The USPS Shipping rate hike announced on Wednesday is bad news for online sellers, and that's not all! There is a new $1.50 fine, and if sellers are not very careful, they may blindly ship packages.

The USPS press release does not describe all the changes-at first glance, these changes seem to apply only to Priority Mail "retail" rates (the cost of buying postage at the post office window). But the commercial rates available to sellers who buy postage online are also increasing.

USPS is adding new fees-if the seller does not enter accurate information about the packages affected by the severity and other fees for packages that exceed the sorting requirements, the fees will increase.

Although some sellers may think this is a good measure to deter shippers from deliberately underpaying, the cost of making mistakes is high.

Priority Mail retail prices will increase by an average of 4.5%. Commercial base prices will increase by an average of 2.7%. Please note that the commercial base price will on average reflect a 17.9% discount off the retail price.

Overall, FCPS prices will increase by an average of 7.6%, of which FCPS-Retail prices will increase by 8.4%, and FCPS-Commercial prices will increase by 7.4%.

The Postal Supervision Commission provides a complete report as a PDF file on its website.

In order to prevent anyone from forgetting, USPS is slowing down the speed of mail while raising interest rates, including plans to slow down FCPS (First Class Parcel Service) "after the holiday shipping season."

China will review the price plan before it goes into effect on January 9, 2022.

The document also includes pricing to support USPS Connect, which is "a set of affordable package delivery solutions for postal services. If well received, it is expected to be launched in 2022."

In addition, after 2 years of market testing, the post office requested the establishment of a permanent Plus One product, "This will provide companies with additional marketing options to contact local customers by mail."

If this situation persists longer, I will switch to UPS. The price seems to be approaching all the time. At least UPS can deliver packages.

In addition to our price increase just in October, will the price increase in January?

Half of my packages are now transferred to UPS or Fedex (Smart Post). I would love to know how Amazon’s new shipping plan will participate in this competition, and whether it will make a difference. The 1.50 cost of "Dimensions" is incomprehensible. I have to talk to my postman to see what is going on.

Wooooow, the holiday price increase has been big, big, big, and now January looks like another uppercut. Especially the first class is more expensive and the service is slower. I think maybe I will not provide this service to my customers from next year.

Maybe I read it wrong, but when they raised interest rates seasonally, they said that the next rate hike would not happen until August 2022, and then they would raise interest rates twice a year. When many small sellers withdraw, raising interest rates will not bring them much benefit. My worth of selling is almost running out.

I left UPS a few years ago because of poor handling which caused too much damage (I packaged it well) and dim pricing. A friend told me that I should consider Fed-Ex, but the logistics is too inconvenient and I don’t want to pay the daily pickup fee.

This is why I mainly ship via UPS now. For anything over 8 ounces, they are cheaper than USPS. I don't pay for the pickup, I just send the package to the local UPS store. UPS will handle my package carefully, but USPS will not. The actual delivery time of UPS Ground and USPS Priority mail is the same, and in many cases UPS Ground is faster. What forced me to deal was USPS’s 30% package destruction rate. I am using USPS boxes and they are discarded. UPS should deliver it to your door, and that's what they do. With another interest rate hike, UPS will get almost all of my business-even the apartments that used to be delivered via First Class Mail parcels.

USPS does not care if they damage your package. Their work is guaranteed.

In the PDF document, the following statement is made: "The manual handling fee when the size of the package exceeds the sorting requirements." Does this mean that the USPS Priority box that is larger than the USPS changed to a new box will incur extra due to "Exceeding the sorting size" cost? How and when are fees charged? Will you apply for the recipient to pay the postage payable? Who decides what is "exceeding sorting requirements"? This new rule is very vague and may allow the dictator’s post office clerk to start increasing fees when they don’t understand and/or misunderstand the rule.

Good question, Airbrake, I have a question to ask USPS.

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