Eddie Woods, Postal Liaison for SourceLink,
Jun 14, 2012
SourceLink Postal Liaison, Eddie Woods, recently attended two Postal Customer Council meetings. The following are postal service updates and plans he took away from the meetings.
PCC – Charlotte
Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe kicked off the meeting with a keynote presentation about the state of the Post Office.
Key highlights
The USPS is $13 billion in debt because of 4 major issues that have continued for many years:
- Volume- declining steadily
- Price- rising, but capped
- Universal service– fixed cost-base obligation
- Labor costs – rising cost/hr
- The USPS is important part of economy – some in Congress don’t understand
The USPS has identified > $20 Billion in savings within next 5 years:
- Health care – significant portion of savings
- Reduce network density
- Revenue management
- Postal Retirement – didn’t make payment in 2011 & can’t make it this year. Health Care budget was 13.2 Billion, but should be 6.2 Billion. The USPS is the second-largest purchaser of health care.
- There will be 25,000 Post Offices but 9,000 will be operated by non-USPS employees
- The USPS should go into private & could save 10-15%
Other Information:
All clients of Mail Service Providers will need to have CRIDs and Mailer IDs. These will become part of what the USPS is calling “By/For information” – i.e. the mailing is For whom and By whom. The USPS wants all of the information on all mailings & will be part of Full-Service.
CSAs – Customer Service Agreements – the USPS is trying simplify this process. The idea is to make it simpler to do business with the USPS. They want to tear down the paper barriers. Make everything electronic.
Mailers' Technical Advisory Committee Update - Retirement of Postnet is set for Jan, 2013
- FullService for discounts starts Jan, 2014
- Visibility & Service performance measurement – the goal is to track 100%
- 2nd Ounce Free – it is here to stay!
- Picture permit indicia has been approved but will cost $.01 - $.02 for each piece
Also, check out the new site to see what delivery standards are for all classes of mail from any location:
https://ribbs.usps.gov/modernservicestandards/ssmaps/find_map.cfm
PCC – Greenville
- Girl Scout Color Guard marched as we said the Pledge of Allegiance and Patricia Sullivan unveiled the Girl Scout stamp.
- Robbie Butler – Mailpiece Design Analyst for South Carolina & Georgia Talked about Mail Quality & Designing Mail for Automation.
The workshop objective was:
- Create mailpieces that perform well in the Postal automated mail stream
- To reduce the risk of additional postage being charged at the point of acceptance
SourceLink continues its commitment to staying ahead of postal changes and regulations to keep all of our employees, clients and friends abreast on all of the latest happenings.