Postal Service Will Offer Fax Machine Services in Northeast

The U.S. Postal Service today announced that it has awarded a contract to a Miami company to install credit card-operated fax machines at selected post offices in the Northeast.

Under a one-year pilot program, Hotelecopy Inc. will install the facsimile machines in 54 post offices in New York City, Boston and Providence, R.I.

“We are now looking at our lobbies to help provide one-stop shopping,” said Assistant Postmaster General Gordon C. Morison, head of the Postal Service’s Philatelic and Retail Services Department.

Hotelecopy, which has contracted with MCI Communications Corp. to provide the telephone connections, will pay the U.S. Postal Service $150 a month in rent for each location plus a percentage of revenue. The percentage amount was not disclosed because Hotelecopy is also competing for similar contracts in four other regions of the United States, officials said.

The service will be tested in up to 8,000 post offices nationwide by next spring under separate contracts, Morison said.

Customers will be charged $12.75 for about three minutes or about seven pages of copy, said Edd Helms, president of Hotelecopy. The machines will accept major credit cards, he said.