The U.S. Postal Service late Friday asked the Postal Rate Commission to support a proposal that would correct an error in its nonprofit periodical rate schedule.
The error–discovered in January shortly after nonprofit rates rose by an average of 18% and commercial rates went up an average of 3%–forced nonprofit mailers to pay higher than commercial rates to mail to their members publications without advertisements.
Depending on the size of the mailing, the error was estimated to have cost nonprofit mailers between several hundred and several thousand dollars in extra postage for mailings between January 10 and last Friday.
Besides moving “to correct an unintended anomaly” in the rate schedule, the USPS asked the PRC to recommend that the postal service’s Board of Governors authorize an excess postage refund program retroactive to April 9. It also requested that nonprofits be allowed to temporarily mail publications with less than 10% advertising at the lower commercial rates.
The USPS said the error was the result of”an unintended byproduct of the sometimes conflicting objectives within the highly complex periodicals rate design process.”
“A lot of nonprofits are going to be anxious to see how quickly this issue is resolved and whether the proposed refunds will be retroactive,” said Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, Washington, DC. “Nonprofit mailers would like to see the refund program retroactive to January.”
