PS Form 3547 is the paper address correction notice the U.S. Postal Service mails back to a sender when a piece of mail can’t be delivered as addressed. Each notice costs $0.93 as of January 2026, and it either supplies the recipient’s new address or gives a coded reason the delivery failed.1United States Postal Service. Notice 123 – January 2026 Price Change You only receive one if you asked for it by printing the correct ancillary service endorsement on the mailpiece.
What Triggers a Paper Notice
USPS does not generate a 3547 automatically. For First-Class Mail and USPS Marketing Mail that isn’t part of a Full-Service mailing, the endorsement “Address Service Requested” is the standard way to get a paper correction notice. Under that endorsement, the mailpiece is forwarded to the new address (or returned if undeliverable) and a separate PS Form 3547 is sent to your return address, with the correction fee charged separately.2Domestic Mail Manual. 507 Mailer Services
Other endorsements behave differently. “Return Service Requested” sends the mailpiece itself back to you rather than forwarding it. “Change Service Requested” is only available for First-Class Mail paired with electronic ACS. “Electronic Service Requested” skips paper entirely in favor of data files.3PostalPro. Ancillary Service Endorsements Choose the wrong endorsement for your mail class and USPS may treat the piece as unendorsed, meaning no correction data reaches you at all.
One boundary worth knowing up front: separate manual PS Form 3547 notices are not available for Full-Service mailings. If your mail qualifies for Full-Service discount prices, address corrections come through the electronic ACS system instead.3PostalPro. Ancillary Service Endorsements
Where the Endorsement Goes on the Mailpiece
The endorsement text must appear in one of four approved positions on the face of the mailpiece:4United States Postal Service. DMM 202 Elements on the Face of a Mailpiece
- Directly below the return address block.
- Above the delivery address and any related elements such as barcodes or keylines.
- To the left of the postage area, below or to the left of any price marking.
- Below the postage area, underneath any price marking.
Your return address itself has to be accurate and legible. That’s where USPS sends the notice, and an unreadable return address leaves the correction with nowhere to go.
What Each Notice Costs in 2026
Every paper PS Form 3547 costs $0.93, billed separately from the original postage. The fee applies whether the notice contains a forwarding address or simply reports why the piece could not be delivered.1United States Postal Service. Notice 123 – January 2026 Price Change The Domestic Mail Manual points mailers to USPS Notice 123 for the current price list.5United States Postal Service. Domestic Mail Manual 507 – Mailer Services
At nearly a dollar apiece, the cost of paper corrections adds up quickly on any list with a meaningful undeliverable rate. That math is the strongest practical case for tightening list hygiene before the drop or moving to electronic corrections.
Reading the Reason Codes
Every 3547 carries a reason code that tells you why the piece failed and, by extension, what to do with the record. The codes you’ll see most often:2Domestic Mail Manual. 507 Mailer Services
- UTF, Unable to Forward. No change-of-address order is on file, or the forwarding order has expired. Usually the record should come off your list.
- ANK, Attempted, Not Known. Delivery was tried, but the carrier confirmed the addressee is not known at that address. The person may never have lived there, or the data was wrong to begin with.
- NSN, No Such Number. The street number does not exist on that route. Almost always a data-entry error on your side.
Notices with a forwarding address are the easy case: update the record. UTF and ANK notices are harder because there’s no substitute address, so flag the record as undeliverable and suppress it from the next mailing until you can verify a current address through another source.
Processing Returned Notices
Paper notices trickle back over several weeks. The workflow is simple: match the old address on the form to the record in your database, then either update it or mark it for removal.
Speed matters. If a stack of 3547s sits for two months before anyone keys them in, the next mailing drops with the same bad addresses and generates another round of notices at $0.93 each. Handling corrections within a few days of receipt breaks the cycle. Senders running regular mailings often assign a specific person or a weekly process to work through returned notices rather than letting them accumulate.
When Electronic ACS Makes More Sense
Electronic Address Correction Service delivers the same information as the paper form through a data file, at a much lower price. In 2026, electronic notices cost $0.21 each for First-Class Mail and USPS Ground Advantage-Retail, and $0.47 each for other classes such as USPS Marketing Mail.1United States Postal Service. Notice 123 – January 2026 Price Change That’s $0.72 less per notice on First-Class Mail and $0.46 less on Marketing Mail than the paper form.
Electronic ACS doesn’t eliminate paper entirely. USPS still issues some hard-copy corrections in certain situations even for electronic participants.6PostalPro. ACS But the volume of paper drops sharply, and the data arrives in a format you can import directly rather than transcribe by hand.
How PS Form 3547 Fits Into Move Update
USPS requires mailers claiming presorted or automation prices on First-Class Mail and USPS Marketing Mail to have updated their mailing lists within 95 days before the mailing date. This is the Move Update standard.7PostalPro. Move Update Failing it triggers an assessment charge of $0.08 per piece on the entire mailing, not just the undeliverable pieces.8United States Postal Service. Notice 123 – Price List On a 100,000-piece mailing, that’s $8,000.
Processing your 3547 returns promptly helps meet the standard, but USPS also accepts other methods, including NCOALink processing (which checks your list against the national change-of-address database) and the 99 Percent Accurate method for mailers who can show their internal list management holds address accuracy at 99% or higher.7PostalPro. Move Update
Relying on PS Form 3547 alone to satisfy Move Update is risky for high-volume mailers, because the paper notices come back after the mailing has already gone out. Running the list through NCOALink beforehand catches most changes proactively, and the 3547 returns then clean up what NCOALink missed. That combination generally keeps lists accurate enough to avoid the assessment charge while cutting the volume of expensive paper notices you have to process.