[ILL-L] United States Postal Service Contacts

[Bierma, Lynn]

Ever been frustrated with "lost" books and the ever so helpful notice from USPS that "an empty wrapper with your address was found in the mail..."?   

After dutifully filling out the "Parcel Search Request" and mailing it to "Mail Recovery Center", I soon realized our library would never see our lost books again.  Luckily, the rash of lost books has stopped after some investigation of packaging down in our shipping dept...(more taping and banning the use of Jiffy Bags).

Has anyone been able to contact a live person at the mail recovery center(s)?  If anyone has this information, please reply!  I'm particularly interested in talking wth anyone at the Mail Recover Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.  To any library in St. Paul....have you been there?  Is it a huge warehouse with books stacked to the ceiling?  Do they have an annual book sale? :)   According to USPS all they need is the name of our library in the book, and if no address, they'll look us up for a web site..which we have.  I guess that's not really enough, because we've not been able to recover our books.

Anyway...back to the topic of this email:

USPS has "Consumer Affairs Associates" assigned to regions throughout the United States.  While I thought I could obtain a listing of the associates and their contact information for the regions and post them to the listserv, there are so many that USPS asks that you send your zip code to them and they'll let you know how to contact the associate.

Send an email to Support at USPS [uspshelpdesk at spemail.esecurecare.net] with your zip code and your request for the contact information of the Consumer Affairs Associate for your region.  I'm hoping mine will be able to help me contact the Mail Recovery Center in St. Paul.

In the same email message, you can also ask for the "Mailpiece Design Analyst" for your region.  I've sent samples of our packaging, and was told it was all of very good quality.  However, I've found that the Jiffy Bags we used easily burst open; they are made out of a heavy cardboard-like material.  We found that out by mistake when I happened to be in shipping and a medium-sized, but lightweight, book inside a "quality" Jiffy Bag was dropped on the floor...hence the banning of Jiffy Bags.

If you're struggling with cost and the new UPS rules on size, I also found out that if I sent "final mailing samples" (packaging with books inside them) to my design analyst, she'd tell us if the packaging would be categorized as large envelopes or flats.  Or, if the packaging was too uneven or too thick/rigid, whether that would move them into parcel category for 1st Class Mail or Not Flat-Machinable category for Standard Mail.  I guess that relates to Library Rate too.

Lynn Bierma
Interlibrary Loan Operations Coordinator
Room 219
IL State Library
300 S. 2nd Street
Springfield, IL, 62701
lbierma at ilsos.net
PHONE: 217-558-1928
FAX: 217-782-4446

Jesse White, Secretary of State and State Librarian


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