Details of Annual Golf Tournament Announced

The Lehigh Valley Postal Customer Council will hold its 12th Annual Golf Tournament (rain or shine) at the Bethlehem Municipal Golf Club on Friday, September 10, 2010. 

Don’t miss this great opportunity for networking with friends in the postal community!

The cost is $80 per person; including greens fees, cart, dinner, and prizes. All reservations and payments must be received by Monday, August 30, 2010. Please make checks payable to LVPCC.

Mail your completed registration form and payment to:

Susan Powell
United States Postal Service
1000 Postal Road
Allentown, PA 18109-8900

For further information contact:

Greg Cunningham: 610-776-8352
Bill Raven: 484-240-6500

Download information pack and registration form

IMb Services Update

FAST^® Release 15.0.0 will deploy on November 7, 2010. Updated FAST 15.0.0 Release Notes are available at http://ribbs.usps.gov/fast/documents/tech_guides/FASTRelease/. The key features of this release are:

• Users now have the capability to choose to receive emails for stand-alone content association.
• The FAST Web Services messaging will be updated to account for previous error messages.  

IMb Services Update

WEBINARS – MIGRATING TO IMb:  To date, mailers have deposited more than 50 billion mailpieces with Intelligent Mail^® barcodes (IMb). If you haven’t already come onboard, we’d like to remind you that beginning in May 2011, to be eligible for automation discounts on your letter-size and flat-size mailpieces, you’ll need to start using the IMb in place of the POSTNET™ barcode. In May 2011, the POSTNET barcode will be ineligible for automation prices and the IMb must be used to claim automation prices with either the Full-Service option or the Basic option.

As always, we wish to make the transition as easy as possible. We will conduct weekly webinars titled Migrating to IMb during September 2010. The schedule is posted on our RIBBS^® Website at http://ribbs.usps.gov/, under Latest News, Important Links.

IMb Services Update

New FAST Help Desk (August 30, 2010): As announced in the Facility Access and Shipment Tracking (FAST^®) 14.3.0 Release Notes (August 15, 2010), the Postal Service™ will launch the new FAST Help Desk effective Monday, August 30. The FAST Help Desk will be available to assist with application and operation-related issues by:

• Email at FAST@usps.gov.
• Telephone at 877-569-6614. The FAST Help Desk telephone number efficiently directs calls through a new IVR network to ensure prompt routing of customer inquiries.    

The FAST Help Desk hours of operation will be Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. CT. Telephone support will be available outside of these hours including weekends and holidays.

If the Help Desk is unable to provide an immediate resolution, a Remedy Ticket will be activated and escalated to the appropriate postal functional entity. All FAST Remedy Tickets will follow the established Issue Resolution Process. 

The FAST Welcome pages have been updated to reflect the new FAST Help Desk contact information.

USPS Seeks Competitive Edge for Standard Mail Parcels

Today, the Postal Service filed a request with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to transfer commercial Standard Mail Fulfillment Parcels from the market-dominant product list to the competitive product list.

The strategy for Standard Mail small parcels redesign is included in the exigent price case that we filed with the PRC on July 6. The redesign breaks this category of mail into two significant and distinct customer segments; marketing parcels and fulfillment parcels.

If the reclassification we are seeking with today’s filing is approved, fulfillment parcels would become a lightweight category of Parcel Select.

We will use DMM Advisory to keep you updated on the progress of this request.

IMb Services Update

PostalOne! ^® Release 24.1.2 will deploy as a maintenance release on Sunday, August 15, 2010, during the scheduled PostalOne! 4 a.m. – 8 a.m. (CDT) maintenance window. The release will address issues with Mail.dat postage statements and qualification reports for all container types and correct unit weights, surcharge application to Standard Mail parcel mailing, and single-piece files with multiple segments. Changes also were made to improve performance within the system. 

The Seamless Acceptance and Service Performance (SASP) Release 3.1.06 will deploy on August 22, 2010, to address several issues with eDoc Mail Data Quality reports.    

The release notes for PostalOne! Release 24.1.2 and SASP Release 3.1.06 are posted on RIBBS^®  under Release Notes.

PostalOne ! Server Patching: The PostalOne ! production and TEM database servers will have a database software patch applied during the scheduled 4 a.m. – 8 a.m. (CDT) maintenance window on Sunday, August 22, 2010. The PostalOne ! system (including FAST OPS web services) will be unavailable for internal and external users during this period.