.  According to the USPS, the floppy pieces need to be taken off the machines and manually processed because the flimsy flats do not feed well on the automated equipment. In turn, this is incurring additional manufacturing and processing costs to the postal service. This will be a big impact for ALL mailers!!!  A perfect example is a Standard Mail Flat Catalog weighing less than 3 ounces - The postage will go from .262 cents per piece to .367 cents per piece. This is a 28% increase!!!  WOW, the catalogers are not happy with this rule, especially in today’s world of cutting costs and reducing page counts.