Effective July 6, 2017, the Postal Service™ is revising Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®), section 604.5, to clarify that when a customer pays a permit imprint application fee, the Postal Service accepts that fee for domestic and/or international outbound mailings.
Effective with the price change of January 22, 2017, the Postal Service eliminated the permit application fee for many products. The article that discussed the fees, titled “DMM Revision: Elimination of Fees” in Postal Bulletin 22462 (3-2-17, pages 4–9), mentioned that the fee would continue to be required for several products, including international mail. This revision inadvertently caused mailers and Postal Service employees some confusion as to whether mailers had to pay separate permit imprint application fees for domestic mail and for international mail.
For similar revisions to Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, International Mail Manual (IMM®), see the article titled “IMM Revision: International and Domestic Permit Imprint Application Fees”.
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 and Refunds
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5.0 Permit Imprint (Indicia)
5.1 General Standards
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5.1.5 Application Fee
[Revise 5.1.5 to read as follows (inserting a new second sentence — bold here just for emphasis):]
An application fee is required only when a permit imprint is used as the payment method for First-Class Mail, USPS Marketing Mail, Bound Printed Matter Flats and international mail, and the mailer does not use the Electronic Verification System (eVS). When a customer pays a permit imprint application fee, the Postal Service accepts that fee for domestic and/or international outbound mailings.
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Although effective July 6, 2017, we will incorporate this revision into a later edition of the online DMM (scheduled for August 7, 2017). The online DMM is available via Postal Explorer® at pe.usps.com.
— Product Classification, Marketing, 7-6-17
