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Sending out business mail may become a little more difficult next month for many companies in the region.

The U.S. Postal Service is consolidating the post offices that accept business mail and establishing 21 “centralized acceptance centers” in southern and central New Jersey and Delaware. So instead of dropping business mail off at the nearest post office, customers will have to bring it to their assigned location starting in July. The centers for Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and southern Ocean counties are Atlantic City, Pleasantville, Cape May, Tuckerton and Vineland.

The change is intended to improve mail flow, provide “up-to-date quality service” and make it easier to train postal workers on the latest mail regulations, according to Ray Daiutolo, a U.S. Postal Services spokesman. Daiutolo said the centralized centers will have staff dedicated to handle only business mail, and they would be more knowledgeable about processing it and better able to answer customer questions.

The new policy should not cause any delivery delays, and customers can request to change their assigned center, Daiutolo said. He said post offices in northern New Jersey have already implemented the program, along with parts of Florida.

The switch will not affect customers who already use the centralized post offices but could hurt dozens of companies and other groups in the outlying cities and towns.

Rick Reynolds, executive director of the Southern Ocean Chamber of Commerce, said he was flabbergasted by the switch. He believes it will put a new burden on businesses, nonprofit organizations and charities, which will have to spend more time and money to travel somewhere for service.

 “It’s beyond inconvenient. You got wear and tear on a vehicle, fuel costs and you got to pay a salary, you got to pay somebody to go do it,” Reynolds said. “And if you’re a volunteer organization, you got to take the burden on yourself.”

The chamber sends out 700 newsletters per month, among other bulk mailings, from the Ship Bottom post office. Under the new policy, the mail will have to be sent to Tuckerton, which is 20 miles away. Reynolds said the chamber may end up sending out an electronic newsletter instead.

“I don’t disagree the centers might make (business mail) more efficient,” Reynolds said. “But to ask the business owners to deliver it to (another) postal office is absurd.”

Bonnie Yearsley, the township clerk in Weymouth Township, Atlantic County, said the change will make it harder to deliver the township newsletter and other bulk mail. Instead of driving to the nearby Dorothy and Mays Landing post offices, she will have to go to Vineland and Pleasantville, respectively. “I’m not looking forward to it,” she said.

Other people think the change is a smart cost-saving measure.

Kevin Biglin, president of Edmund’s Direct Mail, said it is financially difficult to keep trained bulk mail clerks in every post office.

“For them, it’s tough right now, and it makes sense,” he said. Biglin added the switch will not change his Northfield business because they already send their mail to Pleasantville, the next town over.

Harry Weidman, business delivery manager at Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point, called the switch a “mild inconvenience.”

The hospital normally sends four business mailings per month, each with 200 to 800 pieces, to the Somers Point post office a mile away. Starting next month, the business mail will have to be sent to the Pleasantville post office, three towns north.

Weidman said the hospital will make new delivery arrangements, and he might go to the post office himself with the cartons of mail.

“You do what you got to do,” Weidman said. “Am I going to pull my hair out? No. I mean, these are extraordinary times, and I can see why the postal service is looking to economize where they can.”

E-mail Michelle Lee:

MLee@pressofac.com

2 comments:

• Slomo2 (9) posts 5:07 pm

  The top of this story reads like a re-write of a US Postal Service press release. The tip-off is the term "business mail." This is what the USPS used to call, and I think still sometimes does call, "bulk mail." Or, as the public calls it, "junk mail." Having said that, the consolidation of drop-off points for such mailings seems like a good idea, from an efficiency point of view. It's not as if the USPS is asking Joe's Pizza to drive its mailing to, say, Idaho. The USPS is in pretty desperate financial straits, like most every business, and I commend them for taking steps like this. The Internet is killing their business in much the same way that it is killing home delivery of daily newspapers like the Press of Atlantic City. No, I do not, nor have I ever, worked for the USPS.

• Jamesy (65) posts 10:32 am

  mail carriers...just another union that doesn't want to do thier job!...better yet they continue to find a way not to do thier job not to mention manufacture overtime...unions are nothing but scum of the earth and they have ruined this country. It takes a union member 70 hrs to do what should be done by normal workers in 40 hrs or less.

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