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Postage Stamps Going up to 39 Cents
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:24 pm
by HurricaneGirl
This will take effect on Monday January 8th.. don't forget to get some of the little 2 cent make-up stamps for mailing next week.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:25 pm
by HurryKane
Aw, they ought to just hike it up to a dollar and leave it there for 10 years so we don't have the 2 cent/3 cent/4 cent/etc. extra stamps issue for a while.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:29 pm
by arkess7
WHAT!

I heard that the post offices had a good year and they were not in debt.......so why are they raising the price of stamps again!!!!

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:32 pm
by gtalum
Anytime the USPS shows a surplus, their funding gets raided by congress. This prevents them from building up any kind of a fund from which to handle fleet maintenance and replacement, building upkeep and construction, etc. So they have to constantly raise rates to pay for thei roperation. Call your congressman about it.
In the end, it's still an amazing service for $0.39, despite jokes to the contrary.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:17 pm
by Scorpion
I remember when they just raised it from 31 to 32 cents.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:20 pm
by alicia-w
those new 2 cent stamps are beautiful. they're pictures of a turquoise squash blossom necklace.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:27 pm
by alicia-w
If you look at the rates historically, they havent risen that much....
http://www.akdart.com/postrate.html
if you consider that gas was 55 cents a gallon in 1974 and is 2.50 or more now, the price of a stamp is comparatively cheap.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:34 pm
by gtalum
alicia-w wrote:If you look at the rates historically, they havent risen that much....
http://www.akdart.com/postrate.htmlif you consider that gas was 55 cents a gallon in 1974 and is 2.50 or more now...
Of course, 2 years ago gas was just over $1.

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:44 pm
by alicia-w
i dont know where you were , but in March 2004, gas was about 1.65. Over $2 a gallon in some places.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/30/news/economy/gas_prices/
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 5:06 pm
by gtalum
Okay, so maybe 4 years ago.
The national average in December 2001 was $1.06.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 5:38 pm
by TexasStooge
Oh great, another postage price jack-up.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 5:57 pm
by JonathanBelles
what possibly could they need the extra money 4?
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 6:36 pm
by Terrell
Noooooo, not again!!!.

Thank goodness for online bill paying.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:21 pm
by gtalum
fact789 wrote:what possibly could they need the extra money 4?
Yeah, I wonder, what kinds of things have gotten more expensive in the last 3 years? Hmmm....
Plus, I addressed this above. Congress raids the bank eveyr time USPS makes a surplus. Thus they have no savings to fall back on.
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:28 pm
by Skywatch_NC
For the sake of postage stamps hikes...I wish my neighborhood INcompetent sub letter carrier would take a hike!

She's made MORE mistakes w/ mail delivery in recent months than the "moon on the man" so to say. My mother has even called our PO to complain. Go figure why this carrier isn't transferred or for that matter fired!
How I wish our excellent carrier named Cynthia that we had for a year until she got transferred elsewhere was still serving our neighborhood community!
Eric
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 11:18 pm
by MGC
If your mail is messed up blame it on technology, not your letter carrier. Your letter carrier does little in the way of sorting the mail. 99% of the mail is sorted by machine. Sometimes, the mail for unknown reasons will become out of sequence and delivery points will get crossed. Place the blame on the PO's computers that read every letter, decode the handwriting and assign a delivery point to it. Many times the computer misreads the writing on the letter and assignes the letter an incorrect zip code. The zip code on every letter is the series of bars on the front usually on the lower right hand corner of the letter. This is your address in binary form, which when optically read determines the sort destination of the letter. So, it is not your carriers fault.......MGC
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 11:25 pm
by coriolis
I just got my annual raise, so round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows!
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 11:44 pm
by Skywatch_NC
MGC wrote:If your mail is messed up blame it on technology, not your letter carrier. Your letter carrier does little in the way of sorting the mail. 99% of the mail is sorted by machine. Sometimes, the mail for unknown reasons will become out of sequence and delivery points will get crossed. Place the blame on the PO's computers that read every letter, decode the handwriting and assign a delivery point to it. Many times the computer misreads the writing on the letter and assignes the letter an incorrect zip code. The zip code on every letter is the series of bars on the front usually on the lower right hand corner of the letter. This is your address in binary form, which when optically read determines the sort destination of the letter. So, it is not your carriers fault.......MGC
Well, we always make sure if we get a neighbor's mail erroneously that we take it to them...one time my Dad drove around elsewhere trying to find someone's house whom we received a couple pieces of important material and just today we received someone's big packet of Blue Cross insurance information. This carrier has left behind plastic mail baskets in the past on more than one occasion, also. I find it VERY difficult to
believe that
it would be
just postal machines. She also left a PO employee plastic strip card one time in our mailbox that shouldn't have been there obviously!
We have another carrier that comes around every now and then and he does a great job! Cynthia did a heckuva a job, too, as mentioned earlier!
Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:09 am
by kevin
Guess we'll have to buy 2 cent booster stamps to use up the ones we have already for the corporation.
Dangit, can't they just have a mail account and bill you at the end of the month, like the telephone?
Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 7:21 am
by HurricaneGirl

kevin, Maybe a postage meter would be better for your company mail see Pitney Bowes..