Postal Service Rewrites Letter of Commercial Mail Box Law

Slowly, quietly, the U.S. Postal Service is retreating from the most controversial rules that it approved last April for commercial mail boxes.

The rule changes were designed to prevent mail fraud, but hundreds of box renters and rental stores complained that the new regulations imposed undue expenses on honest small-business operators. The controversy ran particularly hot in Southern California, the birthplace of private mailboxes and home to a disproportionate slice of the nation’s rental stores.

By late June, renters were required to file new forms showing home addresses if they operated businesses from their boxes, a provision that set off privacy alarms. By law, anyone--from abusive spouses to would-be burglars--could request the information on the forms from the local post office.

Now the postal service has proposed an additional rule that would allow the release of information on the forms only to law enforcement officers. Postal service officials expect the added measure to become final by year’s end.

“It will alleviate a lot of fears,” said Mike Spates, the postal service’s manager of delivery.

The postal service also has postponed enforcing a provision mandating that all mail received by renters have the initials PMB--for private mailbox--in the address, an addition designed to prevent unscrupulous operators from passing off mail drops as office suites or residences.

The PMB designation, which would appear on envelopes much like “P.O. Box,” was supposed to take effect in October, after which the postal service warned it would start bouncing back improperly addressed mail.

Never happened.

The postal service backed off after hundreds of box renters protested that the address change would cost them a fortune in lost sales and new stationery. There also was no way, they said, to inform all potential correspondents of the new requirements.

In January, the postal service will float a compromise--a modified proposal that would allow renters to preface their box numbers with either PMB or the pound sign. Since such addresses still may not reveal if an address is a mail drop, the postal service also would set up an 800 number that consumers could call to check.

Spates acknowledged the compromise left him unsatisfied.

“That still doesn’t help John Q. Public,” he said, doubting that many people would use the hotline. “But we’re trying to balance the concerns of small businesses with those of consumers.”