MTFCA Forum

Just a heads up...
EVERYTHING went up as of Saturday.
Stamps are now $0.55 (I bought a couple books before).
Small flat rate envelope, $6.70 is now $7.35
Med went up to $14.35
Lg is now $19.95

Not a huge deal, but something to keep in mind when shipping.

Dave, I was interested in your re-action to having pre purchased some 55c stamps. Presumably that was the standard rate for letters. Compare that with our $1.00 Additionally, If you were here, you would have to buy additional stamps to make the old values up to the new. It means there is no advantage to stocking up at the old price. Stocking up does have advantages when purchasing pre-paid satchels.

Allan from down under.

Allen, here we have "forever" stamps. Good for whatever the price is. I paid $0.50 for two books (40 stamps) and they're good for $0.55 now.
I really don't mail that much with stamps, so I should be good till Christmas at least

It's still a great value considering.

Ruxstel24 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 05, 2019 10:55 pm

Just a heads up...
EVERYTHING went up as of Saturday.
Stamps are now $0.55 (I bought a couple books before).
Small flat rate envelope, $6.70 is now $7.35
Med went up to $14.35
Lg is now $19.95

Not a huge deal, but something to keep in mind when shipping.

Dave, I will have to respectfully disagree about "not a huge deal". The increase represents over a 10% increase in prices. I don't know when I EVER had a 10% salary increase to cover inflation of this rate, even groceries are increasing the same rate or more, either by direct price increases or the ever present REDUCTION in quantity in the package WITH an increase in price. My pension never goes up more than 3% for C.O.L., and currently is frozen for the next 3 years. Gonna be rough keeping up with prices and of course the venerable health insurance premiums. Just saying!

In 2006, a Republican congress passed a law that requires the Post Office to fund retirement benefits on a 75 year horizon. So the Post Office is putting away retirement money for people who haven't been born yet. The move was unprecedented. This causes the Post Office to start every fiscal year $5 billion in the hole. The idea was to force a bankruptcy of the Post Office and throw the business to their criminal friends on Wall Street. Ironic because the Constitution mandates a Post Office. If that happens, a lot of people will lose postal service altogether and the prices will certainly go higher (think FedEx and UPS delivering your mail). As an antidote to this self inflicted wound, some are recommending the Post Office provide services as a national bank.

I was looking at a $15.00 die for a hole punch being sold by a Co in Ill. It would have been about 4 OZ to ship. The lowest cost option was UPS at $17.55 per their postage calculator.

The increase represents over a 10% increase in prices.

This is not the highest percentage increase ever, but at 5¢ it's the biggest increase in actual price. A few times since 1863 there have actually been a few price reductions. The most recent was in 2017 when the price of a stamp went down by 2¢, from 49¢ to 47¢.

A USPS Large Flat Rate Box was $13.95 in 2009.
The new 2019 rate is $19.95.

This represents an overall incease of 43% in ten years, or an average of 4.3% per year.

I don’t like any price increase, but to me it just looks like the normal cost of doing business.

Health insurance is 300% what it was ten years ago....

Economics discussions have no interest for me. Price increases are usually the result of someone's greed or poor planning, but I end up paying for it.

All I know is that a small part that I paid ten bucks for costs as much to ship. At the rate they're going, it's going to be cheaper to drive there and pick it up myself......

By the way, when the USPS first started their flat rate box program, the largest box cost something like $11.00..........

Isn't it still less then UPS and FedEx?

Keep in mind that for sending a simple package there may be four (or more) ways to send it with widely varying costs. In addition, if you sold the item on EBAY or send it through PayPal, there are special corporate discounts.

As an example, I sent a set of triple gears from Illinois to California a couple of weeks ago. The gears fit nicely in a small box. To send that box by priority mail (the old parcel post), would cost over $20. My other options would be a flat rate box at either about $8 or $12, or a regional rate box at about $11. I finally decided to put the box into a flat rate envelope and ship it that way, for a little over $7.

You gotta learn how to play the game.