PRC to Rule on Postal Electronic Service by Month’s End

The Postal Rate Commission will decide by month’s end if the U.S. Postal Service has been improperly offering an experimental Internet-based document service for direct marketers called Post Electronic Courier Service (Post E.C.S.) since last July.

“We expect to file a decision with the postal service’s Board of Governors on Post E.C.S by the end of the month,” Steve Sharfman, the PRC’s general counsel, said yesterday. He would not be more specific.

United Parcel Service and the Coalition Against Unfair USPS Competition are challenging the experimental service, alleging that the USPS began offering it to marketers last July 17 without the backing of the PRC and the approval of the USPS’s Board of Governors.

The USPS said it views Post E.C.S., a joint venture with Canada Post and France’s LaPoste, as a “non-postal service” that is not subject to PRC review or BOG consideration.

Earlier in the month the USPS said in legal papers it filed with the PRC that it does not plan to continue offering the experimental service beyond mid-June. There “are no current plans [by postal officials] to request approval from the BOG for an extension [to continue offering the service for an unspecified time], nor any understanding that such a request would be necessary or appropriate at this juncture” of the PRC’s proceedings, the USPS added.

It also said that Post E.C.S. is not a substitute for Express Mail or “any other hardcopy postal service” and that it can not be used to send merchandise, packages or be combined with any other special postal service.

In a separate development, the Postal Service asked the PRC to recommend postal governors approve extending an experimental weight-averaged nonletter-size business reply mail service until next Feb. 29.

Consumers use the service, set to expire June 7, to send rolls of film to mail-order film and photo finishing companies for processing. It is also used by doctors to send assorted specimens to laboratories for examination and review.

Postal officials said the extension would give them time to gather more data that could be used to support a plan to make the service permanent.