Bowe Bell + Howell Postal Systems Company

Bowe Bell + Howell Postage Systems Company

Daniel J Parenti

Walter S Conard

Niren Shah

Richard Wojdyla

Raymond W Lee

Tony S Chan

The present application generally relates to a method and system for identifying whether or not a particular mail piece has machine readable address correction service information and for providing feedback to a mailer or the Postal Service regarding errors in such requests and corrective action needed. In particular, the method relates to analyzing an encoded barcode containing address correction information to verify whether address correction service is requested. For each mail piece containing an address correction service request, the method includes verifying that address correction service request associated with the decoded barcode is valid.

Address correction verification and feedback

Today, high density mailings such as 'marriage mail,' Advo type advertisements, saturation mail, periodicals, and catalogs often require manual handling by the postal authority. Other than saturation mailings, where every carrier stop gets the same article, these items must be addressed. Verification of production is often desired due to spoilage and damage during production, which requires rework by the mailer. The addition of a data controlled mail collation feeder to existing or new Postal Authority automation equipment or the like eliminates the need to manually handle these difficult mail types and eliminates the need to address specific items. The manual casing at the delivery is eliminated. The data processing system that controls the data controlled mail collation feeder will also perform delivery confirmation and may assess postage due.

Data controlled mail collation system

An apparatus and method for use in a networked postal computing environment for centralizing collected data and generating post processing reports to facilitate near real-time access of selected data by authorized users, and involving the steps of collecting data from a plurality of networked mail processing apparatus operating in a mail processing environment. The collected data is transmitted to a data collection and processing server, having a web interface application, for storage in an associated database. The data collection and processing server preferably provide secure user access via a user web browser application. A user can then request retrieval of selected data stored in the database to the data collection and processing server. The selected data is then retrieved and one or more interactive web pages with the selected data are generated and presented to the user. The collected data relates to mail job data, mailer data, and operation and performance data for mail verification apparatus.

Growing community of inventors

Chicago, IL, United States of America

Daniel J Parenti