Price for first class mail will drop from $0.49 to $0.47 on 4/10/16. Price for an additional ounces will drop from $0.22 to $0.21.
If you are a large enough organization to have a shipping department or a staff person who keeps up on all the minutia of shipping, then you already knew about this change. If you are a small organization like me, you may not have noticed. Since I just caught wind of it yesterday, I’m sure there are lots of other people who don’t know about it yet.
(Cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update, because I’m guessing lots of other small CPA firms haven’t noticed the change.)
A surcharge was put in place two years ago, in January 2014, equal to the reductions mentioned above. The surcharge was designed to catch up for the revenue drop during the great recession. The regulator for postal prices (Postal Regulatory Commission) ordered the surcharge added in 2014 and ordered it to be dropped this month.
After a search, I could not find the new price list at the USPS website, so I’m left with a guess that the flat envelope rates will change by the same amounts.
Additional info:
4/7 – Wall Street Journal – Price of US Postage Stamp Going Down 2 Cents – Total volume of mail delivery has dropped 27% since 2007. First-class mail, which is the most profitable product, dropped 35% since 2007.
Article reminds us there was a 9.5% rate increase for parcels in January. That one caught me by surprise. As did this drop.
I am to the point where I have to check prices before using USPS for anything other than a 1 ounce first-class envelope. In addition to slowing delivery time in Southern California, does anyone else think that pricing volatility represents one more drop in the quality of service?
4/7 – United States Postal Service – Forced USPS Price Reduction Begins This Weekend – Official press release tells us this price cut was forced on USPS involuntarily and it will cost them $2 billion a year in lost revenue.