Chapter 3 - Most customer concerns addressed

The Postal Service carefully considered each five-day delivery concern raised by customers. Almost all have been resolved or mitigated. In general, the concerns that could not be resolved centered on outgoing mail not being delivered, collected or processed on Saturday. The Postal Service will continue to work with business, government and individual customers to meet their mailing needs within the context of its new operating model when five-day delivery begins.

Here is an overview of how the Postal Service resolved most concerns.

• Lead time — The Postal Service will provide sufficient lead time for mailers and recipients to adjust to the elimination of Saturday collection and delivery to street addresses. The Postal Service also will implement a comprehensive communications plan to ensure that customers are aware of the changes, and will work with customers to help them adjust. New Monday-through-Friday collection schedules will be posted on collection boxes and in Post Offices well in advance of the change.
• Continue Saturday Post Office services — Post Offices and other postal retail units will remain open on Saturdays. No Post Office will be closed on Saturday as the result of five-day delivery. Post Offices will continue to accept mail on Saturday, but most of it will be processed on Monday.
• P.O. Box-addressed mail — Mail addressed to a P.O. Box will be delivered Monday through Saturday. Local firm holdout mail will be available for pickup Monday through Friday.
• Remittance mail available seven days a week — Incoming mail will be processed and transported over the weekend, so that remittance mail (mail containing payments) and other mail addressed to a P.O. Box will continue to be available for pickup seven days a week.
• Timely delivery on Monday or after a three-day holiday weekend — Currently, there are five times a year when mail is delivered to street addresses on a Tuesday following a three-day weekend that includes two consecutive non-delivery days (Sunday and Monday). When that happens, the Postal Service delivers mail on Tuesday. It will continue to do so under the proposed plan.
  
  Under five-day delivery, three-day holiday weekends will have three consecutive non-delivery days — Saturday, Sunday and Monday. There is sufficient time and mail processing capacity for all mail to meet a Tuesday delivery date. Local operating plans will be adjusted to ensure that all mail scheduled for delivery on Tuesday after a three-day weekend is delivered in a timely manner. This will be accomplished using multiple strategies, including bringing employees in earlier, using overtime, and redistributing carrier workload.
• Processing and transportation to continue for three-day holidays — Incoming processing and transportation will continue on weekends when a holiday occurs on the following Monday. This processing and transportation supports timely delivery of mail after the holiday weekend.
• Continued drop-ship entry on Saturday and Sunday — Drop-ship entry of bulk mail will continue on weekends. The start-the-clock for measuring on-time service performance occurs the day the mail is drop-ship entered.
• Continued bulk mail acceptance on Saturday and Sunday — Bulk mail will continue to be accepted on Saturday and Sunday. Business mail entry units (BMEU) will remain open on Saturday and/or Sunday. Post Offices currently accepting bulk mail on Saturday will continue to do so. Outgoing bulk mail accepted on Saturday or Sunday will generally be processed and have a start-the-clock on Monday. There will be an optional start-the-clock on Saturday for local outgoing and incoming sectional center facility (SCF) mail when three requirements are met: the BMEU is associated with a plant, mail is physically separated and pre-sorted to the SCF or finer sort according to labeling lists, and mail is entered prior to the critical acceptance time.
• Express Mail delivery and collection — Express Mail will continue to be delivered seven days a week. The Postal Service will continue to collect, process and transport Express Mail accepted at a Post Office or deposited in a dedicated Express Mail collection box Monday through Saturday. However, there will be no residential or business address pickup of Express Mail or Priority Mail on Saturday.
• Deliver parcels on Saturdays before Christmas — If needed, parcels will be delivered on either two or three Saturdays before Christmas, depending on the day on which the holiday falls, to ensure delivery before Christmas Day. The number of Saturdays on which delivery would occur also will depend on the volume of parcels. The Postal Service currently strives to ensure parcels are delivered by Christmas and will continue to do so.
• Live animals and perishables — The Domestic Mail Manual will be changed to require that live animals and perishables arrive at a destination delivery unit (DDU) Monday through Friday, rather than the current Monday through Saturday. Mailers needing Saturday delivery of live animals and perishables will continue to have the option to use Express Mail. If an item arrives at a DDU after the critical entry time on Friday, the Postal Service will continue its practice of attempting to contact the recipient to arrange for the item to be picked up Friday or Saturday.
• Medicines — Mailers of medicines, especially laboratory specimens or items shipped in dry ice, will be strongly encouraged to schedule arrival at the DDU Monday through Friday. Mailers needing Saturday delivery of medicines have the option to use Express Mail. If an item arrives at a DDU after the critical entry time on Friday, the Postal Service will contact the recipient to arrange for the item to be picked up Friday or Saturday.
• Election Mail ballots — Election officials will be encouraged to use a P.O. Box address and add a facing identification mark (FIM) to election ballot envelopes that are P.O. Box-addressed, so the ballots can be treated in the same manner as remittance mail. This would allow election officials to pick up ballots seven days a week if they have Caller Service. Using a FIM for P.O. Box-addressed Election Mail also means ballots deposited on Saturday committed for overnight delivery will be available for pickup at a plant when they are processed on Monday/Tuesday for Caller Service, and available for pickup on Tuesday for P.O. Box delivery. The Postal Service will provide appropriate lead time and information for mailers and recipients so they can adjust.
• No delivery of government checks on Saturday — The volume of government checks delivered by the Postal Service has fallen dramatically over the past several years. As a result, this issue is not on the scale it would have been prior to the rise of electronic deposits. The Postal Service will provide appropriate lead time and information to mailers and recipients so they can adjust.

In refining its five-day delivery concept, the Postal Service was able to resolve many concerns expressed by mailers and recipients through modifications that either eliminated or reduced potentially adverse impacts. However, it was not possible to accommodate every mailer and recipient. Accommodation of the following two preferences would have all but negated the core operating plan and pursuit of the Postal Service’s objectives:

• Continuation of Saturday delivery to street addresses of newspapers, magazines, firm holdout mail, Priority Mail, parcels, Standard Mail, medicines and government checks.
• Continuation of scheduled Saturday collections and outgoing processing of all mail.

The Postal Service is sensitive to the fact that eliminating Saturday delivery means that Standard Mail and Periodicals currently scheduled for Saturday delivery will instead be delivered on Monday. The Postal Service recognizes that some mailers of Standard Mail and Periodicals prefer delivery on Saturday because it can coincide with merchandise sales or maximize advertising exposure during leisure hours.

However, it is not possible to accommodate these mailers’ preferences and also serve the overriding objectives of the five-day delivery plan. These mailers will need to adapt to a five-day delivery environment for the mail they send that is currently delivered on Saturdays. They will need to choose whether their mail is delivered by Friday before the weekend, or on Monday, or Tuesday if Monday is a holiday. The Postal Service will work closely with mailers affected by these issues to help them adjust to the five-day delivery plan, and will help them facilitate that adjustment.

After the Postal Service examined and resolved or mitigated as many of the common concerns as it could, it developed the refined plan being made public before the Postal Regulatory Commission.