- For mailers who normally submit hardcopy postage statements, acceptance employees will enter the hardcopy statements presented during the outage.
- For mailers who normally submit postage statements via Postal Wizard, acceptance employees will compare the hardcopy postage statements submitted during the outage to the Postal Wizard statements that appear on the dashboard to finalize those that do appear. If a hardcopy statement was submitted during the outage and does not appear on the dashboard, acceptance employees will enter the hardcopy statement that was provided.
- Mailers who intended to send mailing information electronically (using Mail.dat or Mail.XML) during the outage, should submit their electronic mailing information upon system restoration for the mailings presented during the outage period. Acceptance employees will compare the hardcopy statements that were provided during the outage to the electronic statements appearing on the dashboard to ensure all mailings are presented and will finalize the electronic statements. Mailers are encouraged to work with USPS acceptance employees to verify that all jobs submitted for the outage period Friday, Feb. 5 through Friday Feb. 9 appear correctly on the PostalOne! dashboard.
- The Mailing Date will reflect the actual date of mailing and will not be changed to the date the mailing was processed in the PostalOne! system.
Click here for the contingency procedures.
It has been determined that the outage was caused by database corruption. Root cause analysis is underway to determine how this can be prevented in the future.
FAST® Update – As a reminder, although the FAST system is operational only the online FAST application is available to schedule appointments.
Feel free to contact your local Business Mail acceptance personnel or the PostalOne! Helpdesk at 800-522-9085 with your questions/concerns.
New Barcode Readability Standards
Barcode readability verifications are routinely performed on automation price mailings using the Mail Evaluation Readability and Lookup Instrument (MERLIN®). Samples from the mailing are processed on MERLIN and evaluated for mail preparation including presort and barcode readability quality. Based on verification results additional postage may be calculated. Mailers may elect to pay additional postage or withdraw a mailing that fails verification standards.
Working through the Mailers‚ Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC), the Postal Service™ and the mailing industry have agreed to set an 80% threshold for barcode readability verifications for letter and flat mailings using the Intelligent Mail barcodes. This change is effective on November 30, 2009. The threshold since July 2009 was 70%. Mailings that are verified and that have a barcode readability score of below 80% will not be eligible for automation or Full-Service prices. Further agreement was reached to revise the barcode readability verification threshold to 90% effective March 15, 2010.
Similar to the POSTNET™ barcode, mailers are achieving very good readability scores on MERLIN for Intelligent Mail barcodes. MERLIN scores for the period October 3, 2009 to November 2, 2009 are reflected below.
Streamlining Hard Copy Postage Statement Processing
In our ongoing efforts to improve customer service, the Postal Service® will continue to improve efficiencies of Business Mail Acceptance processes. Starting March 15, 2010, the Postal Service will streamline the processing of hard copy postage statements. Click here to read about it.
Full-Service Intelligent Answers:
The Postal Service will continue to conduct the series of telecons entitled Full-Service Intelligent Answers. These calls that began on July 31 are scheduled from 1:00-2:00 PM EST every Friday until further notice. The calls are for customers who are testing in the Test Environment for Mailers (TEM) or for customers who have migrated to using Full-Service in production and have questions or are experiencing issues. The invitations have been sent via email to the target audience.
If you are currently testing in TEM or have successfully completed the TEM process, but have not received an invitation to join the calls, please contact the PostalOne!® Help Desk at 1-800-522-9085.
