If you sell address hygiene — as a presort bureau, a list house, a printer who runs Move Update as part of the job — the thing standing between you and the Postal Service is a licence. There are six N C O A services today and all of them work the same way: you pay for access to the change-of-address database, you get certified, and the mailer pays you.
N C O A+ removes the licence. It is a per-call cloud interface that goes straight to the mailer. The Postal Service tried to add it to the July rate case; three mailer associations objected that it would breach 39 U.S.C. 404a; the Commission pulled it out on May 27 and told the Postal Service to refile it properly. It refiled on July 14. Comments closed July 31. No decision has issued.
That is the ordinary story, and it would be a fine trade-press paragraph. Here is the part that is not ordinary. Open the current price list — Notice 123, effective July 12 — on the web, go to page 35, and N C O A+ is priced. Eleven tiers, real numbers, live on the public site today. Then download the P D F edition of the same price list, with the same effective date, and turn to page 35. The table is not there.
<!-- Eliminate NCOA+ -->
That is an H T M L comment, invisible in a browser, sitting directly on top of the fee table it names. I want to be careful here, because a comment is not a statement and I cannot tell you who wrote it or when. What I can tell you is what I checked. The N C O A Link licence fees — the ones for the product that is approved — appear in both the web page and the P D F. The N C O A+ tier table appears in one and not the other. I searched the P D F for the distinctive strings: “Tier 12”, “over 1 billion”, “59,500”, “per API call”. Zero hits, all four. Every one of them is on the web page.
So somebody was told to take N C O A+ out of the price list. They took it out of one format.
The first two are printed side by side on page 35 of the live web price list; the difference is my arithmetic, and it is about 80 percent. The Tier 7 line, up to fifty million lookups a month, works out to $330,000 a year — still under the licence. For a Limited Service Provider paying $36,440, Tier 4 comes to $17,508. And there is no Tier 11. The published list runs one through ten, then twelve, and prices twelve at zero.
None of that is the scandal. Prices get drafted, tables get staged, somebody misses a format. If you have ever shipped a rate card you know exactly how this happens, and I would not write an edition about a publishing error.
I am writing it because of what the Commission is being asked to decide, and when. The Postal Service asked for a ruling within 60 days of July 14, and proposed going live on October 4. The objection on the table is that this arrangement breaches a statute about setting the terms of competition. And the party whose conduct is under review has already published the prices.
The Postal Service acknowledges that in reducing barriers to access, some mailers who currently pay licensed intermediaries to check addresses may opt to use NCOA+ instead and that the number of available software providers may increase. The Postal Service states that in this way, NCOA+ would likely increase competitive pressure on some current NCOA licensees but that “[a]ny competitive pressure will arise from the fact that other companies would be empowered by easier access to Postal Service data products.”
39 U.S.C. 404a(a)(1) says the Postal Service may not “establish any rule or regulation (including any standard) the effect of which is to preclude competition or establish the terms of competition unless the Postal Service demonstrates that the regulation does not create an unfair competitive advantage for itself.” The National Postal Policy Council, the National Association of Presort Mailers and the Association for Postal Commerce all raised it on May 11. The Postal Service’s answer, as the Commission records it, is that the statute “is inapplicable to this proceeding as it does not establish any ‘rule or regulation’ within the meaning of the statute.” In other words: a change to the Mail Classification Schedule is not a rule, so the rule about rules does not reach it. That is a real legal argument and it may well win. It is also the entire ballgame for anybody whose business model is being the licensed intermediary.
The Postal Service’s proposed in-market date — not an approved one. It asked for a decision within 60 days of its July 14 filing, which lands around September 12. The Commission was pointedly non-committal: it “will strive to work expeditiously on this matter; however, the issues raised and what comes to light as the record is developed will likely determine the timing.” If you resell N C O A, the useful thing to do in August is not to panic about October. It is to work out which of your clients buy address hygiene as a line item they could unbundle, and what else is in the bundle that they cannot.
