Postage Increase

Yes, there will soon be a postage increase.  It will happen on January 21, 2024.

First Class Forever stamps are increasing from $0.66 to $0.68.  Postcards are increasing from $0.51 to $0.53.

But Marketing Mail (what the rest of us call Bulk Mail) is a different story.

Some of those rates are going up only $0.004!  Yes, that’s 4/10ths of a penny.  And some are actually going down $0.023.

The First Class postage increase is always the one that’s the most painful.  That’s true especially if you work for a company that has to send out statements or other items that have to be mailed at First Class rates.  We all grumble about that increase.  Did you buy a bunch of Forever stamps before 12/31 to decrease this year’s cost?  Remember you can use Forever stamps forever with no increased postage.

Here’s some stuff to counter our grumbling:

• USPS doesn’t use our tax dollars.  They are the only self sufficient US government body.  They did get some money from congress during covid but everything was weird doing covid.
• Our postage is among the most affordable in the world.
• Our postal system is among the most reliable in the world.
• Did you know you can send a letter to Guam with just a Forever stamp on it?  Guam’s about in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and it’s 5800 miles from Oregon but because it’s a US Territory it’ll cost you the same to send a letter to Guam as sending a letter to your neighbor next door.
• USPS works hard to accurately deliver every piece of mail.  The stats on accuracy are always well above 90%.
• You can mail almost anything.  Did you know you could mail a pineapple (without a box)?  If you can work a way to get the labels to stick on the pineapple, and you’re willing to pay a surcharge because it can’t be handled by the machines, you can mail a pineapple.
• Most USPS employees stay throughout their working years.  You can tell a lot about an organization by how it treats it’s employees.
• The system used to distribute the mail is really, really smart.  I won’t go into the details because it takes a bit of study to get how it works.  But take my word for it that the USPS system is really smart.
• USPS handles 44% of the entire world’s mail!  We’re one out 195 countries in the world and we handle just under half of the world’s mail.  And on the most part, it is handled efficiently.  I think that’s pretty impressive.
• Don’t listen to news reports about the postal system.  They try to make it look bad and unstable and likely to close down any second.  That is way, way, way far from the truth.
• Listen to someone like me who has worked closely with USPS for over 30 years.