cannona wrote:Note that the USPS address dmatching software that your bulk mailer will use will only tell you whether or not the address is valid, and not whether the people living there are who you think they are. Also, I don't believe that the USPS will return undeliverable mail pieces to the sender that are mailed at bulk rates
Interestingly, if you look at the raw USPS database, you will see that it only contains address ranges. It is not an actual list of addresses. You can thank congress for this, as they passed a law a while back which prohibits the Post Office from publishing databases of mailing addresses. So, theoretically, just because an address is reported as valid by the USPS address verification database, that does not mean that that address actually exists.
My understanding is that if the mailer scrubs the addresses using the Postal Service's Delivery Point Validation database, that will flag individual addresses that are not actually valid mailing sites. But there are licensing restrictions on that database designed to preven someone from publiishing the database itself or using it to construct blanket address lists.
USPS will not return mail if the person has moved -- unless they filed a forwarding address or if the new resident cooperates by returning it to sender. That is why it is important to do the mailings frequently, at least once a year, because forwarding-address notifications expire.
As for whether USPS will honor "Return Service Requested" endorsements on bulk mail, you raise a very important warning. I certainly do not want to do a mailing that does not qualify for some such service, because address maintenance is such an important objective. I have been trying to research that. It may be that presorted first-class mail, which qualifies for a more modest discount than bulk mail does, would have to be used. Another possibility may to to use the USPSAddress Correction Services. I am still trying to figure that one out.
Addendum: It may well be that the optimum approach would be to utilize a service provider that licenses the USPSNCOA Link database. This service performs the forwarding-address search before the mailing and provides the mailer with a file containing updated addresses, perhaps as old as 48 months. This would seem ideal for tracking some of the lost sheep on the ward roster.