October 24, 2016

The USPS recently gave a webinar overview of its announced price changes for January 22, 2017. We are providing the slides here.

We have said that every mailer needs to check your own mail, in concert with your mail service providers, to ascertain the exact impact of these price changes. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to review the slides to see the overall picture of what the USPS is trying to achieve.

Even though the overall average price increase is slightly under one percent, the range of impacts is there. While in general, the range is quite a bit less than the last rate case in 2015, there is still significant variation among types of mail.

For example, the Postal Service says, “On average, large Nonprofits mailers will see changes in their [Periodicals] prices from 0.9 percent increases to declines of 3.3 percent.” This range appears to reverse some of the large increases from last time. Of course, it’s not averages that customers care about as much as the prices they actually pay.

So we again urge nonprofit mailers to check on the actual impact on your mail, and let us know if you see anything out of the ordinary.