Terms of Service

You are buying one advertising spot, in one trade category, on a shared 8.5×12 postcard mailed to every active address on the USPS carrier routes covered by your order. A card carries up to 14 spots. MailingRoute is operated by LinkedBits; invoices are issued by our billing partner, VGJ LLC.

Your trade category is exclusive to you on every card you appear on. If you hold plumbing on a card, no other plumbing business appears on that same card.

Exclusivity attaches to the card, not to a territory. It is not a geographic monopoly: it does not prevent another business in your trade from advertising on a different card covering a different carrier route, including a route in the same ZIP code or town. If you need a specific set of routes covered, order those routes.

Exclusivity applies for the cards your order is printed on. It does not reserve your category for future mailings — those are a new order.

Your price is quoted per route and depends on how many households the routes you select reach. It does not depend on how many other businesses are on the card, and it does not change as the card fills.

Quotes given before your routes are ready are estimates based on current USPS route data. Your price is fixed at the moment a route reaches the advertiser count needed to print, and we honour that fixed price when the card is produced. Where an order covers a percentage of an area rather than named routes, the specific routes are allocated when the area is ready to print, so the final total may differ from the estimate.

A carrier route is mailed once 12 advertisers have signed on for it. Until then your spot is reserved but the route is not scheduled. When a route reaches that count we tell you, fix your price, and invoice the balance with a payment deadline.

Nothing ships automatically. If a route does not reach the required number of advertisers, it is not printed and you are not charged for it. You are only charged for routes that are committed to print.

A deposit is taken when you order and is credited against whatever actually ships. The remaining balance for each route is due within the window stated in the route-ready notice. We do not send a card to press unpaid.

You can cancel any time before your routes are locked for print, and we will refund what you have paid for those routes.

Locking is the point at which a card's roster is fixed and the job is committed to production — it happens after balances are collected and before the card physically prints. Once a route is locked, that route cannot be cancelled and is not refundable, because the print and postage commitment has been made. Routes on the same order that are not yet locked can still be cancelled.

If we cannot deliver a route you paid for, we refund it.

You can supply your own artwork or ask us to design your spot. Either way you approve a proof before the card goes to print, and approving the proof is what authorises production.

You confirm that you own or are licensed to use everything you send us, and that your ad is accurate and lawful — including displaying a valid contractor licence number where your trade requires one on printed advertising. You grant us permission to reproduce your material for the purpose of printing and mailing your ad. You remain responsible for the content of your own advertisement.

We may decline artwork that is unlawful, misleading, or unsuitable for mail delivered to households.

We promise to print your ad and hand the card to USPS for delivery to the routes you bought. We do not promise any particular number of calls, leads, customers, or return on your spend, and nothing on this site should be read as such a promise. Delivery timing after handoff is controlled by USPS.

Our liability for any order is limited to what you paid us for that order.

Keep your login credentials secure; you are responsible for activity under your account. We may suspend an account used to reserve categories in bad faith, to squat inventory, or to misrepresent the trade the business actually operates in.

We may update these terms; the version in force for your order is the one published when you placed it. Questions: contact us. See also our Privacy Policy.