Private Firms May Deliver International Mail : U.S. Reverses Policy on ‘Remailers’

Setting aside the recommendation of its staff, the board of governors of the U.S. Postal Service declared Tuesday that private companies should be allowed to deliver international mail.

John R. McKean, Postal Service chairman, acknowledged that the private remailers deliver international mail more quickly and cheaply than the Postal Service. The Postal Service’s “monopoly was not intended to protect us from having to face up to our own shortcomings,” McKean said.

The remailers are businesses that collect mail in the United States, mainly from businesses, and dispatch it to foreign post offices for delivery. The industry’s revenue was about $120 million last year.

He said the Postal Service would soon change its regulations to permit private delivery of international mail. Current regulations “do not appear to leave room for lawful operation of international remail services,” he said in a statement. “At least, there is a serious question on this point.”

Private remailers, however, have existed for nearly seven years. Although the Postal Service has vigorously contended that international remailing is illegal, the Justice Department has disagreed and has consistently declined to prosecute remailers.

To resolve that interagency dispute, the Postal Service staff last year proposed regulations that would have clearly declared private international mail service to be illegal.

The remailers had been operating under what Postal Service lawyers called a loophole in the 1979 regulations that permit “urgent,” or overnight, mail service by private carriers within the United States. James I. Campbell Jr., a lawyer for the remailers, said Tuesday that the ruling was “a great victory” for his clients.

The proposed regulations were opposed not only by the remailers but by some of the nation’s largest corporations and banks that use the remail service. The proposal was also opposed by the Commerce Department, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget.

The three federal agencies said the competitiveness of U.S. corporations abroad would be hurt if they had no alternative to the Postal Service. Without competition, the Postal Service would be less likely to innovate or “price its international services competitively,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III said in a letter to the Postal Service.