@lalahsghost:
Thank you.

The DMA makes no money off of the mailings. The customer is the ONLY one in the food chain that would save any money. The rest of us make money on volume, the more the customer mails, the more we get paid.

The DMA is providing this service as a convenience to consumers. It costs money to provide the service so they charge for it. If you like, you can deal with the individual list companies, or you can just pony up a buck and have someone else do it for you.

I hope that answers your question, if not feel free to post another.

If your clients don't want to send ads to people who won't be buying, why do they charge a fee to take you off their mailing lists? "Thank you for saving us money by telling us not to send you junk mail, that will be $1 please, check or charge?" WTF

In addition to which, how about better APCs that can print postage in any amount and for any service, not just $1 and over? And how about allowing same over the internet--would love to print out postage at home w/o having to send Priority or FCM+service.

for years they have increased their rates at a speed outpacing inflation. it's about time this happened.

Sounds like you have waited in line at the post office one too many times. My suggestion is to find a little out of the way post office to do your business at. ;)

In all fairness the post office moves an incredible amount of mail daily, much more than UPS, Fed EX and all the others combined. If you think about it, the post office delivers to at least 80% of addresses in the country on any given day and they do that very well. What percentage of the addresses do third party carriers deliver to? 10%, 20%?

Inflation takes into account the price increases on ALL goods and services. The post office like other businesses do not use all goods and services. Fuel, utilities, equipment, vehicle, labor, land and building costs would seem to me to be what the post office would have to base their cost increases on.

Fuel costs have gone up higher than inflation, steel costs for building and equipment have gone up higher than inflation, and land costs have gone up higher than inflation. The question would be, have the rate increases outpaced the cost increases?

I am not a post office fanboy, they can piss me off too, but fair is fair.

It is true that third party companies can't carry First Class mail, but they are allowed to carry "urgent" correspondence.

my BoA ATM did this with checks (not in envelopes) and perfectly I might add, even when the check was handwritten poorly, it read the amount perfectly.

They don't however, have to compete since other companies are forbidden to carry first class mail.

for years they have increased their rates at a speed outpacing inflation. it's about time this happened.

If only more of the US federal government could convert to this business model.

All you have to do is slap on an address and a stamp to get a rate that is low because the evil bulk mailers pay the majority of the post office's cost.

If you don't like getting bulk mail crap then goto [www.dmachoice.org] and get removed from the lists. Trust me on this, my customers do not want to spend their money sending offers to people that will not be buying.

Because the USPS acts like a private company they are sensitive to being competitive. Like any good business one of the best ways to make money is to save money.

I don't mind reasonable increases in postage, keeping in mind that it should always be less then a phone call. The only thing that really bothers me is that a postage stamp represents "proof of purchase" stating that the consumer has paid for the service of the USPS for delivery of the itsm. If I still have a roll of stamps when the postage goes up, I should be able to use those stamps until they are gone. I have paid for it already and shouldn't have to purchase more or add more stamps to the item.

If that were true, they would have started with the bulk mailers who get steep discounts for mailing their crap.

Good thing I only use 2 stamps a month get THOSE free from work (they come in on customer's bills that they either drop off instead of mail and forget to take the stamp off, or from customer's bills that come thru the mail and somehow missed being cancelled). And dont start with legal techicalities of reusing a stamp that has been thru the mail & missed being cancelled! Dang anklebiters! :|