Affordable Mail Alliance Hits 1,000 Members

Range of mailer markets represents a unique collaboration to battle the USPS' rate hike proposal.

By Bill Mickey
Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Affordable Mail Alliance, a coalition of publishers, catalog mailers, direct marketers, printers and many of their representative associations formed in response to the USPS' proposed rate hike, has hit the 1,000 member mark.

The number is notable because of its range of industry representation. Historically, as the USPS has filed for its rate hikes in less dramatic fashion, the various mailer markets bickered over how the increases would be divided among them.

A sampling of members from the publishing industry includes about 75 individual magazine publishers representing b-to-b, consumer and regional publications; the MPA and ABM; the DMA; IDEAlliance; the National Newspaper Association; and hundreds of local newspapers.

The fact that the USPS is availing itself of a loophole in the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act that allows it to claim exceptional reasons to request rates higher than the statutory Consumer Price Index cap, which currently stands at .6 percent, seems to have created a unique bond among mailers. The USPS made its proposal in early July, which is when the AMA formed.

"It's an unprecedented coalition of the entire mailing industry," James Cregan, MPA's executive vice president/government affairs, tells AD. "In the past, a lot of rate change cases have been matters of different types of mailers and classes of mail fighting each other over who's going to pay what, but this is really the first time in history that everybody has joined together and supported one united effort."

That effort is to convince the Postal Regulatory Commission to reject the USPS rate hike proposal, which, depending on the class of mail, could raise prices anywhere from 5.6 percent into the double digits, says Cregan, who adds that this price hike request was so dramatic and the industry's response so quick, that the AMA formed out of "spontaneous combustion."

The proposal has triggered 90-day proceeding at the PRC, which will issue its decision either granting or rejecting the request by October 4.

USPS Bites Back at Affordable Mail Alliance