Last week the Postal Service posted a proposed rule in the Federal Register to revise the section of the Domestic Mail Manual that involves postmarking. The purpose of the rule, entitled “Postmarks and Postal Possession,” is to educate the public about postmarks. It discusses the history of postmarks, how they’re applied, how they’re used by government agencies and the private sector, and so on.
But all of this information serves primarily as background. The main purpose of the rule is to inform customers that they can no longer expect a postmark to show the date a piece was mailed.
The Postal Service says the DMM revision “does not signal and would not effect a change in postmarking procedures.” Instead, the Postal Service seeks to make customers aware that “the postmark date does not inherently or necessarily align with the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of a mailpiece.”
