The cost of sending Priority Mail packages will rise by about 3.2% on average beginning January 19, 2025. The generally well liked USPS Ground Advantage service will rise an average of 3.9 percent, the Postal Service announced on Friday.
As usual, it’s difficult to break down how the rate change will impact shipping since the Postal Service provides across-the-board averages in its announcements. For example, the USPS doesn’t even break down Priority Mail versus Priority Mail Express – so sellers who exclusively use Priority Mail (not PME) might face something higher or lower than the 3.2% average cited in the release. Shippers must go digging into spreadsheets on the USPS website.
Further complicating things for sellers who purchase shipping labels online – many marketplaces and shipping services offer rates through USPS Connect eCommerce, which is the program that allows platforms and marketplaces to offer better discounted USPS shipping rates to their merchants than the Commercial rates (which themselves are cheaper than Retail rates, which is the cost of buying a shipping label at the Post Office window).
For example, the USPS instituted a peak season rate hike that runs from October 6 through January 19, 2025, but online sellers saw a rate change beginning October 27 because the USPS doesn’t sync its regular rate changes with Connect eCommerce rates.
Sellers on marketplaces such as eBay and Etsy will get a double whammy, as those companies charge commission-plus-payment-processing fees on the total transaction amount, including shipping. But for eBay and Etsy, it’s a built-in rate increase 2 – 3 times a year without having to announce a fee increase.
The USPS will not raise the rates of Mailing services (dominant rates) in January, as previously announced.
While costs are a big factor in which shipping carrier sellers use, reliable delivery and package-tracking are extremely important to online sellers, as a reader wrote in Friday’s letter to the editor.
In the meantime, the USPS published the results of its fiscal year ended September 30 last week. CBS News’ headline was dismal: “After two “Forever” postage stamp hikes, the USPS lost nearly $10 billion in 2024.”
As your earlier story, USPS no longer competitive , raising prices doesn’t mean increase money. ALL the increases yearly for the last 8 years and fixing the retirement plan, how can they still be losing that much money every year. My shipping costs have more then double in the last 4 yrs ago.
I can’t fathom with the USPS leadership fails to understand that continuing to raise rates sky high just leaves the PO uncompetitive and drives away business. No wonder losses go up in sync with rate increases. To quote Homer Simpson, D’oh!
1) charge the buyers more in postage to offset the hike
2) raise your items price to offset the hike
3) change the way you ship if you can- bubble mailers and no more boxes
4) adjust the shipping weights accordingly
There’s only so many increases you can do before items don’t sell anymore.I’ve cut 50% of inventory I had 4 yrs ago, just don’t buy to sell them anymore.
The games of making it look like USPS lost a lot of money continues as a huge majority of losses are non cash expenses on paper. USPS had a non cash expense of over $5.5 billion for retirement health care funding. USPS paid more than $3.2 billion for workers comp do to discount rate changes. Total non-cash component of workers’ compensation expense (benefit) (non-GAAP) $ 2,164 billion. USPS used only $62 million in cash for operating expenses in 2024 vs $2.5 Billion in 2023. USPS spent over $1.2 billion more on equipment purchases in 2024 than 2023.
read up at
https://about.usps.com/what/financials/10k-reports/fy2024.pdf
Pay more, get less! Seems to be the norm for the last several years now.