METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PHASED REDIRECTION

摘要

The present invention is directed to a method to address the situation when a mail piece is not automatically read and requires redirection. The phased redirection disclosed herein uses directory flags. The Flags are associated to the records in the Address Data Base at the Delivery Point (street/house number) level. A first is Priority Handling Flag, wherein the subject Delivery Point contains one or more addressees who require redirection outside the delivery domain of their original sorting center. A second is Offline Handling Flag, wherein the subject Delivery Point contains one or more addressees who require redirection within the delivery domain of their original sorting center. A third is Validation Required Flag, wherein the subject Delivery Point contains one or more addressees whose name(s) is not sufficiently differentiated from family members or other residents to allow an automatic Redirection decision without operator validation.