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501 Gram Catalogue – 1 Gram Increases Costs by $3.19 per Piece
We prepared a mailing for a client consisting of 1,216 catalogues at a weight of 508 grams. If the piece had weighed 500 grams or less, the mailing could have gone as Addressed Admail. The important thing to note here is that the minimum for Addressed Admail is 1,000 pieces, whereas the minimum for Catalogue Mail is 2,500 pieces. Therefore, to mail this piece at Catalogue Mail rates, the client had to pay for 1,284 pieces at the phantom rate. Thus, phantom postage alone was $2,927.52.
This mailing truly demonstrates how dramatically unit costs can jump. We ran a test LCP sort on 1,216 Oversize pieces of Addressed Admail, at 500 grams, which resulted in an average unit cost of $1.50. Using the same data and same volume, when we increased the weight by a single gram and did a subsequent recalculation as Catalogue Mail, the unit cost jumped from $1.50 to $4.69 (this, of course, included paying for the 1,284 pieces at the phantom rate). The resulting total postage increase turned out to be $3,879.04, and for a mere 1,216 pieces!
Case Notes:
CN.1. This case truly demonstrates just how important planning can be. Consider for a moment that 8 grams is a mere 0.016 of 500 grams. There are a few ways that one might consider reducing the weight by 8 grams: These would include:
- a lighter stock for some or all pages
- a marginal reduction in the length and/or width
- possibly cutting back on the overall number of pages
CN.2. The difference between minimum piece requirements for different Canada Post products had a critical impact here. If the phantom postage had not been an issue (i.e. there were at least 2,500 catalogues) then the unit cost would have been dramatically lower.
CN.3. It should be noted that we did forewarn the client about exceeding the 500-gram threshold. However, in this instance, the catalogues were being printed by a U.S. parent company and our Canadian client could do little to control the weight of the piece.
CN.4. Rip out any page! We had a similar experience a few years back, in which a catalogue came in at 503 grams. In this instance the catalogue had a Cerlox binding. We called the client and told them about the additional postage costs. We also noted that if one page was removed, the weight would fall below 500 grams and it could be mailed as Addressed Admail, saving them a few thousand dollars. The client simply replied “So rip out a page then.” We asked, ‘Which page?” to which they replied, “Any page will do!”
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