Seamless Acceptance - Written for Mailers Hub September 2019

As discussed at the late August meeting of the Postmaster General’s Mailers Technical Advisory Committee, the Postal Service is continuing to develop its plan to require Seamless Acceptance by 2021.

The first step in the process would be issuance of a proposed rule in the Federal Register. The USPS expects that will occur this month, with a thirty-day period provided for com-ments from interested parties.

As now envisioned, that proposal would include:

• Mandated use of Seamless Acceptance for all mailings entered at detached mail units, and for mailings that are 90% or more Full Service IMB entered at a BMEU

• Seamless parallel by March 1, 2020

• Required use of Seamless Acceptance by February 1, 2021

• Retirement of manual verification for mailers submitting over 90% Full Service volume by July 1, 2021

• Auto-finalization of Seamless postage statements – even if permit fees are due for renewal

Of course, the above timeline could change as the steps and dates are reviewed by senior management. Moreover, it was suggested that there be no prescribed dates in the pro-posed rule, only that each step would be implemented at a specific interval after issuance of a final rule – whenever that might be.

Other changes

Changes to the sampling process for mailing entered under Seamless Acceptance are being considered.

Among those changes are:

• Removal of the general postage adjustment factor based on weight, payment, and mail characteristics

• Replacement of the current sampling method (one container, three trays, thirty pieces) with downstream (in-process) sampling

• Comparison of the sample to the e-docs submitted with the mailing

• Establishment of separate thresholds for errors in weight, pay-ment, and mail characteristics

Initially, these changes would be piloted for Periodicals mailings before being adopted for other categories. Testing of the new process will be conducted using July data.

On a related issue, regarding how a mailing service provider can ensure there’s adequate postage in a customer’s ac-count to pay for a mailing, the current process – having a postal clerk check the mail owner’s account – would be modified to enable checking directly through PostalOne.

As described, a screen would be provided to the MSP on which would be entered the permit number and type, and the authorizing post office (city/state). To protect the privacy of the mail owner’s information, an account balance would not be returned but, rather, a green “check” if funds are sufficient, or a red “x” if they’re not. However, the balance check would neither lock the needed funds nor consider any other concurrent balance inquiries from other mailers.

Attendees commented that this red/green indication wouldn’t enable an MSP to inform its client about the amount needed to pay for a mailing. The USPS representatives indicated that condition would be reviewed further.