In 2004, more than 9.7 billion pieces of mail were sent to undeliverable addresses of which over 600 million pieces were sent to "vacant" addresses – a house, apartment, office or building not occupied for at least 90 days.

To reduce wasted expenses associated with this type of undeliverable mail, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has developed a new data table that is used with address matching software which helps mailers determine when they may be sending to vacant addresses.

The new "no-stat" and "vacant" tables are available through Coding Accuracy Support System address matching software (CASS Certified) as part of the Delivery Point Validation (DPV) product.

Contact your DPV product vendor to learn whether these new tables are incorporated in their products. If mailers are using a service bureau to process address lists, the USPS recommends that you ask the provider to use these tables during processing.

For additional information on DPV, call the National Customer Support Center at 800-238-3150 or visit www.usps.com/ncsc/addressmgmt/dpv.htm.

04/23/2008