Customer Support Ruling

Postcard Size Pieces Bearing Attachments
Updated January 2001

PS-020 (201.1.2)

This Customer Support Ruling discusses whether a postcard mailed at the card rate may bear an attachment.

To qualify for mailing at the card rate, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) 201.1.2* states that postcards (i.e., cards not supplied by the USPS), must be rectangular in shape and not less than 0.007 of an inch thick.  Other requirements for the minimum and maximum length and height dimensions apply as stated in DMM 201.1.2.  Postcards must be of uniform thickness and made of unfolded and uncreased paper or card stock of approximately the same quality and weight of stamped cards.  Postcards may be formed of one piece of paper or card stock, or two pieces of paper that are permanently and uniformly bonded together.

Postal standards provide that matter which is in the form of a card, but does not conform to the physical standards for the card rate, may not be mailed at the card rate.  Such nonconforming matter is subject to postage at the applicable rate for matter other than cards (i.e., letters, flats, parcels).

A question was raised about a card that had a photograph held to it under a plastic cover by a laminating process.  Cards so prepared do not qualify for mailing at the card rate because they bear attachments, they are not prepared entirely of paper or card stock, and they are not of a uniform thickness.  Pieces that do not qualify for the card rate are subject to the applicable First-Class Mail or Standard Mail rates of postage.  The Standard Mail rates may only be claimed if the content of the mailpiece is eligible for the applicable Standard Mail rate as specified in DMM 243*.

*See also DMM 101.6.3, 343, and 443.

(Signed)
Sherry Suggs
Manager
Mailing Standards
United States Postal Service
Washington DC 20260-3436