[Milsurplus] Media Mail again!

[Hue Miller]

"Interesting and makes sense but the manager's statement may or may not
reflect official USPO policy.... Don't know if going back to USPO 
headquarters
for an authoritative judgement would do any good or not.  :^(
Dennis D.  W7QHO
Glendale, CA"

LOCAL USPO policy! As the man said, it can vary, window to window!
I asked once at the local PO, and the clerk photocopied a page of the 
regulations
for me. How helpful! ( NOT! )   I have had a clerk grill me about the 
contents, a
game of Twenty Questions. Another person at the same office said simply,
"That sounds okay to me."  I called the USPO toll free number and asked 
about
the same issue. As you'd expect, this was zero helpful, the answerers there 
know
only a minimal script, and IIRC, this one just referred me back to the 
website text.

******************
On Jul 16, 2011, at 10:31 AM, Bill Cotter wrote:

" > I just returned from our local Post Office. The manager stated that
> "The intent of the Media Mail restriction on advertisements refers
> strictly to the bulk shipping of flyers, handbills, printed
> advertisements, catalogs, graphic art advertising and other
> print-shop jobs." In other words, media to be used to promote
> selling (present tense).
>
> He also said "Magazines, manuals, CD's, DVD's, publications,
> journals, digests, etc are considered books or bound materials, and
> are shippable as media mail." He went on to say ".....The fact that
> a historical document contains an advertisement does not make it
> the dominant characteristic of the material......" It is a
> magazine, not a catalog. "

I feel like printing this out and taking it with me to the PO -- except
that it has no attribution.
This whole issue reminds me that I was going to write, as in "write
on actual paper", to the Postmaster General to urge for a clear and
definitive ruling on this, and one that is applied uniformly.  Maybe i
will even finally get on this now that I've been reminded. I was thinking
paper, because hopefully, it would be less easy for some underling to
intercept and delete.
( I did actually get a human response to a paper letter, when about
25 years ago I sent in a suggestion that they go to self-adhesive
stamps. )
Clearly, "Harper's Magazine" from the American Civil War have no
advertisement purpose, even tho they are profuse with advertising.
Now what about "73 Magazine" ? It only dates back a  few years,
but the magazine is extinct, and the advertisements clearly are no
longer viable.
I sent a few heavy manuals on the old IMTS mobile phone system
to a collector. The manuals didn't quite fill the box so I used some
small boxes from circuit cards to fill in the spaces. I took the box
to a smaller outlying town Post Office, because there's never any
waiting line there. The woman at the window grilled me about the
contents, okay, no need for me to lie at all, this is a simple per-
regulation case. I did note that this Post Office seemed to lack for
activity. In fact, it seems like an oversized installation, for the size
of the town. Maybe a downturn in Post Office business accounts for
that. When my friend received the box and opened it, there was a
notice inside that the contents had been inspected and passed.
He found however that one of the circuit board boxes I had fitted
inside as spacers, still contained a circuit card. I think if they had
noticed that, they might have thought this was some kind of ruse
to ship electronics and manuals together. It occurred to me afterward,
maybe this particular Post Office has not that much to do, and
inspecting my parcel gave them more official work to keep busy at.
And say - here's another issue you can try to get a coherent ruling
on: what you are allowed to send to Cuba. In answer to that question
at the local PO, the clerk photocopied for me, the same text I had
come there to ask about. You're on your own!
-Hue Miller / Newport, Oregon