TIME TO MOVE ON MOVE UPDATE

The November implementation date is upon us, have you made the required changes?

According to the RIBBS Website, “Effective Nov. 23, 2008 the Postal Service is increasing its effort to improve the percentage of deliverable mail by revising the Move Update standards. The Move Update standards provide ways for mailers to reduce the number of mail pieces that require forwarding or return by the periodic matching of a mailer’s address records with customer-filed change-of-address orders. The final rule published Sept. 28, 2007, included the following changes related to Move Update processing:

• Increase the minimum frequency of Move Update processing from 185 calendar days to 95 days prior to the date of mailing.
• Extend the revised Move Update standards to include all Standard Mail (letters, flats, parcels and Not Flat-Machinables), as well as automation-rate and presort-rate First-Class Mail.”

That is a concise description of the changes but what choices do mailers have for complying with the new regulations?  In the same article are listed four choices:

OneCode ACS™

NCOALink™ processing.

FASTforward^® MLOCR processing (letter mail only).

Ancillary Service Endorsement.

OneCode ACS™ - This is the electronic Address Change Service from the USPS that is tied to the use of the Intelligent Mail^® Bar Code incorporating a Mailer Identifier from the mailer. In that it is electronic it is also highly efficient and makes it easy to update addresses.

NCOALink™ - This service provides mailers with corrected addresses prior to the mail entering the mail stream. This is purchased by license and there are different levels of licensing. Many people are licensed as end users when they purchase software that provides this service as a part of the addressing software package.

FASTforward^® MLOCR - FASTforward Multiline Optical Character Reader is a pre mailing process that reads the address on the mail piece, if necessary applies a new address directly to the mail piece before it enters the mail stream.  (Used by large Presort Houses and  Mail Consolidators)

Ancillary Service Endorsement. -  Any mailer may use an ancillary service endorsement to (1) request a hard-copy notification of the addressee’s new address and (2) tell the Postal Service how to handle UAA mail. You may combine ancillary service endorsements with other approved Move Update methods. Mailers can meet Move Update requirements for First-Class Mail service or Standard Mail service by using the following endorsements to update addresses:

Return Service Requested

Temp-Return Service Requested (First-Class Mail only)

Address Service Requested

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