"...Because Quad ships so many pieces of direct mail and publications, over the years it has created such a tight relationship with the U.S. Postal Service that Quad in some ways effectively acts as an extension of the Post Office. Quad pre-sort magazines and catalogs, which creates efficiencies for the Post Office "mail-stream" and entitles Quad to bulk mailing discounts...."
"...There is a general lack of understanding by many postal processing facilities and personnel as to what the requested dates really mean. Because of that, there are times when postal employees go out of their way to ensure that mail is being processed and delivered by the dates on the mail. How do they go out of their way to ensure this? It could be segregating the mail by the dates requested which results in additional handling or utilization of additional floor space. It could be processing the mail in a separate pass on sorting equipment or, in the worst-case scenario, manual processing it to avoid waiting for the normal machine time. Or it could be "warehousing" mail that has been delivered too early...."
