In the fourth quarter, Marketing Mail came in at 94.17 percent against a 94 percent target. Put the Sundays and holidays back into the arithmetic and the same quarter is 94.17 93.72. The mail did not move. The calendar did.

Every mail plan you have ever written ends in a promise about time. In-home the week of the fourteenth. Allow seven to ten days. The client hears a date and builds a call center schedule, a landing page, a sale, a gala around it. You get that promise from the Postal Service’s on-time numbers, because there is nowhere else to get it.

Yesterday the Postal Regulatory Commission filed a 114-page analysis of how those numbers were produced in fiscal 2025. It is not an order and it will not be in the Federal Register. It is the referee’s account of the season, and it is worth your afternoon.

Start with the sentence that frames everything after it.

Eight public indicators measure High-Quality Service. The Postal Service missed all eight. The Commission is careful to add the part that turns a bad year into a pattern.

Now the part that belongs to you specifically, because your mail is not First-Class and the headline number is not yours. The indicator that covers standard mail is the USPS Marketing Mail and Periodicals Composite, and by the Commission’s own description “approximately two-thirds of the volume in this composite indicator consists of USPS Marketing Mail letters.”

It is the best-looking number in the report: 93.09 percent against a 94 percent target — a miss of nine-tenths of a point while single-piece First-Class three-to-five-day missed by more than seven. If you have quoted a service figure to a client this year, it was probably this one, and it was defensible.

In April of fiscal 2025 the Postal Service stopped counting Sundays and holidays in service performance. The Commission ran fiscal 2025 both ways — with the exclusion applied and without — and printed both columns in Table III-4. For the Marketing Mail composite, the fourth quarter reads 94.17 percent with the exclusion and 93.72 percent without it.

The target is 94.00.

So the fourth quarter is above target one way and below target the other, and the whole distance between those two states is 0.45 of a percentage point that was never delivered by anybody. It is Sundays and holidays leaving the denominator. Here is the Commission on what that did across the board.

Full-year figures for the same composite: 93.09% against a 94.00% target, down from 93.53% in FY 2024. So the annual number fell year over year AND missed a target that had itself been lowered. All figures are the Commission’s, from Tables III-1 and III-4.

I want to be careful, because this is not fraud and I am not going to dress it up as one. The Postal Service changed its service standards through a public process, the exclusion is disclosed, and the Commission published both columns precisely so anyone can see the difference. Nobody hid anything.

But a client does not hear “94.17 percent under a measurement convention adopted in April.” A client hears “94 percent of it arrives on time,” and then plans a Monday around it. The convention changed mid-year, in the direction that flatters the result, and the Commission says so in plain words. That is a thing you now know and your competitor does not, and it is the difference between quoting a number and understanding one.

Kept honest. This is an analysis, not an order — there is no order number, no Federal Register citation, and nothing here compels the Postal Service to do anything except what the Commission frames with “must” for the FY2026 report; the rest is recommendation. The composite is not Marketing Mail alone. It is USPS Marketing Mail and Periodicals together, about two-thirds Marketing Mail letters by volume, and the Commission notes separately that disaggregating Periodicals “demonstrates a notable difference from the composite.” There is no standalone published Marketing Mail on-time figure, so anyone who quotes you one — including me — is quoting the composite. The exclusion is disclosed policy, not a trick, adopted through a public process; the Commission printed both columns itself. My framing of what it does to a client conversation is mine. The district figures are from the Commission’s narrative text, not my reading of its maps, which are images. And the 0.45-point gap is Q4 for this composite specifically — the annual gap is smaller, 93.09 versus 92.91, and other indicators move far more; single-piece First-Class three-to-five-day moves 1.99 points annually. Do not generalise 0.45 into a rule.

Sources (primary, verified today): Postal Regulatory Commission, Analysis of the Postal Service’s FY 2025 Annual Performance Report and FY 2026 Performance Plan, Docket No. ACR2025, Filing ID 140502, submitted and accepted July 29, 2026 — 114 pages including Appendix A findings and recommendations. Every quotation and figure in this edition was read from the full report PDF, served by the Commission’s filing system at prc.arkcase.com (fileId 255718); that is an application endpoint rather than a permanent path, so the Commission’s own two-page press release PDF, hosted on prc.gov, is the stable citation for the top-line finding. Service figures are from Tables III-1 (targets vs. results), III-2 (quarterly), III-3 (target history) and III-4 (with and without the Sunday/Holiday exclusion); the Commission’s own source line for Table III-1 is “FY 2025 Annual Report at 38, 40.” The related procedural orders in this docket are Order No. 9422 (January 7, 2026) and Order No. 9465 (February 25, 2026); no reply comments were filed. This report was NOT published in the Federal Register — a search of every PRC document published there since July 1 returns nothing corresponding to it. No trade coverage supplied a fact in this edition.

