USPS Undeliverable As Addressed (Uaa) Mail Audit

I never thought much about this, but after seeing this graphic, it apparently represents quite a significant cost to the USPS:



The entire audit (which I'm sure represents quite a cost, too) is available at this link:

http://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/defaul...r-14-006.pdf

Perhaps it would make sense to have a "do not return" class of mail for items that the sender does not want or need. Might help lessen the cost of handling such mail a bit. Of course, the cost of identifying such items might negate the possible savings.

Forwarded mail meaning what exactly? They don't mean it costs that much for the yellow sticker when I move correct?
-Considering the numerous seemingly educated people who constantly omit the apartment number from my address every year, I can see their incompetence costing the service that much money in undeliverable and returned mail.
-This doesn't include some credit cards, which for some reason, always likes to revert bills to previous addresses 2 or 3 times a year. I know I'm not the only one this happens to by the random ones I get in the mail for other people addressed to my address. Another cost there.
-Thirdly, a little less than 10 years ago I volunteered to help out in a mailroom of a large company for a change of pace(I personally like a change of pace to see something new...), They would run all of the letters through one of those high speed metering machines. They're apparently not very accurate. Everyday the mail person would cart up a bucket of letters that was missed by the machine, or didn't even print correctly. I never knew such a process occurred, it didn't seem "right".

Going down the mental list as these things come to me, $1.5 billion seems right. And all of these things I mentioned was due to our modern day "efficiency" and automation, with the partial exception of point 1 which is the smaller of the 3 issues. I say partially, because sometimes the way computer fields are set up can help people to miss the apartment field.