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The U.S. Postal Service is trying to promote its new centralized rate classification structure unveiled last fall, although use of this system will remain voluntary.

Just the same, mailers will still be able to have local USPS officials make such decisions for them and a local appeals process will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

Last November, the USPS consolidated five regional mailing standards and customer service centers in New York, Chicago, Memphis and San Francisco into one office in New York City.

In addition, the USPS will open even newer offices for this unit in September at its Church Street offices in New York, near the site of the former World Trade Center.

Nevertheless, mailers will still be able to have local and regional USPS officials make classification decisions for them and a local appeals process will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

"USPS sales and account executives are promoting the new set up to their customers," said USPS vice president of rates and classification at a press conference Monday.

While the USPS is touting this new system, it is not offering mailers any tangible incentives to begin using it, said a USPS spokesman.

Under the centralized system, mailers would have a single location at which to submit their mail pieces for consideration and could even submit them electronically through e-mails with portable document format (PDF) attachments of their mailing pieces, said Kearney.

He said this new system is best suited or customers with multiple mailing locations. Already such large mailers as Reader's Digest and Capital One are taking advantage of it.

"Once again, the postal service shot itself in the foot," said Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce in an earlier interview. "Mailers will no longer be able to shop around for the most favorable rates, as many do now.

"If you're a printer in Wisconsin who has a good relationship with postal officials in Chicago, how are you going to do with somebody in New York who's never heard of you?"

USPS officials denied that much shopping around actually takes place and Kearney predicted the practice would decline as more mailers began to use the new centralized system.