Small- and medium-sized mailers have been looking for an easy, cost-effective way to receive change-of-address information, and now they have it, says Chief Technology Officer Charles Bravo.

• Responding to input from the Mailing Industry Task Force, USPS made change-of-address information available on a CD-ROM, effective January 1, 2003.
• ”Most mailers in the small-to-medium-size group don’t have the capability to receive electronically transmitted data to update their address files, so this is a good solution for them,” Bravo said.
• To use the CD-ROM product, mailers need to participate in the Address Change Service (ACS) program managed at the USPS National Customer Support Center in Memphis. There is no fee to use the service.
• Mailers can use the CD-ROM to view, search and print their change-of-address records to manually update their address files. And when a change-of-address record is provided through ACS, mailers pay a reduced fee of 20 cents instead of 70 cents.
• “By continuing to improve address quality,” says Charles Morgan, industry chairman for the address quality subcommittee, “there is potential for significant savings for USPS, and significantly better results for direct mailers.”
• “Programs like this,” says Deputy PMG John Nolan, “are part of our continuing effort to work with the industry to make mail more responsive to customer needs.”