More than 40 million Americans change their address each year, which means the U.S. Postal Service forwards an awful lot of mail. In fiscal year 2010, it forwarded 1.2 billion pieces. Under the Postal Service’s regulations, customers who fill out a change of address form have their mail forwarded to their new address for 12 months after the move. Mail forwarding costs the Postal Service almost $300 million a year. The cost to return mail to sender is another $800 million.
The cost of mail forwarding – and returning to sender and treating as waste — is baked into the overall First Class Mail rates, so all customers effectively pay for this service whether they use it or not. Canada Post has taken a different approach to mail forwarding, charging recipients either an annual or semi-annual fee when they move. Residential customers pay $75 for 12 months of forwarding and business customers pay $235. These prices increase slightly if the person or business moves to another province.
The Canada Post model extricates the costs from the overall First Class Mail rate and is structured so recipients pay for the service, but only if they use it. Some U.S. business customers have requested that the Postal Service explore new pricing and product options to reduce the costs of forwarding and returning mail to sender. Would a model similar to the Canada Post one work in the U.S. or would residential recipients, in particular, feel like they were being charged for a service they thought was free? Should the sender pay for forwarding instead of the recipients? What would happen if recipients or senders decided against paying for forwarding? Would total costs merely go up since return to sender mail costs more than twice as much as forwarding per piece?
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Cannot speak for all the circumstances that require a customer to forward their mail but it would seem we should be not be offering the service for free either for forwarding or returning mail.
In regard to the COA’s. I cannot see the one month free and then charge idea working. You would still have to have the infrastructure to handle COA’s. Why not make premium forwarding THE service. No free service. Either tell customer to call up those that you need to correct your address or use our service.
We have snowbirds. Let them pay for the service. They can use premium forwarding.
We are constantly correcting customers forwarding requests. Having to fix their incorrectly filled out forms, correct CFS errors, explain to customer why the delay in their getting their forwarding. With the change of plants handling our forwards we are having an increase of problems.
Premium forwarding. You go to you office, they review form, they handle the forwarding, they are accountable. No middle man, no delays and customer has a contact person to speak with if a problem or question arises.
If USPS wants to still have a record, input can be made via the office handling the Premium forwarding.
And it is already set up on USPS for the customer to request.
Honestly I believe the cost of COA’s is much higher, as I cannot imagine how they would know how each office spends their time handling the COA issues. We have to deal with COA issues daily.
In regard to “return to sender”. Charge the customer that is receiving. They want the mail back for a reason, they should be willing to pay for that service.
I am not in favor for this hidden cost within the first class mail. You want a service pay for it.
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Harry, I believe you are absolutely correct. The cost of each time a piece of mail is diverted from its set course to another address is much higher than $.45. In 2001, the cost to divert a piece of mail to the Central Forwarding System was &.75 per piece of mail. If there was an error in the Change of Address, and it was sent back to the Carrier Post Office, that cost another $.75. Every time it bounced from one location to another, it would cost an additional $.75. That was way back in 2001, while the carriers still managed the mail that was sent to CFS. I do not know how much it costs now that an off-site facility is handling it, but I know that the number of Forwarding Errors drastically increased when it happened. It was better when carriers could generate a COA for each misspelling of a customer’s name. Carriers that were regulars on the route would know the nicknames, maiden names, and aliases of the longtime customers. Carriers would know to personally discuss the COA’s and how they worked with the customer BEFORE they filled the COA’s out. Carriers usually know their longtime customers and all their little quirks. Carriers were the customers first line of defense when it came to giving long lasting help to their patrons, even long after they moved.