The Postal Regulatory Commission filed its analysis of USPS's FY2025 performance yesterday. 114 pages, Docket ACR2025. Almost nobody in direct mail will read it, and there's one table in it that changes how you should talk to clients.

Start with the headline finding, verbatim:

"In FY 2025, the Postal Service did not meet any of the four performance goals."

Eight public indicators measure service quality. USPS missed all eight. And the Commission adds the detail that turns a bad year into a pattern:

"none of the eight FY 2025 performance indicator targets were met despite the Postal Service lowering all targets compared to FY 2024."

Now the part that's actually yours.

Your mail isn't First-Class. The indicator covering standard mail is the USPS Marketing Mail and Periodicals Composite — about two-thirds Marketing Mail letters by volume, per the Commission.

It's the best-looking number in the report. 93.09% against a 94% target. A miss of nine-tenths of a point, while single-piece First-Class 3-5 day missed by over seven. If you quoted a service number to a client this year, it was probably this one. It was defensible.

Here's Table III-4.

In April, USPS stopped counting Sundays and holidays in service performance. The Commission ran FY2025 both ways and printed both columns.

Marketing Mail composite, Q4:

With the exclusion: 94.17%
Without it: 93.72%

The target is 94.00.

Above target one way. Below target the other. And the entire distance between those two states — 0.45 of a point — is Sundays and holidays leaving the denominator. No mail moved faster to earn it.

The Commission, in its own words:

"The reported improvement in FY 2025, Quarter 4 results appears attributable, at least in part, to the Sunday/Holiday exclusion rather than improvements in on-time delivery."

I want to be careful here, because this isn't fraud and I won't dress it up as one. The standards changed through a public process. The exclusion is disclosed. The Commission published both columns precisely so anyone could see the difference. Nobody hid anything.

But your client doesn't hear "94.17% under a measurement convention adopted in April." They hear "94% of it arrives on time," and then they staff a phone bank around it.

Three things I'd change in how I work this week:

1. Stop quoting the national composite. Ask for districts. The Commission says plainly that for the 3-5 day standard, "more than half of the mapped districts have less than a 75 percent on-time score." It cites Indiana at 81.6% on-time for 2-day and 64.6% for 4-day. A regional drop doesn't live in the national average, and a 94% promise made against a 64.6% district is how you lose an account.

2. Re-baseline any in-home window built on FY2024 numbers. Two changes stack: lengthened service standards in Q3/Q4 FY2025, plus the scoring change. USPS itself told the Commission it "is unable to propose a way for the Commission to compare" results across years with reasonable certainty. If your transit assumptions predate April 2025, they describe a network that no longer exists.

3. Know that a target hit next year means less. The FY2026 composite target is unchanged at 94.00% — but "every FY 2026 target remains below the corresponding FY 2024 target," and the Commission flags this as "especially notable considering that FY 2026 targets reflect the lengthened service standards and Sunday/Holiday exclusion." Same number, easier test.

One more line, on USPS blaming "temporary" disruptions for two straight years. The Commission isn't having it:

"A condition that recurs across two consecutive fiscal years is not 'temporary' in any ordinary sense of the word."

And: without a definition, "neither the Commission nor the Postal Service's stakeholders can determine whether the disruptions are subsiding, persisting, or worsening."

You're a stakeholder. That sentence is about your ability to plan a drop.

Keeping it honest: this is an analysis, not an order — no order number, no Federal Register citation. The composite isn't Marketing Mail alone; there is no standalone published Marketing Mail on-time figure, so anyone quoting you one is quoting the composite. The 0.45 gap is Q4 for this composite specifically — the annual gap is smaller (93.09 vs 92.91), and other indicators move much more. Don't generalize it into a rule.

Source: PRC, Analysis of the Postal Service's FY 2025 Annual Performance Report and FY 2026 Performance Plan, Docket No. ACR2025, Filing ID 140502, July 29, 2026. Tables III-1 through III-4.

FIRST SOURCE · one verified original-source finding, composed for one reader · this edition: direct mail — written for the agencies, printers and mail service providers who have to turn a national on-time percentage into a date they promise a client