On Tue, 3 Dec 1996, Steve Murden wrote:

> Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 10:18:36 EST
> From: Steve Murden <SMURDEN@GEMS.VCU.EDU>
>
> Second, I have noticed a consistent notice in all of the renewals
> from Mary Ann Liebert.  It says:
>
>      New postal regulations require that we have complete street
> addreses for our subscribers.
>
>      Please check your address as shown on this renewal form.  If
> your street address is missing, please fill in the required street
> and number information on this form and return to us along with
> your renewal form.
>
>      By correcting your address, you will ensure faster and intact
> delivery by the postal system.
>
> Can anyone tell me what those new postal regulations are?  At my
> university, all mail is delivered to the university post office,
> and is dsitributed centrally from there.  We are not allowed to
> have direct mail delivery at our libraries.  In our case, putting
> the street address on our mailing labels would only cause
> confusion.  If I received my personal mail through a PO Box, they
> certainly would not require me to list my street address (or the
> street address of the PO) on my incoming mail.  Is this another
> case of someone misinterpreting postal regulations?  Or (a worst
> case scenario), another case of the USPS setting illogical
> regulations?
---------

Steve, I suspect that Mary Ann Liebert is changing her method of
fulfillment from the USPS to the system (there's a name for it, but I
can't remember it) where all copies for a town or other area are sent to a
local distributor who drives around and hangs them on your doorknob in a
plastic bag -- maybe with lots of junk advertising included. You notice
she says "postal system," not "Postal Service."

A few years ago I gave my mother a subscription to _Travel & Leisure_,
which is one of those Boulder CO or Harlan IA magazines (i.e., magazine
fulfillment center). They had such a delivery system. Now, my mother lives
in a retirement community where everyone has a mailbox in the central
building. Her street address, which the magazine never asked for, is
meaningless for mail delivery. But the T&L delivery person somehow found a
street address with a number matching Mother's post office box and hung
the issues on that doorknob. Once we had figured out (thanks to the
surprised recipient) what the problem was, I remembered something I'd
learned from a visit to NeoData in Boulder a short time before. You don't
have to accept this type of delivery!! If you request USPS delivery, they
have to give it to you. So, I called the fulfillment center's handy 800
number, gave the delivery system its proper name, and asked them to stop
it. They did, and my mother now gets _Travel & Leisure_ in her post office
box every month.

Moral: You too can win! Steve, If Mary Ann Liebert does her own
fulfillment, why not call and ask them about these "new postal
regulations." If it's just a change of delivery method, refuse it. If the
Postal Service has decided not to use post office boxes any more, I
suspect more publishers would be telling us about it.

Marcia Tuttle
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
tuttle@gibbs.oit.unc.edu