Metering incoming deliverable mail to identify delivery delays

DETAILED DESCRIPTION This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a system that allows a third party, such as a postage meter manufacturer or PSD manufacturer, to collate data, process the data and report localized delivery delays on a nationalized basis.
The apparatus of this invention may be utilized by organizations or people who mail invoices, bills, letters, or other items for timely responses by recipients of the mailings.
If the recipient fails to respond to the mailing in a specified period of time, the original mailer may assume that the recipient has not replied to the mailing.
At this point the original mailer may take certain preplanned actions, i.
e.
, send a nasty letter to the recipient, notify a third party of the recipients delay etc.
This invention provides new information to the original mailer to allow the mailer to selectively delay mailed responses to the recipient's failure to reply because of identified delays in the delivery of the mailers mail.
Premature replies to recipient delayed delivery responses may cause mailers embarrassment and the expenditure of unneeded funds.
The foregoing is accomplished by connecting a scanner and control software to a digital postage meter or PSD that would read incoming digitally metered mail.
Instead of printing an indicia, the scanner would read the already existing indicia and other information on the mail piece and then extract the sender data fields that are contained in the indicia or on the mail piece.
The extracted mail data would be periodically uploaded to a data center.
The data center would compare the extracted data with mail sender data that has previously been uploaded from sending meters and processors to determine unexpected delivery delays in the delivery network.
In essence, originating mail processors would upload pertinent mail piece information on addressees, pointers or other identifiers automatically and periodically to a data center.
The recipient addressee of the mail piece would temporarily configure his digital postage meter or PSD as a mail receiver so that the postage meter or PSD would read the digital indicia that was affixed to the currently delivered incoming mail