Just so everybody knows. Double-check your postage before sending those bills tomorrow!
…blasted postmaster general…
Isn’t this the 3rd or 4th raise in postage in as many years?
Tripler
Who are they using for accounting, Arthur Andersen?
Rats. I meant to get my Christmas cards out yesterday.
It’s not exactly easy to plan for things like anthrax attacks and having to buy new equipment to sterilize mail, not to mention all the lost revenue associated with the Sept. 11 attack and the anthrax attacks.
Maybe there could be 2 postage rates. 1 for residential mail, like letters & bills, and another for junk mail (Spam).
Besides, the cost of ammunition keeps going up…
d&r
There already is, and I believe that rate has increased as well. The amount of ‘junk mail’ that the USPS delivers helps keep first class rates down somewhat.
Yeah, please think of my husband’s needs when he has to supply himself for working on his letter-carrying route each day; their uniform allowance doesn’t cover it for some reason.
(Seriously, though, other things increase in price each year and yet it seems that the USPS gets a disproportionate amount of ire over something rather cheap in price.)
And it when it all comes down to it, it still blows me away that I can have a birthday card for my brother and have somebody take it directly to his house in Florida from my home in Chicago and it only costs me $0.37.
I’ve had roommates who probably wouldn’t have taken out the damn garbage for that much money.
Goddamnit, I just bought stamps on Monday. :mad:
How does e-mail affect the cost of postage? I seem to remember hearing something along the lines of “E-mail has cut into postage profits, so we have to raise the rates to make up the difference.” If that is true, thenit seems to me that the use of e-mail will continue to increase and the Post Office will lose money in the long run.
On the other hand, e-mail may be an incentive for the P.O. to keep prices as low as possible so as not to lose more customers.
FWIW, I use e-mail almost exclusively to communicate. Bills and birthday/holiday cards still go by snail mail, and the USPS is my choice for mailing parcels. (Take that, UPS! ) But aside from cards, the only things I regularly send by mail are bills. If I took the trouble to look into it, I could probably set up electronic payments.
Johnny, there was a whole Seinfeld episode about Kramer discovering the horrifying truth that there was no longer any need for the post office…the postmaster general had some choice words for him.
Duly noted.
However, with the more recent raises in postage over the past few years (prior to 9/11, mind you), this seems to be less of an antiterrorism effort than one might think.
Besides, IIRC, in one of my briefings I’m pretty sure I heard that FEMA and the DOJ were funding a lot of the interim AT/FP (Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection) measures.
Tripler
Unless I am mistaken . . .
Thanks for pointing that out, Denise, I didn’t know that was the case.
I’m not bothered at all by the minimal cost of mailing a letter. As interface2x pointed out, .37 is a great deal for door to door delivery. It just seems that every 6 months there is a rate change. I wish they’d just bump it to 50 cents and be done with it for a few years.
Today’s the day! It now costs 37 cents to mail a letter.
(For our Canadian friends: up where you are: it’s still 48 cents to mail a letter. That’s only 32 cents American!)
Oh man am I glad you posted this - I’m sittin’ here doin’ the bills, <sheepishly>[sub]and I was unaware[/sub]</sheepishly>.
:: note to self ::
Buy lifetime supply of 1 cent stamps.
:rolleyes:
Didn’t they jusr bump it to 34 cents last autumn?
Put me in the “raise it to 50 cents and have done with it for a few years” camp.
Of course, I recently ran out of stamps, so I don’t have to buy any three cent stamps…it worked out well, this time.
I was almost out of stamps, so I said heck with it and got the new ones. They need some better designs, though, since I’m getting sick of flags.
Robin
I liked the old engraved designs they used to have. I’m not a stamp collector, but I did pick up some neato triangular stamps a few years ago. The design was engraved instead of just printed like a magazine. Much more interesting to look at. For mailing bills, I don’t really care what the design is and I like the non-lick stamps; but it would be nice to have pretty lick-to-stick stamps just for a change of pace.