A Stamp That Lasts Forever

The Post Office is my business partner. Every month we mail a million postcards, letters, and magazines for our clients, and if one gets lost, you know who gets the blame. I sometimes feel like a farmer, who has the weather for a business partner.


Big Changes In My Partner’s Business

The price of stamps has been steadily increasing: 13 times in 32 years, and set to rise again from 39 cents to 41 cents. With the cost of gasoline and transportation, and the automation of so many transactions, it is not a big surprise that the Post Office needed to increase rates.

There are some common sense reforms hiding behind a price increase: stuff that costs more to deliver will be charged more money. My Postal Partner continues to invest major dollars in machines to improve productivity, speed the mail and enhance service. From now on rates may go up every year by a little bit (FedEx and UPS go up by 3% or 4% every year like clockwork).

To decrease the impact of these small increases on consumers, the Post Office is introducing a First Class stamp that's valid forever. Making its debut on May 14th, a Forever Stamp purchased in 2007 (for 41 cents) will be sufficient to mail a letter in the year 2012, 2050, or beyond (when the price of letter stamps will be 41 dollars). The days of plastering your letter with 1-cent stamps to meet the latest stamp price are over.


You Can Minimize the Postal Increase Bite – and We can Help!

Here are a few things you can do:

1. ListScrub™ your mailing list – it’s dirt cheap and pays for itself in postage savings – and we guarantee it. Visit http://www.PetersListScrub.com/ for information.

2. Design Your Mail Piece to Automate. The Post Office says, “We’ll give you big discounts if you give us a piece of mail that runs through our machines.”

3. Make sure the address you are mailing to really exists. My Postal Partner says, “Give me a good address and I will give you a big discount.” Some postal costs have gone up by fractions of a penny – and one of the categories of mail we have huge volumes in has even gone down. Visit my partner’s website at http://www.usps.gov/ for lots more information. Or give us a call at 1-866-PETER-02 -– we’re glad to help!


Happy mailing,
Peter