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the U.S. Postal Service, who examined the reasonableness of the
imbalance fees from the perspective of the postal community.
Respondent proffered an economist to opine on an arm’s-length
markup percentage for imbalance and transfer services between DHL
and DHLI and to determine the imbalance and transfer costs and
fees for years prior to 1987.
First we consider the report of petitioners’ expert, who
used the practices of the postal community to analyze the
reasonableness of the imbalance fees. Petitioners point out that
their practice of no fees for imbalance and transfers was based
on the postal system approach. Their expert explains that,
initially, postal systems of the world accepted the premise that
mail flows between two given countries essentially in balance;
i.e., it is expected that each outgoing letter will engender an
incoming reply. Consequently, there was a form of reciprocity.
At some point, the postal community determined that the incoming-
outgoing balance assumption was no longer valid. That
recognition occurred in 1969 and evolved through 1989.
Petitioners’ expert states that DHL and DHLI recognized the need
to change in the mid-1980’s and was able to implement it only as
of 1987. As of 1969, however, a convention among postal systems
established a weight-based fixed or level rate of 50 centimes per
kilogram of excess mail received, with a SwF2,000 threshold.24
24 It appears that the monetary units used for the
convention are Swiss francs.
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