Postal Letter

Does the US Postal Service cheat letter- and package-senders to give rate breaks to bulk mail senders?

I heard that the USPS uses high postage rates on first-class mail and packages, so that they can offer lower rates to commercial bulk-mailers. Are we ordinary citizens being used to subsidize the costs of by-mail advertising for rich corporations, who send us tons of unwanted catalogs that clutter up our mail boxes and just get thrown in the trash, un-looked-at? vollyballchic and justagrandma. There's a difference between a bulk order and a bulk mailing. When a store, such as Wal-Mart, makes a bulk purchase, it pays for delivery of the items from the manufacturer to their store, and naturally it is cheaper to buy a lot from one seller than the same amount from many sellers. But when someone mails a letter, he carries it to the post office at his own expense. Letter writers not only pay the costs of carrying the letter from their town's post office to another post office across the country (i.e., postage), they ALSO pay to get the letter TO their town's post office. There's no difference, then, between what it costs the post office to receive outgoing mail, whether bulk or letters. It's zero, in each case. What's really happening is that the post office has shifted the burden of corporate bulk mail advertising over to the non-corporate citizen who mails letters and packages. It would be better if corporations paid for their own advertising.

Public Comments

1. well even with the higher rates paid by first class the USPS is losing money.
2. Everything is cheaper in bulk. Wonder why Wal-Mart offers such cheap prices? It is because they can buy in bulk.
3. That's not cheating or duping, its cheaper for them to handle bulk rates than individual letters. A good many companies do that, buying in bulk is the big deal at a couple of Costcos, Sam's Club and BJ's Its no secret. Rates have been posted for years and that's always been right out there.