Ray - my company does customer follow up using post cards for the automotive
repair industry. For years we subscribed to the USPS address center to get
6250 bpi tapes of city state and street files. I have made a pretty neat
IMAGE data base with this information to help us see the correct spelling of
streets/cities as we are inputting hand written work orders.

When the USPS FINALLY relaxed their bar code rules enough to justify our
putting bar codes on our cards, I went though this CASS search.

First, unless you do **a lot** of mailing - a "lot" in my estimation at
least 50,000 pieces/day, it is simply not worth the effort to try and write
your own software for CASS certification. You jump though enough hoops
simply getting your own pieces certified for a bar code. The post office
will give you a template and there are strict requirements for empty space
around the bar code.

There was some CASS software for the 3000 but of course a lot more expensive
than for a PC.

I found this company now owned by Semaphore - ZP4 - subscription for a CD is
$90 every 2 months. Every morning I download my file from the HP with
Reflection, run it though this software on the PC - and upload it.

Because I put their data base straight to disk updating 1000 records might
take 4-5 minutes.

Because most of this PC software expects you to print off a PC, I had to
write some small routines to take the 9 digit zip the ZP4 generated - throw
it to the Post Net chip on our ancient 2566a printer and get a bar code on
the card.

We will be getting a newer Dataproducts LM1115 printer and I am hoping that
my code should should work on this printer, which it should.

There is a lot of PC CASS software that is pretty junky - difficult to use -
but this has worked out very well for us. This software allows you to write
templates for your files so the process is pretty automated.

You can contact this company at (831) 688-9200.

They are located in Aptos CA, just across the bay from Santa Cruz which is a
pretty cool place to have a company...

Bill
<<<
Subject: CASS certification

Hi all,

I've been asked to see if I can get some info on what folks are using for
shipping address certification.

What service companies do you use, and what do they provide.

One area of special interest is anyone using any service (home-grown or
canned) that does address certification down to ZIP + 4 + 2  (2 being the
delivery point level).

As always,  thanks in advance for your time.


Ray Shahan

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