On November 23rd the USPS will be implementing a change in how they discount bulk mail. While Fellowship Technologies does not provide CASS or PAVE (bulk mail) solutions, we do have some customers who have created a good work around that will no longer be successful after this change. With this post, we will attempt to clarify the impact of this change and the functional intent of Fellowship Technologies moving forward. This does not impact anyone outside of the US.
In simple terms, CASS is a validation that your addresses are clean and well formatted easing the burden on the USPS; this is how they are able to offer a small discount.
Also in simple terms, PAVE will bundle your mail down to the actual postal carrier’s load, taking the burden of this sorting off the post office; this will result in a substantial discount and includes significant savings.
CASS is a pre-requisite to PAVE as a way to validate the accuracy of the bundles. The post office will waive this requirement if you are willing to print “Return Service Requested” on every letter which will kick back those that are undeliverable and in turn charge the customer the full postal rate. Essentially this is an insurance policy allowing you to vouch for the address accuracy.
As mentioned before, we currently don’t offer either of these solutions; however, the ingenuity of our customer base has managed to find a good work around. Many of our reports that result in a list of addresses have been given a “sort by zip code” option, allowing our customers to manually find the postal code breaks, bundle them appropriately, mark “Return Service Requested” and submit them as PAVE reducing their postal rate as much as 75%. Excellent!
On November 23rd the USPS has modified their bulk mailing program to require that all zips include the optional +4 digits a CASS listing provides to qualify. If even one letter in the batch does not have the +4 extension, the entire batch will be delivered, but the bill will be adjusted to the full postal rate.
Understandably, we have heard quite a few people identify concern as they approach a typically large mailing season (Christmas followed by contribution statements). We have put our heads together to help our customers and have come up with the following course of action.
· Building a CASS solution will be a priority project for 2009
· A temporary stop gap solution will:
o Clean all zip codes nightly to include the +4
o Create a new report using a people list that allows you to sort by zip and move those without the +4 to the back of the pack
o Users will run the reports they currently run, save the results as a people list and follow that by running the new report in the previous bullet
o Because people lists are being used, any process that can create a people list will benefit from this change
o The timing is unclear, but we do understand the urgency
Thank you for your patience, we will keep you notified as progress is made.
-ACE Team