Effective July 5, 2007, we are discontinuing use of the few remaining Postal Service™ precancellation hand-stamps and precancellation electroplates. Once used to precancel limited quantities of postage stamps, these devices no longer have a functional purpose in the Postal Service. Post Offices™, stations, and branches must discontinue the use of these devices and destroy them locally to ensure that they are no longer usable.
We will update 604.3.0 of Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) with the following revisions.
Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM)
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600 Basic Standards for All Mailing Services
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604 Postage Payment Methods
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3.0 Precanceled Stamps
3.1 General Information
3.1.1 Definition
[Revise 3.1.1 as follows:]
Precanceling is the cancellation of adhesive postage, stamped envelopes, or stamped cards before mailing. Precanceling may be done by the mailer under a postal permit, or mailers may purchase precanceled stamps bearing a rate category from the USPS.
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3.3 Precancellation of Stamps by USPS
[Delete 3.3.1, Stamps Precanceled by USPS. Renumber 3.3.2 as new 3.3. Revise the first sentence as follows:]
Precanceled stamps are preprinted with a rate category as the precancellation method.***
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We will incorporate this revision into the next update of the online DMM on Postal Explorer® at http://pe.usps.com and into the next printed edition.
— Mailing Standards,
Pricing and Classification, 7-5-07
