50c Stamp Increase... They Still Don't Get It.

It's a bulk discount. Most of these companies send in huge volumes, millions upon millions of pieces at a time, that they qualify for a discount. If you want to send out a million pieces of mail at once, I'm sure you'd qualify too.

It seems that over the last three or four years that I've gotten less "junk mail" and fewer catalogs than I remember getting. This is part of the reason the USPS is looking to raise rates, because the junk mail and catalogs paid for a lot of the overhead. Now that business is using mail less and less, the individual postal customer is going to pay more and more.

I have a little more radical plan to cut USPS expenses. Deliver mail to half the customers on M-W-F, to the other half on T-Th-Sat. Use some of the savings to STAFF post offices, so I don't walk in and find 15 people in line and ONE clerk on duty. I can't think of a single piece of mail that causes a crisis if it has to wait ONE extra day.

Something else that really ticks me off, some moron somewhere decided that post offices should process passports too. I have had plenty of opportunities to time the maddening result, and I can report that doing ONE passport application takes about as much time as servicing 14 regular customers in line. I don't care how much revenue the USPS gains from passports, this is an idiotic idea which infuriates the rapidly-thinning customer base.

We have a Federal Building in our city, send all those passport customers down there, where they have trained staff, chairs, and restrooms, especially since you only apply for a passport once every ten years.

I have written endless complaints to my Congressman and Senator, I can't even get a reply, much less a grudging understanding of the problem.

Maybe our biggie government really doesn't want its inconvenient red-haired stepchild (USPS) to succeed -- otherwise, they could auction off postal delivery rights and use the money to fund other stupid, bizarre, political-payoff schemes.

Connie - it is merely a proposal - it has not been approved and thus not date. It will depend on what bills the House and Sennett pass as both are looking at bills aimed at USPS (part of the mess USPS is in comes from earlier bills).

I am so surprised to see so many Americans complaining about a few cents.
I thought they were wealthy and generous people?
What has gone wrong over there?
Or should it not be asked by me?

I think people feel the problem is that the raising of the postal rates doesn't really solve anything, they are complaining about the philosophy behind the 5¢ instead of the 5¢ themselves. All it really does is it makes other non philatelist people think "oh the postal system is charging too much, I could just send an email for free." you see, email and texting will practically kill the postal system because now people don't write letters- they just send emails.. Now, if there was a charge for emails or similar things; say 75¢ each people would think "oh, the USPS is a much cheaper alternative". Americans are as far as I can tell decently generous (or at least the ones from my town are). However, wealthy? Not for the most part.

In UK after another massive hike in April the cheapest letter rate is 50p = 77c. If however you want the recipient to get it before they die of old age First Class is 60p = 93c. And on no account send a Large Letter because that will be 90p = $1.39.

Of course even the few people left in Britain who can still write (as opposed to being able 2 txt)have stopped sending letters. A friend of mine in the Post Office says that the only thing still keeping them going is ebay, because sellers are happy to use them since the extortionate costs are being paid by the buyers.

Maybe ebay should buy the Post Offices.

Yeah, but ebay would make you use click n' ship with tracking.

Let me offer a bit of friendly advice from a generous but not so wealthy American...I believe it is much better for all concerned to stick with discussions of a philatelic nature on this forum.