PRC Recommends Extension of BRE Service Test
The Postal Rate Commission is recommending that the U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors approve the extension of an experimental weight-averaged non-letter size business reply mail service to next February 29.
Consumers have been using the experimental service since June 8 1997, to send rolls of film to film and photo finishing companies for processing and doctors and law enforcement authorities to send a variety of specimens to laboratories for testing and examination.
The experimental service is scheduled to end on June 7, the same day postal governors are slated to meet in at postal headquarters in Washington, DC. Whether they will act on the PRC’s recommendation at that meeting, or at a special session, could not be immediately determined.
Endorsing the PRC’s recommendation to postal governors are the Advertising Mail Marketing Association, District Photo, Mystic, Seattle, Time Warner and York Photo in addition to Brooklyn Union Gas Co., Key-Span East Corp., Long Island Power Authority, and the PRC’s Office of Consumer Affairs. The recommendation was issued on May 14 and made public yesterday.
Their support, the PRC said “greatly increases the likelihood of avoiding an unexpected increase in the service fee for participants in the experiment and a needless disruption in operations and service.”
Besides recommending an extension of the experimental service so the USPS can develop additional data supporting a PRC recommendation that postal governors make the service a permanent business reply mail classification based on weight averaging instead of on a piece-by-piece basis, the PRC ‘s May 14 decision also recommended drastic cuts in existing fees for the service.
It recommended cutting the fees for qualifying pieces, paid on a per-piece basis to 1 cent from 3 cents; slashing monthly maintenance fees to $600 from $3,000, and abolishing the one-time $3,000 set up fee.
