We will skip the
buzzword “seamless acceptance” because nothing is more frustrating than
speaking in code; yet now I sense you pleading, begging to know what this term
means, intuitively knowing you will be forced some day to comply or forfeit
your first born.
Seamless
acceptance is designed to streamline and automate the hand off or induction of
business mail (and nonprofit periodicals mail) for verification, payment and
induction into the USPS mail stream. Let’s agree to think of it as paperwork
reduction except for the actual mail itself (let’s not go crazy after all.)
Usually, a
printer's employee alongside a domiciled postal employee eyes print samples for
weight verification, four eyes at once, as magazines come off the print run. Other in-plant methods exist, for example,
using the weight of laden pallets minus the tare weight, but let’s stick with
the eyeballing small samples example.
Weight is a
critical matter in calculating postage.
So too are eyeballs
viewing a scale, but the USPS wants to remove their domiciled employees, permanently
assigned to a printers plant, and check magazine weights another way, far, far
away, by adding this task to the responsibility of plant employees at USPS
plants around the country. After all, everything is now connected by computerized
accounts, so remote verification is not that difficult.
Verification
means confirmation of an original measure, something the printer’s employee
will now do alone to determine the postage payment just before magazine are
loaded onto pallets and the trucks start rolling.
What will be so difficult
when magazine weights are verified in far-flung places? Humidity. Minor
variations in trim size. These add up when trying to verify postage for a
100,000 run magazine based on, say, twenty copies weighed in different places.
Small measurement variations can amount to big postage when multiplied by
100K.
That is why this
topic came up at the USPS' Mailers Technical Advisory Committee this week.
Printers all but stood in line to express how difficult this is going to be,
and ask what weight tolerances the USPS will allow. No one, after all, wants to
make a stab at claiming the correct postage only to be called out later for a
deficiency. Apparently issue weights are a moving target.
So, printers were
solicited to participate in a test called, “How much does a magazine mailed
from Mid-America weigh in Miami vs. Phoenix?” I bet you are thinking, “Why can’t
this just be done in a lab under scientific conditions?” Wise you are. All you
would need is a humidifier and a vaporizer.
Most printers define
the discussion as how much of a tolerance will the USPS give them on magazine
weight verification, and therefor correct postage. Some argue for certification, i.e. if a
printer shows you they can produce the correct weight and postage x times in a
row (I’m making this up), give them a pass on any future measured
variations. (I don’t know how well this
meets Sarbanes-Oxley).
I see it another
way. Why not have the printer’s employee
determine the actual weight. Use that weight, calculated to four decimal points
of a pound. Save these copies for the period during which those magazines are
in the mail stream and subject to dispersed USPS verification. If the USPS
determines there is a weight variation resulting in a postage deficiency
(however they reach this conclusion), the printer may produce the primary sample
used and together, with the USPS, the original measurement is confirmed or
denied. If confirmed, all dispersed measurements become irrelevant, unless
differences in product can be determined (inclusion\exclusion of blow-in cards,
version differences, etc.) Printers should probably sample various ends of the
print run and average them, saving all samples. This way it doesn't matter if humidity-soaked
measurements are made elsewhere around the country. What counts is that the
original measurement is reproducible. This saves printers of good will from
suffering postage deficiencies due to measured sample variation, especially outliers
which naturally occur.
Or we can run
around like chickens with our heads cut off, worrying about paying more postage if caught with
magazine weights over 2 standard deviations as measured in Miami.
