NAGOYA (Kyodo) A TV home shopping company based in Nagoya abused a postal discount system for disabled people to mail about 4 million advertisements between August 2005 and September 2008 on the cheap, company officials said Tuesday.
Prime Network Inc. found the practice problematic after an in-house probe and stopped using the discount system in October, the company officials said.
The revelation came to light after Osaka prosecutors arrested a former senior employee of Best Denki Co. and seven others on April 16 over similar conduct.
Japan Post allows disabled people and their supporters to mail out periodicals at sharp discounts of around ¥8 each, instead of the regular ¥120. To get the discount, the periodical must have a regular circulation of 500 or more and meet other conditions.
Prime Network is believed to have mailed the ads on the cheap by packaging periodicals published by groups for the disabled inside them. This allegedly saved the company about ¥400 million in postal fees.