New Restrictions on Free Post Office Box Service

The Postal Service is adding new restrictions for free Post Office Box Service that would eliminate almost everyone’s eligibility.  #3 is why most recipients in rural areas don’t have carrier delivery to start with, eg. unimproved or poorly maintained roadways, unsafe conditions, or other conditions that preclude extension of carrier delivery.  “Other conditions” would encompass nearly everyone not excluded elsewhere.

Don Cheney
Auburn WA

SUMMARY: The Postal Service is revising the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) 508.4.6 to clarify eligibility, to simplify the standards, and to facilitate uniform administration for Group E (free) Post Office (PO) Box service.

DMM 508.4.6.3 Additional Standards for Free PO Box Service

b. Eligibility for Group E PO Boxes does not extend to:

1. Individual tenants, contractors, employees, or other individuals receiving or eligible to receive singlepoint delivery to a location such as a hotel, college, military installation, campground, or transient trailer park.

2. Locations served, or eligible to be served, by centralized delivery or grouped receptacles such as cluster box units, apartment style receptacles, mailrooms, or clusters of roadside receptacles.

3. Locations where town ordinances, private roads, gated communities, unimproved or poorly maintained roadways, unsafe conditions, or other conditions preclude extension of carrier delivery.

http://frwebgate2.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/TEXTgate.cgi?WAISdocID=rluufN/0/1/0&WAISaction=retrieve

2 thoughts on “New Restrictions on Free Post Office Box Service

  1. Just another example of Customer Connect. Until management realizes we are not the only game in town anymore they will continue to screw the customers. Wake up bosses. Yes the guy who pays postage is important…….but the receipient deserves service too.

  2. Where is the governmental oversight? Congress, both in the Senate and the House are suposed to monitor the Postal Service via their respective oversight committees, where are they?
    One of the biggest problems with the Postal Service seems to be that while they are a monopoly, they take that monopolistic attitude to the limit. They seem to think that they are not accountable to the President, when he said he wanted 5-day delivery, the Congress when they want facts and honest testimony, see former PMG Potter when he made up a fantasy figure on the Service’s debt, or to the public, to whom they treat like a third world country.
    What other company woulod close post offices in small towns, remove mail boxes, take away 24 hour automated postage machines, deliver their customers mail at night, and force them to stand on ungodly long lines by not staffing their jobs?
    The Postal Service needs new management and a new direction; and, to be reminded that they work for the Amreican people and they do what we want, not as they want!!!

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