July 1, 2020

COVID-19 CONTINUITY OF OPERATIONS UPDATE

Effects on Requalification Efforts for Periodicals Publications

The Postal Service understands that the Periodicals industry continues to have a difficult time renewing requester and subscriber/paid publications due to the COVID-19 outbreak.To address this, in an April 2, 2020 Industry Update, we temporarily extended expiration dates of all legitimate requests for extension by legitimate subscribers for six (6) months, effective from January 15, 2020.

Due to continuing issues with COVID-19, we are extending this temporary exception to the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) 207.4.2 and DMM 207.7.6 mailing standards until October 31, 2020.This new temporary extension is available until October 31, 2020 to legitimate requesters or legitimate subscribers whose paid subscriptions would have expired on January 15, 2020.

This should allow publishers to count requests or subscriptions that either expired or would have expired between January 15, 2020 and October 31, 2020 as legitimate requesters or legitimate subscribers/paid publications. This new temporary extension includes renewals related to membership renewals. It is only applicable to legitimate subscribers and legitimate requesters who continued to receive the publications during this period.

This is a temporary exception to DMM 207.4.2 and DMM 207.7.6.Starting on November 1, 2020, this temporary exception to the DMM will no longer be in effect and the 3-year requester requirement and the paid subscriber requirement will apply.

Please note that publishers are not exempt from submitting and publishing (if required) their PS Form 3526, Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation, by October 1, 2020 at the original entry Post Office as required under DMM 207.8.3.1.