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Could not agree any stronger with Harry’s comments. Lets not forget about the irrate customer because they did not inform someone of their new address, then want us to pay their late charges. I spend at least 5 hours a week on the phone trying to fix forwarding errors. Example: Son moves out puts in family order, customers put wrong new address, wrong old address, wrong date. Moved back didn’t know he had to cancell forward. I am a strong supporter of the CFS it does work our employees are just lazy. During mail count my carriers wanted credit for removing the reject labels from forward errors. I told them to give them to me and if they were indeed CFS errors I would give them a mark-up. Surprise no CFS errors all carriers error.I believe this is a service that needs to be paid for. How can 45 cent possibly cover this service? How many people have to handle a single piece of mail to get it to a second destination. Insane for anyone to think we could make a cent of a letter period. But to basically put it thru the mail stream three times, each piece of mail forwarded must cost us several dollars each.
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Sandee, if you are in one of the Postal Regions where the mail carriers no longer handle the forwarding of mail, the mail to be forwarded often never even reaches the carrier’s route. The Central Forwarding Databases catch the mail and forward it, and the carrier only receives it if there is an error caused BY the Central Forwarding System data entry teams. Did you know that? If you are having all mail being forwarded by the carriers, and they are continuing to have a high percentage of mail coming back, there is a way to fix it. While I was in Charge of Quality Control, we were able to bring the 12% of errors returned to 4.5%. Of that 4.5% I was able to prove that 3.5% of those errors were made by data entry clerks in the Central Forwarding System. We were able to figure out exactly what the problems were and find solutions for those issues. The best part, is that it was an amazingly simple process from start to finish. All we needed were the end of run reports from CFS which breaks down exactly what type of error was repeating and which route it came from. Piece of cake.
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I agree with the comments posted. Main handling and mail forwarding services ahould be assigned to professional companies with right expertise who can maintain a healthy interaction or link between a company and its clients. .
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“Mail forwarding costs the Postal Service almost $300 million a year. The cost to return mail to sender is another $800 million”. This is your quote. Wouldn’t it save money if instead of returning mail to the sender, that you extended the Mail Forwarding Time to two years instead of one? I would have very happily paid a Fee of $50.00 to extend my Mail Forwarding Time for an additional year. Instead of forwarding the mail with a yellow sticker to the person who moved (for a year), why don’t you make it happen that if a person moves and does not bother to notify the people and companies they correspond with within the first six months do something about it. You issue reports that list the names in the Central Forwarding System Database. You should have the ability that instead of alphabetizing the database by customer name and address, add a field that indicates where the forwarding piece originated. Alphabetize the database by sender. Sometimes, it is not the fault of the customer that moved that their new address has not been updated in a company/sender database. Some companies will not update to your new address no matter how many letters, E-mails or phone calls you send. Often, it is the sender who is costing the USPS so much money. Do something about it. Alphabetize your sender list. Figure out who the culprits are that refuse to update their customer databases. Send them a report that shows them which of their customers have moved, and list the new corrected address. It is not the job of USPS to update their databases. It is their job. Charge them $.75 for every name that they have refused to update their database for during the last six months. For companies that maintain incorrect addresses for over 200 of their customers per month, send them this list on the second Friday of every month. That should give them time to correct the databases for the next billing cycle or magazine delivery. They may gripe about the outlay of cash, but in the long run, it will mean that the address they send each item to will be the correct address the first time. This might remove a great deal of mail traffic and cost from the Central Forwarding System and the Return to Sender Expenses. They will pay much less to have the mail correctly sent initially, than they would if they have to pay “Return to Sender Fees” for many pieces that are sent back to them because of the same customer with a bad address.
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Interesting discussion! Based on the numbers quoted, it appears that you could charge customers $10 for one year’s forwarding. I’d also like to be able to extend for another year (for another $10). There are some bills (like insurance) that only show up once a year. If they miss my address change request and it falls outside the one year forwarding, I’d never know about it. Returns are another interesting area. I tend to think this should be included in the cost of first class mail. It would not be cost effective to try to collect on each return. But, maybe an “extra-first” class rate that does cover returns. Those who don’t pay it don’t get the returns.
Meanwhile, is there some way I can pay for another year of forwarding?
THANKS!
Harold
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