Rates for some key USPS shipping services including Priority Mail and First Class Package Service are going up significantly on January 21, 2018 (assuming they’re approved by the PRC), and according to Postal Mag, those rates had been approved in 2016 despite not having been announced publicly until last Friday.
Postal Mag says the last remaining Postal Governor signed several post-dated orders before his term expired in December 2016 – “Currently there are no postal governors because the Senate has not confirmed any new governors in a couple of years,” it wrote. (And as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “any future increases would require board approval, which can’t happen until the Trump administration nominates members and the Senate approves them.” A precarious situation indeed.)
Postal Mag wrote, “The (2018) rate increases were officially announced by the USPS on October 6th, 2017, but the planned hikes were known in detail since at least December 2016.” It said the “Dead Hand” clause the Postal Governor used is legal and “no intent of wrongdoing is implied.”
But while it says the Postal Service deserves credit for planning at least a year ahead, “the post-dated documents may not sit well with mailers impacted by rate decisions made in 2016 that affect rates in 2018.”
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Any increase to first class international is another nail in the coffin for international sales…
I quit doing international sales a long time ago when the chinese who purchased my items started to knock them off on ebay at some ridiculously penny price. Did they get around that? sure – they started using freight forwarders. how’d I get around that? went into paypal and refused to accept international credit cards. If I don’t ship internationally why would I accept an international credit card that paypal charges me extra for all the while helping to unemploy myself? Here’s the deal – I need to hang onto my job. I can’t live on anther bowl of rice – I need to make the mortgage payment on the house. Wish you’d address this issue of the chinese killing our jobs on the open format for discussion. Am I losing sales? Yup – lost 6 this month already. I simply request that the buyer pay using the USD thru paypal. They have all declined so far. Not one paid. I don’t care. It means my item doesn’t show up on ebay and undercut me. Let them start from scratch from my picture and hire a carver to create the mold. That’ll take them awhile and their too lazy to do it.