Post Offices Running Out Of Christmas Stamps?

The link below gives a report of several post offices in the vicinity of Chicago where Christmas Stamps have become in such short supply, that customers waiting 45 minutes in line were met with disappointment when they discovered Christmas Stamps were no longer available.

Considering there were 400 million Holy Family Stamps printed and a whopping 750 million Santa & Sleigh Stamps printed for 2012, there should have been no excuse for such poor distribution.

But on the bright side, if the USPS is, in fact, experiencing a 20% increase in mailing and shipping services compared to last year, they must moving in the right direction.




http://southtownstar.suntimes.com/n...offices.html

Severna Park, MD (21146) has been out of the Santa & Sleigh for at least a week, perhaps longer. They are selling both of last year's booklets which one clerk insisted were this year's stamps (nevermind the date on them).

Had the same problem at my post office. They hung a sign on the exterior door explaining that they were all out of Christmas stamps. They'd even exhausted last year's booklets. Would seem that USPS should do a forced distribution of Christmas stamps to all post offices based on the annual volume of each one's annual sales. I'd think it would be far better to have too many than too few as in this case.

My post office, Douglasville, GA has been out since almost three weeks. Austell, GA, a very small post office still had a stack of them last Friday.

Peter

I overheard a woman and clerk talking about the various Christmas stamps selling out. Sounds like they were also selling last year's stamps, and those sold out, too.

BUT, in a couple of years we will be reading about how they printed too many of some other design!!

The local postal workers that order the stamps for there PO's needs to order 100 stamps instead of 50 stamps that the head office sent in their memo.:)

Add Charlotte NC to the list. A lot of people were using New Mexico Statehood stamps on their Holiday cards!

I had to settle for love stamps for my Christmas cards. What a bummer.

For once our little post office had my choice of the Holy Family or the alternative !!

My local post office had Santa & Sleigh, the Holy Family a few older types AND giving out fresh baked holiday cookies!

I had to mail a heavier package to Cyprus thus I got to use one of those weird new Waves of Color $5 stamps.

WT: The 20% increase in use would explain the sellout, not poor distribution.

I guess this is some good news to us stamp collectors. I thought it was odd that there were only Holy family stamps for Christmas stamps left at my local post post office last week. I cut a lot of christmas card envelopes this time of year and I'm seeing a lot of older Christmas stamps and other stamps as the envelopes got closer to Christmas. Interesting in the news article about the post offices being open on Sundays. I think that's a great idea.