Kept honest. N C O A+ is not approved and this is not a done deal. Docket MC2026-300 is open, the Commission has issued no decision, and October 4 is the Postal Service’s proposal, not an effective date. The H T M L comment is evidence of a discrepancy, not proof of intent. I am reporting exactly what is in the page source and the verified fact that the P D F edition of the same price list lacks the table; I cannot tell you who wrote “Eliminate NCOA+”, when, or whether it was an instruction or a section marker. Read it as texture, not as a finding. The zero-priced top tier I cannot explain. Notice 123 prints “Tier 12 — over 1 billion (per API call) 0.00” and has no Tier 11; whether that is a placeholder, a rounding artefact or an error, I do not know, and I would not build a bid on it. The savings percentages are my arithmetic on two tables printed on the same page — an annual licence against a monthly tier — and they assume a licensee’s volume actually falls inside the tier I picked, which for a large bureau it may not. I could not read the July 31 comments. The Commission’s public filing endpoint failed on the relevant range, so I cannot tell you who filed on the closing day or whether anyone sought more time; do not assume the record is quiet. I also could not read the Postal Service’s July 14 Request itself — everything attributed to it here is quoted from the Commission’s own published order, which is primary but one remove from the filing. Finally, prices and pages change: I read Notice 123 and pulled the P D F today, and both may be corrected by the time you check. If the web table is gone when you look, that is the story confirming itself, not disproving it.
Sources, all primary and all fetched today, August 2, 2026. (1) USPS Notice 123, Price List, effective July 12, 2026, page 35, section “Address Management System (AMS)” — the web edition at pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/Notice123.htm (HTTP 200, 1,561,269 bytes). Source of the NCOALink Service licence fees quoted here (Full Service Provider $436,300.00 per year; FSP each additional site $215,600.00; Limited Service Provider $36,440.00; LSP each additional site $18,220.00; Interface Software Distributor License $62,600.00; Initial Interface Developer $13,100.00 first year; End User $17,840.00 first year; End User each additional site $8,540.00), of the complete NCOA+ fee table (Tier 1 up to 10,000 — $19.99; Tier 2 up to 100,000 — 199.90; Tier 3 up to 500,000 — 999.00; Tier 4 up to 1,000,000 — 1,459.00; Tier 5 up to 5,000,000 — 3,650.00; Tier 6 up to 10,000,000 — 7,200.00; Tier 7 up to 50,000,000 — 27,500.00; Tier 8 up to 100,000,000 — 39,990.00; Tier 9 up to 500,000,000 — 49,500.00; Tier 10 up to 1,000,000,000 — 59,500.00; Tier 12 over 1 billion, per API call — 0.00, with the note “Fee is monthly unless otherwise indicated. Monthly API usage determines tier assignment.”), and of the HTML comment <!-- Eliminate NCOA+ --> which immediately precedes that table in the page source. (2) The P D F edition of the same document, notice123.pdf (HTTP 200, 1,337,931 bytes, 63 pages, cover stamped “Effective July 12, 2026”), text extracted with pypdf. The comparison reported above is my own and was run with discriminating strings rather than a single term, because the P D F’s text layer splits “NCOALink” across elements: “Tier 12”, “over 1 billion”, “59,500” and “per API call” each return zero hits in the P D F and one hit apiece in the web edition, while “436,300” and “36,440” — the approved licence fees — appear in both. (3) Postal Regulatory Commission, New Postal Product, Order No. 9643, Docket No. MC2026-300, 91 FR 45290–45291, FR Doc. 2026-14538, published July 20, 2026 — full text via the Federal Register plain-text service, 2026-14538.txt. Source of the July 14, 2026 filing date and the Mail Classification Schedule section 1515 citation; of “a proposed implementation date of October 4, 2026”; of “Currently, the Postal Service offers six NCOA services”; of the competitive-pressure passage quoted in full above; of the Postal Service’s position that 39 U.S.C. 404a “is inapplicable to this proceeding as it does not establish any ‘rule or regulation’ within the meaning of the statute”; of “DATES: Comments are due: July 31, 2026”; of “the Postal Service requests a Commission decision in this proceeding within 60 days” and the Commission’s reply that it “will strive to work expeditiously on this matter; however, the issues raised and what comes to light as the record is developed will likely determine the timing of the decision in this proceeding”; of the earlier refusal, that the addition of NCOA+ could not “be appropriately vetted during an expedited rate adjustment proceeding” and that “[s]hould the Postal Service desire to re-propose the introduction of NCOA+, it should do so in a proceeding under 39 [CFR] part 3040” (Docket No. R2026-1, Order No. 9584, May 27, 2026, at 130–31); and of the three objectors named at footnote 3 — the National Postal Policy Council, the National Association of Presort Mailers and the Association for Postal Commerce, each filing May 11, 2026. (4) 39 U.S.C. 404a(a)(1), read from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel via govinfo. The count of “NCOA” appearing in exactly one 2026 Federal Register document is my own search of the Federal Register, run today. Trade coverage supplied no fact in this edition.
