[Njtechdiv] How To & who Can Send "Free Matter"?

[Eileen Scrivani]

Hi All, 

This after noon I went to the Oradell post office to ship a large box of Braille books I no longer use. I was sending to another blind person who lives in NC.

I had my sister tape it lightly so it could be opened easily for inspection, and it contained 4 sizeable volumes of Braille in the box. My sister wrote “Free Matter For The blind & Handicapped” on the outside of the box as well. 

When we got to the counter, the postal worker said I could not ship these free matter and that I needed to get a certification of some type. I debated the point with them (nicely) saying that all it required was that braille only was in the box and that they were able to look in the carton. Given, I haven’t mailed anything in this way in a long time. They called their supervisor at some other location and came back saying again it required I had to fill out some form they would mail to me and I would get special certification to ship as Free Matter. I was almost going to pay for it, but when they started looking shipping rates up on their computer a choice for sending free Matter was an option. Then they further went on to start reading postal guidelines in the back room.

Bottom line was the postal clerk said as a “one-time only” courtesy to me, she would let it go through as free matter since she could clearly see I was blind! I offered to show them both my non-drivers license as well as my handicapped parking plaque as proof I am blind. She did not want to see either of those things. 

Finally it went through, but I m left wondering how does braille matter ship and what do I need to do to take advantage of it. Honestly, I next to never use it except in cases like this when I have a braille book that’s no longer being used. Oh, the 4 volumes I was shipping were not bound or covered, the pages were just rubber-banded together and they seemed to have an issue with that as well! <geeish> What are the rules and what certification do I need? I don’t abuse this as a lot of blind people think they can ship any old item for free. 

Thanks for any information on this that is accurate.

Eileen 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/njtechdiv_nfbnet.org/attachments/20190524/2844edbb/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Eileen scrivani.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 92 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/njtechdiv_nfbnet.org/attachments/20190524/2844edbb/attachment.vcf>