Mail | LetterStream Blog

Struggling To Keep Up With USPS Postal Regulations?

USPS DMM Domestic Manual

Ever wonder if trying to keep up with the ever-changes rules of the United States Postal Service (USPS) is worth it? Well in their defense, they are trying hard to come up with new and better ways to process mail in order to control their costs.

However, that means a lot of changes to postal regulations. Here’s a few new Post Office rules pertaining to mailings that went into effect in January 2013.

Postage Rate Increase – A whole multitude of price increases went into effect. These price changes impacted First-Class Mail, Certified Mail, Standard Mail and about every other kind of mail.

Tabbing Rules – The size of tabs required for sending out tabbed material changed, making many tabs unusable and requiring acquisitions of new equipment.

Intelligent Mail Barcode – The Postnet barcode has been phased out for getting postal discounts. Now the new multi-dimensional barcode is needed to speed USPS mail processing.

Address Correction – In late December the USPS cancelled the FASTforward program.

We know that more changes are yet to come as the USPS will continually need to change and innovate.

If you are beginning to wonder if you should try to keep up or just simply outsource your mail projects, LetterStream might be worth considering.

We’ve got over ten years of experience making people happy and removing the headaches of mailing.

How Can You Send Mail on Postal Holidays?

USPS Post Office Sign

LetterStream can send your mail even when the post office is closed for a holiday. This might be hard to believe, but it is true! The United States Postal Service (USPS) will accept our mail at the post office on some postal holidays even though the front doors are locked.

The holidays that the USPS accepts and processes our mail include Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (MLK Day), President’s Day, Juneteenth, Veteran’s Day and Columbus Day.

Our mailing process is a bit different than putting a letter in your personal mailbox or dropping letters in the big blue USPS mailboxes. In fact, we even skip the front counter of the local post office and go directly to the USPS Bulk Mail Entry Unit (BMEU).

BMEU’s process large quantities of mail each day and are basically the main drop point of large mailers across the country. In order to accommodate the large mailing volume, BMEU’s maintain a slightly different holiday schedule than the retail operations of the postal service. This allows larger mailers to keep their mail traveling through the postal system when most other organizations cannot.

So feel free to use LetterStream.com to create first-class mail, postcards, standard-mail and non-profit mail, even on holidays.

The only catch is that on holidays when we take mail to the post office, we are only able to mail Certified Letters if we have more than 200 of them (that is nearly always the case, but it is something to keep in mind anyway).

We recommend creating your certified letters anytime you have them–most holidays we do have enough to meet the postal minimum.

USPS to Cancel Saturday Mail Delivery

Just Announced on the AP this morning:

“Postal Service to cut Saturday mail to trim costs” (*see link to full article below)

According to the article, the United States Postal Service (USPS) plans to drop Saturday delivery of letters the week of August 5th, 2013 in an attempt to save the Postal Service $2 billion annually.

USPS mail truck

This change should have no impact on the way LetterStream prints and mails letters and correspondence for our customers. It should be noted that without Saturday delivery of mail, homeowner, consumers and recipients may receive their statements or other documents a day later than usual.

In the grand scheme of things we believe the impact will be minimal for the following reasons:

Most of the “time sensitivities” and legal regulations of mail relate to when the mail piece is actually mailed, not when it is received.
Most mail pieces that require a recipient to act in some way allow an appropriate number of days for the recipient to respond.
Most businesses don’t pick up their mail on Saturdays anyway.

However, to reduce any impact this announcement may have, we encourage you to load your jobs to the LetterStream website earlier in the work week and schedule your mailings with this information in mind.

For those not currently using LetterStream for printing and mailing, we believe our services can cut time out of your current mailing process, thus negating the impact of changes to mail delivery.

To keep informed of this and other USPS changes, consider subscribing to our blog by entering your email address in the form provided to the right.