There are two official copies of the current USPS price list. Same effective date, July 12. One of them prices a product the regulator has refused to approve. The other one doesn't have the page. Quick background, because the story doesn't work without it. If you sell address hygiene — presort bureau, list house, printer running Move Update as part of the job — a licence is what stands between you and the Postal Service. Six NCOA services exist today and they all work the same way: you pay for database access, you get certified, the mailer pays you. NCOA+ removes the licence. Per-call cloud API, straight to the mailer. USPS tried to add it to the July rate case. Three mailer associations — NPPC, the National Association of Presort Mailers, and PostCom — objected that it breaches 39 U.S.C. 404a, the statute barring USPS from setting the terms of competition against private parties. On May 27 the Commission pulled it out and said if USPS wants NCOA+, refile it properly. USPS refiled July 14. Comments closed July 31. No decision has issued. Now open Notice 123 on the web, page 35. NCOA+ is priced. Eleven tiers. Live on the public site right now. Download the PDF edition of the same price list — same effective date — and turn to page 35. The table isn't there. And in the page source of the web version, sitting directly on top of the fee table, is this: <!-- Eliminate NCOA+ --> An HTML comment. Invisible in a browser. I want to be careful, because a comment isn't a statement and I can't tell you who wrote it or when. So here's what I actually checked. The NCOALink licence fees — the approved product — are in BOTH the web page and the PDF. The NCOA+ tier table is in one and not the other. I searched the PDF for four distinctive strings: "Tier 12", "over 1 billion", "59,500", "per API call". Zero hits, all four. All four are on the web page. Somebody was told to take NCOA+ out of the price list. They took it out of one format. The numbers, from the two halves of that same page 35: Full Service Provider NCOALink licence: $436,300 a year. NCOA+ Tier 6, up to 10 million lookups a month: $7,200 a month. That's $86,400 a year. About 80% less. Tier 7 — up to 50 million a month — still comes in under the licence at $330,000. And the top line reads "Tier 12 — over 1 billion (per API call) — 0.00." There is no Tier 11. The list goes one through ten, then twelve, priced at zero. I can't explain that and I wouldn't build a bid on it. None of that is the scandal, by the way. Rate cards get staged, formats get missed. If you've ever shipped one you know exactly how it happens. What makes it worth your attention is what's being decided, and when. USPS asked for a ruling within 60 days of July 14 — around September 12 — and proposed going live October 4. The objection is that the arrangement breaches a statute about setting the terms of competition. And the party under review has already published the prices. USPS's answer to the 404a objection, as the Commission records it: the statute "is inapplicable to this proceeding as it does not establish any 'rule or regulation' within the meaning of the statute." A classification change isn't a rule, so the rule about rules doesn't reach it. That's a real argument and it may well win. It's also the whole ballgame if your business model is being the licensed intermediary. Two practical things. Check which price list your team quotes from. If somebody has a bookmark to the web edition and is building estimates off page 35, they can see fees for a service that legally doesn't exist yet. Until the Commission rules, the PDF is the version that matches reality. And nothing about Move Update changed. No mailer's obligation moved this week. The approved NCOALink services on that same page are still the only approved way to satisfy it. Kept honest: NCOA+ isn't approved, MC2026-300 is open, and October 4 is a proposal, not a date. The HTML comment is evidence of a discrepancy, not proof of intent. The percentages are my arithmetic on an annual licence against a monthly tier. I couldn't read the July 31 comments — the Commission's filing endpoint failed on that range — so don't assume the record is quiet. If the web table is gone by the time you look, that's the story confirming itself.
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FIRST SOURCE · one verified original-source finding, composed for one reader · this edition: direct mail — written for the people who sell the service the Postal Service just published a price for