Greetings and Salutations From a Post Office Near You

Postal Service Offering Greeting Cards

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Busy consumers can buy, address
and mail a greeting card while conducting other Postal Service business under
a year-long pilot program launched earlier this month.

The Postal Service is testing a limited line of greeting cards in about 500
Post Offices. Initial sites were chosen based on availability of display
space, the number of customers visiting the location and convenience to
customers. An additional 1,000 locations will begin offering cards after the
first of the year.

Offering greeting cards on a limited basis serves as a market test to
determine if customer interest is high enough to warrant expanding the program
throughout the country according to Robert Bernstock, president, Mailing and
Shipping Services.

"Greeting cards are a great way to let someone know you are thinking about
them," Bernstock says. "This will be a real time saver. We believe our
customers will like the convenience of having greeting cards available while
doing business at the Post Office."

More than half of the 7 billion greeting cards sold in the U.S. are sent
through the mail. "Cards are incredibly linked to the mail," notes Bernstock.
"What better place to sell them than at our Post Offices."

The assortment includes cards for birthdays, baby announcements,
encouragement, sympathy and wedding anniversaries. Additional seasonal
displays will offer cards appropriate to various holidays and times of the
year, including Mother's Day.

Greeting cards join the selection of shipping and mailing products at the
Postal Service designed to better meet the needs of customers. In addition to
items like mailing tape, envelopes and packaging, decorative mailing boxes
make sending a gift easier than ever.

According to the Greeting Card Association, Christmas and the winter holiday
season is the biggest time of year for greeting cards, but Valentine's Day
isn't far behind. And birthdays, anniversaries and other life events happen
all year long. The most popular everyday cards are birthday cards, followed in
popularity by cards celebrating anniversaries, and cards of encouragement
including get well, friendship and sympathy cards.

An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery
service that reaches every address in the nation, 149 million residences,
businesses and Post Office Boxes, six days a week. It has 34,000 retail
locations and relies on the sale of postage, products and services, not tax
dollars, to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government
Agency five consecutive years by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has
annual revenue of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world's mail.

SOURCE U.S. Postal Service

Greg Frey of the U.S. Postal Service, +1-202-268-2168