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UnteAtae
General Accounting Office
Washington, D.C. 20548
General Government Division
B-248004
April 24, 1992
146447
The Honorable Jim Sasser
Chairman, Subcommittee on
General Services, Federalism,
and the District of Columbia
Committee on Governmental Affairs
United States Senate
Dear Mr. Chairman:
This letter responds to an inquiry from the Subcommittee for
information about the Postal Service's enforcement of the
double postage rule [39 C.F.R. sec. 320.6 (c)] that allows
private carriers to deliver time-sensitive letters. This
question arose in discussing the results of our work on
assessing the effects suspension of this rule could have on
Postal Service operating revenues. Our report on this
assessment, U.S. Postal Service: Priority Mail at Risk to
Competition if Double Postage Rule Is Suspended, will be
issued shortly. We did not deal with enforcement in the
report since it was not one of the questions directed to us
in the original request letter jointly signed by Chairman
David Pryor, Senator Ted Stevens, and you.
We discussed the enforcement of this rule with Postal
Service headquarters officials in the General Counsel-Law
Department and Inspection Service. In general, the Postal
Service approach to obtaining compliance with the double
postage rule, as with enforcement of all aspects of the
Private Express Statutes, depends mainly on education and
moral suasion. Postal Service officials also said that a
more aggressive enforcement effort (i.e. audit of mailer or
carrier records) would likely result in complaints of
harassment by customers and competitors.
When the rule was established in 1979, Postal Service
officials said that the Service conducted a campaign to
inform postal customers of the provisions of the regulation
and associated penalties for noncompliance. Once the
provisions of the extremely urgent letter suspension became
common knowledge in the mailing community, this educational
GAO/GGD-92-7R, Double Postage Enforcement](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.gao/gaobackae0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)