“Informed Delivery” is a digital service that allows enrolled users to receive an email notification that contains grayscale images of the outside of their letter-sized mailpieces processed by USPS automation equipment prior to delivery. This service is offered at no cost to the consumer.
“Informed Delivery” is currently available in areas of New York, Connecticut, and Northern Virginia.
According to USPS:
Informed Delivery is making mail a more valuable and effective communication channel for consumers, increasing the relevancy of physical mail in today’s highly digital environment. Informed Delivery offers residential customers the convenience of knowing what is in their mailbox from anywhere, even while traveling. Providing advance notice of mail delivery also allows consumers to take action before important pieces reach their mailbox, revolutionizing the customer experience with mail. In some cases, email notifications with mailpiece images will include interactive content, such as “ride-along” images or related links from the business mailer. Lastly, users will have access to an online dashboard, which will display their mailpiece images from the previous six days.
Currently, there are over 75,000 Informed Delivery users in areas of Northern Virginia, New York, and Connecticut. According to USPS data, 90 percent of users surveyed in Northern Virginia have said they would recommend Informed Delivery to friends or family, and 97 percent of those surveyed in New York would likely continue using the service. In light of the positive feedback that the Postal Service has received from Informed Delivery users, the Postal Service intends to expand the Informed Delivery notification service to the Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Richmond metropolitan areas in September 2016, with national expansion planned for 2017. To achieve this goal, the Postal Service has developed a comprehensive user acquisition strategy that includes a direct mail referral campaign, email campaigns sent to My USPS and USPS.com users, and promotion at retail locations. For the referral campaign, USPS will send a mailpiece to current Informed Delivery users with the request that they send the provided tear-off cards to friends and family who may be interested in the service. As part of the user acquisition strategy, the Postal Service will be collecting personal information from internal and external sources, as identified below.
USPS is using customer information to link physical mail with digital content in order to provide consumers with a convenient, innovative, and relevant way to access their mailpieces. Specifically, customer information will be used to support the Informed Delivery notification service, providing users with a daily email notification containing images of their letter-sized mailpieces that will be arriving in their mailbox soon. Additionally, this information will help USPS maintain up-to-date user records and prevent fraudulent transactions, resulting in an improved customer experience. USPS will also collect data analytics from mail campaigns sent through Informed Delivery in order to determine the outcomes of each campaign and help guide business decisions.
PO Box users are not currently targeted as participants in the current pilot. PO Box customers in certain Post Offices nationwide can use existing Real Mail Notification service to receive a text-only message without images, via email, or SMS message. Check with your local Post Office for more details.
*** When customers’ mail is not delivered as expected, they will likely complain. Mail theft can be quickly detected with this new service.
What do I know? Just a craft employee, WELL SAID. A friend thinks this is just the next step the gov’t is taking in tracking what we receive, just like emails, phone calls, texts….. and of course its at usps expense. Just another EXPENSE we are forced to take on leaving no $$$ for wages.
And of course. Let’s not charge a dime for this service!!
Unbelievable!! Well, not really!
Lord help the Regular carrier that miss-delivers one of these.
Oh, the CCA was on the rout, it’s ok
The service is a good idea, like all things there has to be accountability . The
problem is that too many people do not do their jobs correctly. I have worked
with many excellent workers, but some offices are just not up to standard. It
comes from leadership that should get the boot. The Post Office is way over paid to tell the public to fly a kite like they do. Many former workers don’t want
anything to do with this mess. Try calling an office, and get the dumb
computer,or nothing.
Now all we have to do is make CCA’s and young runners who have been trained to run, run, run, ignore COA’s and name labels in boxes, and throw mail on vacant cards and deliver mail that was supposed to be on vacation hold deliver this anticipated mail to the right box and the right person.
This is management’s fault for wanting a cut rate half price workforce. Turnover is high, service is terrible, and yet they want to launch more of these programs that look good but do nothing to guarantee the accuracy of the delivery. When I was a new carrier way back in 1984, I was told by my supervisors that we were expected to understand the COA system, forward mail properly, get the right mail to the right customer whenever possible, or face possible discipline. It was expected of all of us, not just the old timers who knew their routes backward and forward. They were expected to keep their pink cards up to date and label boxes properly.
But that was in a dream world where there was still a certain amount of pride and community service attached to being a letter carrier. It would not be long before computers introduced DPS, and management started getting the bright idea to automate as much as possible. Soon, service expectations began to suffer as management began paying themselves bonuses for increased productivity at the cost of the dependability of the deliveries.
Now, it’s only the old carriers like myself who will retire soon who were taught the right way to carry mail, and while there are some younger carriers who are pretty good themselves, for the most part it’s pathetic. I would imagine most larger offices are like this. I know our rural carriers are sometimes just horrible.
When we carriers with 30 years and longer leave, the USPS will see a marked increase in sloppy careless delivery because that’s what they pushed. Their own damn fault, but since they’re so detached from the street, they can’t see it.