Postage Rates

[ladder13]

$4.41 to mail a three-ounce thick envelope across the US as a parcel. About to go up. Ridiculous.

Letters can become "parcels" if they meet certain criteria. Goodbye 73 cents.

First-Class Mail Fact Sheet).

 

[Tom S.]

I did. Very small 2.1lbs, $12.95. That was on top of the 73 dollars of postage

Say WHAT??????

 

[GypsmJim]

Recently I had to send several packages. I checked all the rates and the USPS was the lowest of all. I don't get the complaints about their "high" prices.

What bothers me now is that many of the vendors on EBay are now using a "shipping partner". When you follow the tracking you see that the vendor gave it to the partner a day after the order, and then it sits with them for a week and a half before they turn it over to the USPS. THEN, they get it to my house in 2 days.

 

[Walkin Horse]

Let's get Amazon to run the post office and we could get free shipping.

 

[CalifEd]

Let's get Amazon to run the post office and we could get free shipping.

Send that suggestion to:
White House
C/O DOGE
Washington DC
next January.

 

[VaTom]

My local small post office has great folks. The problem here in Roanoke Va. is that USPS closed the sorting center in the valley. Now if you mail a letter to go across town or in the area, they truck it to Greensboro NC (2 hours away) for sorting then truck it back to Roanoke for additional handling and delivery. I guess some higher up figures it is more economical but burning diesel fuel for a semi to haul it 200 miles (out and back) doesn't make sense to me.

 

[LVSteve]

They have just "sold" Royal Mail in the UK to some oligarch type. I predict that in about 5-10 years a government will take it back. They have already taken back several ailing train franchises and the Defence Ministry has bought back the military living quarters it had farmed out some years ago to a contractor. Result of that was sloppy/non-existent maintenance and the UK military living leaky, damp homes.

Oh, and if you think our military does better with it's private contractors, check this out.

Navy's Cruiser Modernization A Lesson In How Not To Run Such A Program: GAO Report

The USPS is the least of our problems.

 

[Jack Flash]

When I started at the Post Office, a ways back in time, stamps were a nickel and shortly after went to 7 cents. Doom and apocalypse were predicted

That had to be 50, 60 years ago. All those years of inflation wreaked havoc on the dollar.

My general rule of thumb is take prices from back then and multiply them by 10, and that's probably too conservative considering what's gone on the last few years.

So 7 cents then is 70 cents now. About the same cost for a stamp when adjusted for inflation.

I remember talking to my father about my great-grandfather who had to live with one of his daughters due to his age and financial situation.

In my ignorance, I made some comment like "Gee, at least he has social security."

My dad scoffed "Yeah, every month he gets about enough to buy a pair of shoes."

Last I checked on this forum, there were no complaints that social security has gone way too high!

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

A reason why rates are going up is lack of volume. I used to go through a roll of stamps a month. Now with e mail A roll of stamps lasts several months. My default communication with clients is e mail. Try the letter-PDF and attach to e mail. Scan in the original and trash the hard copy. At the end of the case-client has electronic copies of everything. If they don't have a computer, they get charged extra for the snail mail approach and in the end I mail them a thumb drive with their file-they can go to office depot if they want a paper copy. Spell it all out in advance in the retainer contract so I'm covered with the bar association.
Snail mail is a means of last resort now if you are sending something. If hard copy originals with wet signatures is required to be sent it's with FedEx ot UPS. Post Office is working on a outdated business model that is doomed to failure