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Be Careful of Printers Who "Wanna Be" Mailers

Return to News Items August 1, 2007
 

Has this happened to you? Your printer tells you "Oh, we can mail your job for you. And it'll save you money!"

Be careful - while printers may know printing, they don't have the knowledge or experience of a real mail house. The following happened recently to one of our clients.

A volunteer group affiliated with our nonprofit client contacted a printer - we'll call him Printer X - to do the printing for an upcoming social event. But Printer X wasn't happy just getting the printing work, and told the fundraising committee he could complete the mailing as well and - here are the magic words - save them money.

After affixing addresses and stuffing the envelopes, Printer X attempted to drop the mailing at the USPS. Where it was promptly rejected.

So what did Printer X do? He delivered the rejected mailing to us and ran. Here is what we found:

  • The postal paperwork was prepared incorrectly and discounts were missed
  • The bag tags were all wrong and needed to be removed and reprinted
  • The material was not sorted correctly for a nonprofit mailing
  • The material was not strapped - a USPS requirement
  • The addresses were positioned strangely and contained an ugly endorsement line (this on a beautiful invitation, no less!)
  • There was no barcode, so the USPS would have to affix an unsightly paper barcode

 

No wonder the Post Office rejected the mailing! But the true cost of using Printer X was in the postage. According to the paperwork, our client would have owed $659.42 in postage. When we reworked the mailing, they only owed $556.47. That's a savings of over $100.00! Plus, if we had been able to barcode, our clients would have saved a total of $171.00.

Perhaps, though, that's the least of our client's worries. Because due to how Printer X had addressed their invitation, it looked, well, like junk mail. There was an encorsement line on every invitation. And strangely, the addresses were positioned at the bottom right of the large 10x7 envelope.

Let's face it. These days - especially since postal reclassification - mailing is not simple. So be sure you use a mailer who has the postal experience and knowledge to answer your questions. A mailer who will make sure you're paying  the lowest postage rate possible. And most importantly, a mailer who cares about how your mail piece looks.

And that mailer is Post haste Mailing Services.

 

 

 
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