On November 21, 2007, the Phoenix BMEU accepted mail from one of our mailing houses with an Intelligent Barcode.  O’Neil Printing is the first customer in the Arizona District to be approved for the Intelligent Mail barcode.  Mailing Specialist Gary Jamroz learned that without the proper level of readability on Merlin and other USPS automation equipment, his mail would not be eligible for certain mailing automation discounts.  This requirement will become mandated in 2009.

Gary communicated continually with Mail Piece Design Analyst Mary Valdez and the BMEU staff.  After six months of intense education, testing, and adjusting, he achieved the readability rate of 100%.

Now, he expects that O’Neil will be placing Intelligent barcodes on their mailings in December 2007, ahead of the mandated date.  Gary stated, “I want our customers to know we will utilize every avenue of discount the USPS offers.  We want to be known as high quality, cost-conscious printer to our current clients and any other business that wants nothing more than the best possible product at the best price.”

An Intelligent Mail barcode is the USPS-developed barcode that mailers use to encode routing and tracking information on mail that can be read by automated mail processing equipment to sort mail and to provide tracking information to the mailers. An Intelligent Mail barcode consists of 65 vertical bars, each representing one of four possible states: full bar, ascender, tracker, and descender.  These 65 bars encode a string of 31 digits, divided into two parts: a 20-digit tracking code and an 11-digit routing code (when required).  The 11-digit routing code may contain a ZIP code, a ZIP+4 code, or a delivery point code, unless required to contain level of code in specific applications; no correction digit is needed within an Intelligent Mail barcode.  Mailers must incorporate a Mailer ID. 
 
What is a Mailer ID?  The Mailer ID is a unique 6 or 9 digit numeric code that is assigned to a mail owner or mail preparer based on their annual mail volume.  To obtain MID, OneCode ACS subscribers can contact the ACS department at the National Customer Support Center at 1-800-331-5746.  Mailers printing the Intelligent Mail barcode solely for automation rate eligibility can contact the Postal One! Help Desk at 1-800-522-9085 to obtain a MID.