Use Of Stamps On Parcel Post

I'm just asking about the ZIP+4 discount cited in the docs. The docs don't say who qualified or not. The B&W rate book is just a republishing of the USPS spreadsheet for that period. It doesn't have any additional info, and the format is identical to the spreadsheet.

A picture of a mailpiece isn't relevant to my question, since I'm just asking about whether individuals could get that discount. Either they could or they could not.

Becker is now saying above that retail customers could not get the ZIP+4 discount. That's not documented, but I believe him. I'm not sure what all the drama is about. My questions are fairly simple, just rates and so forth, but it seems like they generate a lot of tangents and confusion, so maybe I'm not at clear as I think I am. I expected every stamp collector to know the rate history cold, going back to at least 1950 (and they didn't change much before the 1960s anyway). I know the rates cold going back to the 1970s, just from exploring business plans recently that involved e-commerce shipping. I memorized the Notice 123 last year, and then looked at the rate history, so telling me to look at the 123 was annoying – that's old hat to me. I figured collectors would know all these details since there's just one monopoly provider to learn, and the number of rates and conditions to memorize is small compared to the number of different stamp issues and so forth. The rates are critical to understanding the postage affixed to a mailpiece. If we see a fractional stamp matching the ZIP+4 discount, it tells us some things about the mailer, depending on what we know about the rate rules.

It is fairly simple. The point to the discounts on bulk, non-profit, carrier-rate, Zip, Zip+4, etc., is that the mailers needed an appropriate permit to mail their large mailings which ALSO had to be sorted/bundled/trayed/labeled per specific instructions. The mailer does a significant part of the work for the USPS, they get a discount in return.



Nope. I don't memorize what I can so readily look up.

In the years since the transportation coils were phased out, much stamped mass mailings have a generic stamp applied and the mailer pays the balance of the cost behind the scenes. B&W have termed this a "false franking". It is often impossible to determine exactly what was paid for a given piece of mail.