The full AP story can be found here:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/postal-service-cut-saturday-mail-trim-costs

USPS First-Class Postage Increasing on Jan. 27th, 2013

usps rate increase

It’s official. The United States Postal Service (USPS) is increasing postage rates on many of their services, including First-Class postage. The changes are set to take effect on January 27, 2013.

The following is a snippet from a USPS press release:

The price for First-Class Mail single-piece letters will increase by just a penny when prices change in Jan. The new 46 cent Forever stamps will allow customers to mail letters to any location in the United States. Forever stamps are always good for mailing a one-ounce letter anytime in the future regardless of price changes.

Highlights of the new single-piece First-Class Mail pricing, effective Jan. 27, 2013 include:

Letters (1oz.) — 1-cent increase to 46 cents

Letters additional ounces — unchanged at 20 cents

Letters to all international destinations (1oz.) — $1.10

Postcards — 1-cent increase to 33 cents

*Source: USPS.com http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_114.htm

Visit LetterStream.com today to create your First-Class mailing before the new postage rates go into effect. We are always available to help walk you through the process–it just takes a few minutes!

Mailing W-2s, 1099s, and/or Charitable Giving Statements?

Tax Forms with Glasses

It’s January, which means it’s time to send out 1099‘s, W-2‘s, Charitable Giving/Contribution Statements and other tax related documents for the current tax year.

If you are still trying to figure out how to get your documents mailed without mandatory all-night stuffing parties, we might be the right people to call.

With our hi-tech production facility and knowledgeable staff (friendly staff, too), we can take the burden out of printing, folding, stuffing, licking, stamping and mailing your critical documents.

Call us today and get some expert assistance no matter how many (or how few) documents you have.

Sending Mail on Postal Holidays

Can you send mail on USPS postal holidays? Sure you can!

Let’s face it, we don’t all get the same paid holidays that the United States Postal Service (USPS) employees get. In 2012, the USPS is closed for 10 holidays.

However, if you are working and you need your mail to go out, LetterStream has the ability to mail your letters on many postal holidays. While the post office front counters are closed and mail carriers are off, there are some holidays that the post office back office is still on duty.

So, “Yes”, the USPS accepts and processes our mail on President’s Day (Washington’s birthday), Columbus Day, Veterans’ Day, MLK Day and Juneteenth.

If you are like us and are working those days, feel free to send your mail to us and we’ll get it mailed on the Holiday for you!

Who’s Faster? You or Us?

Sometimes we hear concern from mailing prospects on the east coast. Their concern is that it will take too long for mail created here in Scottsdale (Phoenix area), Arizona to make it back to the east coast.

This is a reasonable and logical concern, but we are pretty certain that our west coast mail can consistently make it back to the east coast and be delivered faster than east coast mail can.

Doesn’t make sense? Well, consider these points… When the post office is closed on the east coast, we generally have 2-3 extra hours, given the difference in time zones. We have tremendous print and mail capabilities, which means we can probably get the mail printed and inserted far faster than an in-house solution, improving our chances of getting the mail finished first.

Your jobs are not filler work for us, so we won’t put the job off to work on other projects (which we hear happens in some companies where printing and mailing isn’t their bread and butter), further improving our chances of getting the mail out at least one day faster than other companies.

And finally, the best part… our mail departs our facility after the local post office is closed, travels to a USPS acceptance facility, gets sorted to commercial airlines headed for the east coast and typically hits major east coast cities before the sun even comes up. So, when someone is concerned about the speed of mail across the country, we simply say “West is Best!”.

Always Learning…

Our customers are always surprising us with new and inventive ways to use our products.

Here are a couple great ideas:

Save money with postcards. Some of our property management customers have found that they can save a fair bit of money by using postcards to present first violation notifications.
Simple thank you’s go a long way. Those same property management customers use postcards to send simple “Thank You” notes to those residents that are doing a great job keeping their yards spic-and-span. A great, inexpensive way to let residents know that they are appreciated.

Give it a try!…

Create and send postcards with LetterStream