A surprising number of household goods are considered hazardous materials (hazmat), and new USPS fees taking effect next week could blindside some sellers.
Essential oils, nail polish (and nail polish remover), perfumes and colognes, hand sanitizer, inks, stains and varnishes, hairspray, and electronics with a lithium battery are among the products listed by the Department of Transportation as posing a significant safety risk while being transported.
On July 12, USPS will begin charging a $7.50 hazmat handling fee – and it will charge a $50 noncompliance fee for packages not properly declared and labeled. Note the USPS never allows explosives or metal mercury (such as mercury thermometers, mercury barometers, mercury blood pressure monitors) to be mailed.
As Pitney Bowes said, the new hazmat non-compliance fee going into effect next week is the “$50 mistake you don’t want to make.”
Among other rate changes going into effect on July 12 are higher dim-weight rates (USPS will lower the dimensional weight divisor from 166 to 139 across all domestic competitive products); and USPS is eliminating ounce-based rate differentiation for published Commercial USPS Ground Advantage prices.
Sellers should expect another rate increase to hit in October, just in time for the holiday shopping season.
Update 7/7/2026: The $7.50 fee is for Priority Mail, but the $50 noncompliance fee applies to all commercial packages including Ground Advantage, per Federal Register:
“Two new fees related to the processing of packages containing Hazardous Materials will be introduced. A HazMat Handling Fee for USPS Ground Advantage will be established but set at $0 initially, with the option for the fee to increase in the future. Also, a HazMat Noncompliance Fee of $50 will be applied to any competitive commercial product when Hazardous Materials are detected but the customer did not appropriately declare and label them.”
Wow that’s going to be interesting, plus don’t you also have to put in dimension for all packages too, thought I saw that somewhere. I hope there’s a list on what’s suppose to be reported. I bet alot of sellers will be pulling items, $7.50 is pretty steep.
DO NOT assume the advice you see on YouTube videos is correct!
The sole purpose of these authors is to get viewers on their YouTube so the channel can be monetized by Youtube and so the authors can earn other income from affiliate links and directly selling you various goods, services and subscription training courses on selling online.
Wether or not the information presented is correct is beside the point to many of these authors. Almost all of these so called “experts” will remove comments that criticize their information, even when you provide information proving them completely wrong. I’ve never seen any of these so called experts publish a correction of their false information or correct videos.
Take for instance the author of the channel ShedFlips and ImgonnaPackIt. They posted a video of how to package bulk nail polish orders on eBay. It not only violated common sense on multiple levels it violated USPS packaging and labeling rules. Yet their response to my comments were to delete them and just mention in a future video that they had been apparently packaging the nail polish orders wrong. No correction of the previous video, which will continue to mislead people for years to come.
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“electronics with a lithium”
This can be a little deceptive based upon what people think are “electronics”. Many people might think this only includes such things as smartphones, but this can include a wide variety of other items with rechargeable batteries such as shavers, small handheld garden trimmers, power tools. Many of these devices have internal hardwired batteries as opposed to the external battery packs commonly used on power tools or the wafer thin removable batteries in smartphones.
The best thing you can do is first search online for a MSDS sheet for the product, which will list the product hazards, how its classified and so forth. Next, track down USPS shipping documentation on the particular type of hazardous materials the product contains might contain.
The monetary fines above are the least of your worries. Improperly packaging and shipping these items can lead to the injury and deaths of others. Batteries improperly shipped via a air carrier; for instance, have led to onboard fires that have led to crashed of planes where there were additional casualties on the ground.
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Back in the mid 1990s a wholesale of office supplies and furniture, as well as janitorial supplies, I worked for was charged $5.00 a case by UPS for each case of Gojo hand sanitizer. These were cases of rubber bladders that were used as refills in public bathroom hand wash dispensers. Because they contained a trace amount of alcohol, which aided in drying the hands, they were considered hazardous. As the UPS clerk I need to specially mark each case as well as enter them into the daily pickup log. We did at least 400 packages per day just for UPS, with majority of our items being out by our own trucks. Adjusted for inflation that is $10.99 in 2026 dollars.
Will sales platforms be collecting this fee alongside shipping charges? (Or, in other words, do I need to go update all my hazmat listings so I don’t have to cover this myself?)
Found out that’s for priority mail and express, not Ground advantage
Thanks, I’ve updated the post to clarify. (The $7.50 fee is for Priority Mail, but the $50 noncompliance fee applies to all commercial packages including Ground Advantage, per Federal Register.)
How will they know what I am shipping?
Oh, THEY WON’T!
Is anyone paying attention to this:
“…and USPS is eliminating ounce-based rate differentiation for published Commercial USPS Ground Advantage prices.”
I thought I read that all weights below 15.99 ounces will be charged at the current 15.99 ounce rate. Now we know how USPS is going to pay for those lower rates on the 3 to 5 pound packages. It is on the backs of lightweight items.
I ran just the difference for a Click & Ship 4 ounce package. Here’s the change:
Zone 1: Increase will be from $5.50 to $6.93 ($1.43 more)
Zone 8: Increase will be from $6.36 to $8.40 ($2.40 more)
The USPS is out of control!
The company’s that have a contract with USPS won’t see the change, ebay just made announcement it will still have the ounce base rate with ebay’s labels. If you sell on ebay but buy postage at the PO, you will see that increase. I’m pretty it won’t be long before ebay switches over
This will affect These new Commercial Pricing rates will affect shipments to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and military addresses, any non-continental destinations
guess its time to block all them