|
The U.S. Postal Service issued a rule in
January which takes effect on May 11 that will affect all periodicals
mailers, newspapers included, and will have the effect of delaying the
delivery of many newspapers.
The new rule requires that mail sacks
contain a minimum of 24 newspapers. Prior to May 11, mail sacks could
contain as few as six newspapers. This week’s mailing will be the last
under the old rule.
Mail sacks are labeled with a particular
zip code and are forwarded to the appropriate post office for local
distribution or, to a mail handling center for further processing
before delivery to a local post office.
Mail bags with newspapers that share the
same zip code are delivered directly to the appropriate post office
and generally have more timely delivery to the subscriber. Newspapers
with different zip codes that are sent to mail processing centers
generally have slower and more sporadic home delivery results.
Newspaper subscribers in the local area
may not be affected by the new rule, since there are more than 24
newspapers contained in mail bags going to Comanche, Dublin, Gorman,
Desdemona and Stephenville.
Subscribers in outlying areas, including
most of those in the major metropolitan areas of Texas, will likely
experience slower and less predictable delivery schedules beginning
next week.
Some subscribers, those who live in
smaller Texas cities or in other states where there are few others in
their zip code who subscribe to this newspaper, will likely not see
any impact from the rule change, since they have already been
experiencing the lengthy, multi-step mail processing that will now
affect more of our subscribers.
The newspaper associations have fought
the implementation of the 24-minimum piece sack rule for some time,
however, without success. The current battle in Congress is for
delivery standards to be set and enforced.
We regret the change. It will have the
effect of both delaying delivery to many of our subscribers outside of
the local area and of increasing our postage expense, since the
mailing rates for bags with multiple zip codes is higher.
We are prepared to receive inquiries and
complaints from our subscribers, but are placed in the unfortunate
position of being unable to do anything to improve upon the situation. |
