How FSS will Take Away our Co-mail Savings

I have attended several postal meetings recently where postal officials updated the industry on the status of the FSS. Click here to see the FSS in action. It seems the program is back on track after some start-up delays. I would suspect that in the near future the postal service is going to start asking or requiring U.S. mailers to prepare flats for the FSS. 

Why are they implementing FSS?

The FSS sorts flats in Carrier Walk Sequence. (Carrier Walk Sequence is just a fancy term for putting mail in the order that it is delivered). The more the USPS can automate the daily tasks of the carrier, the less expensive it will be for the USPS to deliver the mail. Because the USPS is swimming in hot water, you can imagine it will continue to jump at any opportunity to make money.

How will this affect me?

First, we will start to see the disappearance of the carrier route flat discount. The FSS machines will start to do what mass mailers are doing right now, putting flats in Carrier Walk Sequence. The USPS estimates the FSS will sort about 80% of the flat volume when installation is complete.  That will still leave 20% of the flats eligible for the carrier route discount, and therefore only 20% which is eligible for co-mail savings.

How to get the savings back

To compensate for the loss of co-mail savings the USPS has stated they are going to give catalogers a discount if they organize their shipping pallets to fit the FSS machine requirements. This process is called co-palletization.

Now, to be frank, I am not sure if the co-palletization savings is ever really going to happen. We have been told and promised by the USPS that we would have savings before, but nothing ever follows through.

If we lose co-mail savings most catalogers would see a 5-10% increase in postage! Postage continues to increase and savings is decreasing. Can we really afford to pay more for mail?

If you are sick of paying more, and more and MORE for postage email the American Catalogers Mailers Association. Catalogs need to have a voice before our postage savings are taken away.

• Tags:
• catalog mail
• co-mailing
• postage savings
• USPS

One Response to “How FSS will Take Away our Co-mail Savings”

1. Sandra Altern says:

   June 15, 2009 at 5:02 pm

   Don, as a client, this is exactly the type of information we’re looking for! Thank you for taking a proactive approach to educating us about these types of postal issues.

   Reply

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