§ 3001.67 - Requests involving experimental changes.

(a) This section and §§ 3001.67a through 3001.67d apply in cases where the Postal Service requests a recommended decision pursuant to section 3623 of the Postal Reorganization Act and denominates the new service or change in an existing service as experimental in character. These sections do not apply to the situation in which a request not denominated as experimental by the Postal Service, either at the time of its filing or subsequently, is found to be justified by the Commission only on an experimental basis, following analysis of the record made in the proceedings on such a request.

(b) This section and §§ 3001.67a through 3001.67d are not intended to substitute for the rules generally governing requests for changes in the Domestic Mail Classification Schedule in cases where the treatment of the proposed changes as experimental is not justified by the character of those changes. The Commission reserves the right, in appropriate cases, to require that the normal procedures prescribed for nonexperimental cases under section 3623 be used. In determining whether the procedures for experimental cases may be used in a particular case, the Commission will consider:

(1) The novelty of the proposed change;

(2) The magnitude of the proposed change, including its effect on postal costs, postal revenues, mailing costs and practices of users of the mails, and persons or firms offering services competitive with or alternative to the service offerings of the Postal Service;

(3) The ease or difficulty of generating or gathering data with respect to the proposed change; and

(4) The desired duration of the experiment as indicated by the Postal Service in its request and, specifically, in its proposed Domestic Mail Classification Schedule language.

(c) In the case of a proposal denominated as an experiment by the Postal Service, the Commission will entertain representations by parties to the case that the proposal should not be considered as an experiment and should follow the normal mail classification change procedures. The Commission does not contemplate entertaining representations by parties to a case filed under the normal procedures that the matter should be treated as an experiment under this section and §§ 3001.67a through 3001.67d.