Postal Rates Going Up Again in April

[pwaldo]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110113/...s_postal_rates

The Postal Service said Thursday that most rates will increase April 17 under a formula that allows the agency to raise prices within the rate of inflation.

The post office said the 44-cent price of a first-class stamp won't change, but heavier letters will cost more. The basic rate is for the first ounce, and the price for each extra ounce will rise from 17 cents to 20 cents.

The Postal Service lost $8.5 billion last year despite cuts of more than 100,000 jobs and other reductions in recent years.

They were projected to lose $6 billion and found a way to go over that by a couple billion dollars.

[nebboy]

Ba - hum - bug

[duwal]

oh well, little more cost for postage to get my celebrity autographs. No biggie

[Star_Cards]

seems like if they are losing that much money every year the problem isn't simply having their rates too low. I thought they were toying with not delivering on saturdays to cut some costs. I doubt that would save a large percentage of their deficit but seems like they could find some other ways to save. The rate increase isn't too crazy, but they need to do something to figure out why they can cover their expenses.

[duane1969]

I think e-mail, texting and IMing have killed the USPS. Why take the time to write a letter, put it in an envelope, address it and then have to make a special stop at the P.O. to mail it when my e-mail is just a click away?

Also I have gone paperless for most of my bills so my mailbox gets filled with more junk mail and advertisements than anything else. I think that if I didn't have a mailbox I wouldn't be that bad off.

[duane1969]

seems like if they are losing that much money every year the problem isn't simply having their rates too low. I thought they were toying with not delivering on saturdays to cut some costs. I doubt that would save a large percentage of their deficit but seems like they could find some other ways to save. The rate increase isn't too crazy, but they need to do something to figure out why they can cover their expenses.

I think this would actually help a lot. My local P.O. has two in-city mail carriers, 4 or 5 rural route carriers and a person who works the counter. That is 7 or 8 employees for an area with a population of around 4000.

If those 7 or 8 employees worked 52 less days a year at, let's say $10 an hour for arguments sake (we know they make more), that is a savings of $29k to $33k per year for just one little town. Even if they only did it in small towns (say 20,000 of the smallest towns...the census says there are over 25,000 towns in the US) that is a savings of $580 million, and obviously I am lowballing on salary, and generalizing on number of employees since most towns are bigger than my little piece of heaven.

I think that only delivering to the largest of cities on Saturday (LA, NYC, DC, etc) could easily save in excess of $1 billion.

[Star_Cards]

I know people get valuable mail every day of the week, but most businesses could do without getting mail on saturday and I think individuals could too. I'm not sure if I'm the norm or not, but there's about only once a week where I get any sort of mail that's not an ad or something.

as far as email and paperless billing killing the USPS, I'm not sure that is the problem. Sure the internet has brought change in letter, bill, and other single stamp mailings, but the internet has also brought along lots of others ways people use the USPS. Most businesses around the world never had a mail order business before the internet. The thing that took away letter and bill mailings has brought a whole new range of package shipping. Ever since I got on ebay and half.com I've spent way more at the USPS than I did before. Businesses all around the world and individuals have done the same. I'd bet that they have way more parcels than they did before the internet. I'd say the business is there, they just haven't figured out how to balance things.

[bouncer]

I know people get valuable mail every day of the week, but most businesses could do without getting mail on saturday and I think individuals could too.

I agree with this completely. I typically only pickup my mail 3 days a week. I'm to lazy to walk down to my mailbox. I would be fine with the PO cutting my mail to 4 days a week to save money. I know on the flip side the carries will be taking paycuts because there working less.

as far as email and paperless billing killing the USPS, I'm not sure that is the problem. .

I believe this is the number one factor in killing the USPS. I'm not sure how old you are, but growing up I used to send an average 8-10 checks a month to cover my bills. Now millions of people use online bill payments with there banks and this is a huge loss in revenue.

[pwaldo]

seems like if they are losing that much money every year the problem isn't simply having their rates too low. I thought they were toying with not delivering on saturdays to cut some costs. I doubt that would save a large percentage of their deficit but seems like they could find some other ways to save. The rate increase isn't too crazy, but they need to do something to figure out why they can cover their expenses.

They were but I honestly think they will NEVER do it until the economy gets better. Obama needs people getting hired and not fired. It would save a ton of money but all of those job losses would hurt the economy and the government isn't going to do that right now.

[CYmarlins]

online bill pay has deffinately changed things, a couple years ago i used to send a couple checks in the mail to pay off bills. now i don't send any, since i can pay any bill online now.

i personally like getting my mail on saturdays, but if it helps to cut cost i'd be fine with getting mail just 5 days a week.

btw, that is a heck of a loss for the post office! wowowow!