Postal

The postal price increases for marketing mail are driving down volume and, more importantly for the USPS, driving down profits. The postal price increases need to be rolled back. Basic economic principles apply to the pricing decisions for catalogs and direct mail: Catalogs (and direct mail) are very sensitive to the cost of mailing. More…

The postal price increases in the near term have proven to be a failure. The USPS modeling predicted that revenue would increase and demand wouldn't fall. However, the data tells a different story. In 2023, revenue of “marketing mail” decreased by $920 million and volume decreased by 7.7 billion pieces. The USPS produced and relied…

The U.S. Postal Service, fresh off several consecutive significant price hikes, will not include a surcharge this peak season for mailers and shippers sending items during the holidays. The announcement marks a departure from recent USPS strategy, which has increased its prices between early October and mid-January for the last few years. Postal management pointed…

The U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) reseller program, which has been around since 1992 to offer discounted shipping rates, is about to be shut down and will impact e-commerce sellers at the end of this month. For the uninitiated, USPS resellers act as outsourced sales representatives for the Postal Service that work with some tech providers…

The U.S. Postal Service filed a notice Wednesday of a temporary price hike for this year’s peak holiday season, which it said would help cover extra handling costs. The agency said the adjustment was approved by its board of governors and is now pending review by the Postal Regulatory Commission. The price increase would go…

A bill that aims to provide long sought-after financial stability for the United States Postal Service is heading to President Biden's desk after Congress passed it with bipartisan support Tuesday. The federal agency has been on the brink of insolvency for years, and received an additional blow beginning in 2020, when a series of operational…

In our role as advocate for catalog, online, direct and other retailers, one of our biggest challenges of the past few years has been in making all retailers understand why the U.S. Postal Service has been so badly in need of being reformed by Congress. Last year’s (and actually, on through the present) controversies involving…

The U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday it wants to raise the rates for sending packages during the holiday season, saying the increases would cover the anticipated heightened package and shipping demand, which typically brings extra handling costs for the agency. If approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission, the new rates would be in effect from…

The USPS’s announcement of new, higher postage rates for catalogers and all other mail is a mistake and should be rolled back. The attempt to boost revenue by raising rates may very well have the exact opposite effect: catalogers will drastically scale back on the number of books they put into the mail, suppressing USPS…

Postmaster General DeJoy should see the handwriting on the wall and gracefully step aside. Why? He had no plan to insure delivery of ballots during an election season. He whiffed on holiday deliveries and allowed UPS and FedEx to shift a backlog of packages over to the USPS. His plans to improve the Post Office…