In a letter to USPS Chief Operating Officer Pat Donohoe, BMG Columbia House VP Clifton B. Knight Jr. says that the proposed new Postal rates and regulations “will make it impossible for us to remain in the business of selling music and video products by mail”. Knight asserts that his company will face increases of “62% to 115%” in its product shipments. And if the company is “constrained to stop using the mail for product shipment”, it will “inevitably reduce, if not entirely eliminate” its “use of mail for marketing and promotional purposes”.

Knight says the problem isn’t just the rates- it’s the fact that the USPS is reclassifying his company’s product from flats to parcels, even though Knight claims BMG has gone to “considerable expense” to make sure that their CD and DVD shipments meet the requirements for automated flats.

Letter from Clifton B. Knight Jr to DPMG Pat Donohoe

The Postal Service has a ton of rules, some of them painfully complicated yet necessary, some of them just a pain. A story in a Wisconsin newspaper, linked to on the Postcom web site illustrates one of the latter.

A man successfully unloaded a pile of old farming magazines from the 1940’s on eBay, estimating media mail shipping costs at $8.00. When he got to the post office, however, he was surprised to discover that because the magazines contained advertising, they couldn’t be shipped media mail, and it was going to cost closer to $20 to mail them.

The advertising rule makes sense when applied to current periodicals, but it’s hard to see why it should apply to what are obviously not active advertisements.

A mindless adherence to the letter of the regulation when it so clearly violates the intent isn’t particularly smart. I realize that it’s not in the postal service’s financial interest to encourage the use of low revenue services like media mail. But as long as they’re in the rate structure, they should be made available openly and reasonably.

Collector trying to change letter of the law regarding advertising postal regulation: Provision interferes with man’s plans to sell artifacts on eBay