Price Of Stamps Goes Up This Weekend - 49 Cents

There were some other interesting facts about the losses.
Tom

Doesn't matter to me, I don't use the postal service more than a handful of times per year anyhow.

What I find interesting is that the USPS website does a very poor job in communicating what the new postage rates are (at least so far).

If you go to their website (www.usps.com) you can click on "New Prices: January 26, 2014" but it merely links you to a whole series of spreadsheets that show the new rates for many, many services, most of which are not even applicable to the average consumer.

Unless you know to advance down to "First Class Mail - Retail" and click on the spreadsheet link, does it even make mention of the new rate for postcards (34-cents) or for the Non-Machinable Surcharge (21-cents).

Bottom line: It's not very user-friendly for the average consumer.

I went to usps.com and clicked on New Prices and this is what I saw at the top of the page.

I've seen that...but it doesn't reference the new postcard rate (34c) or the additional ounce/non-machinable surcharge rate (21c). You have to dig into the databases to find those prices.

Maybe they'll update their website after the new rates take effect, but as I explained earlier, for now the information is hard to find.

I find there website at best to be inadequate.

Here's another thought:

I'm sure not the first to think about this, but for cover collectors it seems we can order from SFS a very nice combination of patriotic-themed stamps that will total the new first class 49-cent rate that will be especialy nice for pictorial cancels and the like:



It seems to me a cancellation would show up so much better on a cover with this stamp combination than the upcoming Star Spangled Banner "Forever" stamp that has a black background and will not lend itself well to special postmarks.