Effective September 6, 2011, the Postal Service™ will revise the Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) 508.4.6 to clarify eligibility, simplify the standards, and facilitate uniform administration for Group E (free) Post Office™ (PO) Box service.
Group E PO Box service is provided free, with restrictions, to customers whose physical addresses are not eligible for any form of USPS® carrier delivery service. This service is consistent with the USPS responsibility to provide universal mail delivery. This revision will simplify and clarify some of the language related to administering Group E PO Box service.
The Postal Service will remove the descriptive term, “business location”, in favor of the general term “physical address”. The latter describes residential locations as well as business locations.
The Postal Service will delete the reference to “out-of-bounds delivery receptacles” in favor of language recognizing that Group E PO Box service is not available when a physical address receives any form of USPS carrier delivery.
The Postal Service also will revise the DMM to acknowledge carrier delivery service that, once established to a particular physical address, eliminates Group E eligibility.
This revision reflects the final rule Federal Register notice published on July 12, 2011 (76 FR 40849–40850), which can be found on Postal Explorer® at http://pe.usps.com.
Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM)
* * * * *
500 Additional Mailing Services
* * * * *
508 Recipient Services
* * * * *
4.0 Post Office Box Service
* * * * *
4.6 Fee Group Assignments
* * * * *
[Revise the title, introductory text and items 4.6.2a, b, and c, and eliminate item d in its entirety as follows:]
4.6.2 Free PO Box Service (Group E)
Customers may qualify for Group E (free) PO Box service at a Post Office if their physical address location meets all of the following criteria:
a. The physical address is within the geographic delivery ZIP Code boundaries administered by a Post Office.
b. The physical address constitutes a potential carrier delivery point of service.
c. USPS does not provide carrier delivery to a mail receptacle at or near a physical address for reasons in 4.6.3b. “At or near a physical address” is defined by reference to how carrier delivery is already established in a particular locale or ZIP Code.
[Revise the title and introductory text of 4.6.3 and add new items a through d as follows:]
4.6.3 Additional Standards for Free PO Box Service
Only one Group E (free) PO Box may be obtained for each potential carrier delivery point of service, under the following conditions:
a. Group E PO Box customers are assigned the smallest available box that reasonably accommodates their daily mail volume.
b. Eligibility for Group E PO Boxes does not extend to:
1. Individual tenants, contractors, employees, or other individuals receiving or eligible to receive single-point delivery to a location such as a hotel, college, military installation, campground, or transient trailer park.
2. Locations served, or eligible to be served, by centralized delivery or grouped receptacles such as cluster box units, apartment style receptacles, mailrooms, or clusters of roadside receptacles.
3. Locations where circumstances not within the control of the Postal Service prevent extension of carrier delivery, such as town ordinances, private roads, gated communities, unimproved or poorly maintained roadways, or unsafe conditions.
4. Locations served by a delivery receptacle that a customer chooses to locate along a carrier’s line of travel and to which the Postal Service makes delivery.
c. A customer must pay the applicable fee for each PO Box requested in addition to the initial free Group E PO Box.
d. The online application tools described in 4.3.1b cannot be used for free PO Box service.
* * * * *
We will incorporate these revisions into the next monthly update of the online DMM, which is available via Postal Explorer at http://pe.usps.com.
— Product Classification,
Pricing, 8-11-11
