AddressAccelerator

We have AddressAccelerator and love it!  It has substantially reduced the number of pieces of first class mail that are returned because of bad addresses.  We offer remembrance cards for birthdays, Christmas, etc. and are always dealing with bad handwriting or missing information like street vs. road.  It will correct or add that information.  As Melissa said, it is not perfect -- some newer addresses are not always there, and we occasionally it will not find an address when we first try, but if we close the record, reopen and try again, it is there.  Overall it has saved a ton of time and postage.  

Melissa Graves:

It is different than AddressFinder in that it just standardizes the format to the postal standard and adds postal codes and county, etc. It does not tell you if the person living there is still there or moved.


I have never had any issue with it other than it not finding some addresses so we just leave it as is. 


Some places are a bit old fashioned and do not like to abbreviate things which is silly since the post office relies on electronic reading and standardizing does help get your pieces delivered the fastest and most accurately. No one cares anymore if it says Boulevard or Blvd. Truly, they do not. And RE does allow you to not abbreviate but do not tell your staff that. Just accept the best postal standards you get.

 

Jennifer Padilla:

Hello-- Does anyone use AddressAccelerator? How is it? Any issues or kinks that need to be worked out? Is it better than just AddressFinder?


Thanks,

Jenn

To understand why AddressAccelerator does what it does you need to understand how USPS computers read mail.


They work from the bottom up. So City State Zip all need to be on the bottom line.

Then the line directly above that needs to be the delivery address beginning with the street number.

Anything above that is ignored until it gets to the carrier.


Anything else in the delivery address line (second from the bottom) will cause the mail to be rejected by the system. I believe if it is rejected 3 times it then goes into a bin to be manually read. You REALLY do not want this to happen. This is where mistakes happen as it is up to a human to read it and get the proper barcode printed on the envelope which directs it for the remainder of the journey until it gets to the mail carrier. It also can be the first of several delays that could end up in your piece never reaching it's intended recipient.


So you WANT the apt number to be on the same line as the address (at the end). You do NOT want it on the line below as that is where the post office expects to see the delivery line. Also the abbreviations are standardized so EVERYONE is using them. The recipient of your mail piece should not get offended that you used a truncated version of a word if everything else they get has the same one AND it gets delivered properly the first time and does not get mishandled and suffer a late (or non) delivery.