Description
Address Change Service (ACS) is an electronic enhancement to traditional, manual methods of providing change-of-address (COA) information to mailers. The system is designed to reduce the volume of manual (hard copy) address correction notifications handled by both the Postal Service and mailers while at the same time centralize and automate the provision of address correction information to mailers. Mailers add a unique code to the address area of their mailpieces to identify them as ACS participants. As undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) mailpieces are subsequently processed at Computerized Forwarding System (CFS) sites, this code prompts the CFS computer system to create an electronic record of the customer’s move information. These records are consolidated nightly at the National Customer Support Center (NCSC) in Memphis and are provided to ACS mailers according to a frequency determined by each mailer.

Expected Benefits
ACS provides significant cost-saving benefits to mailers and the Postal Service. ACS participants are able to use electronically generated address correction information to update their mailing lists more easily and in a more timely manner. The mailer’s cost to receive electronic ACS notifications is $0.20 per record; manual hard copy notifications are $0.50 per notification. This front-end savings, coupled with the fact that electronic records cost substantially less for mailers to process than labor-intensive manual mailing list update methods, leads to a two-edged financial benefit for participating mailers.

The Postal Service reaps a dual benefit from mailers’ use of ACS as well. Electronic address information costs considerably less to process and provide to mailers than manual notifications. In addition, mailers who utilize ACS are able to update their mailing lists in a more timely manner. This leads to an overall reduction in costly UAA mail volume as fewer mailpieces must be handled multiple times by Postal Service personnel.

Current Status
Currently, ACS has over 3,000 participants representing over 4,200 active participant codes across all mail classes. More than 119 million notifications were provided in 1997, which represents a 6.5% increase over 1996.

Reference Documents
USPS Publication 8, Address Change Service (Adobe PDF file).

For more information, please call the National Customer Support Center at 1-800-331-5746.