The United States Postal Service recently announced a rate cut ahead of the holiday season.  This latest rate change focused mostly on the Priority mail shipments, with up to 58% off certain packages. While the Post Office has always been an economical way to ship small packages, now even heavy packages are being discounted.

With rate decreases across many weights and zones, shippers can save an average of 42% over private carrier rates and up to 35% over previous Priority Mail rates, based on Commercial Plus pricing. (source). The rate decrease will especially be beneficial for e-commerce shippers that want to continue to offer free shipping on their products.

The Postal Service won approval from its regulators in August to lower prices by as much as 58% on certain Priority Mail packages for customers shipping at least 50,000 parcels a year (source). This of course aggravates shipping industry giants UPS and FedEx who have also been in the news with their plans to change their shipping rating to dimensional based pricing instead of just weight alone.

So what does this mean for StarShip users? Starting September 7, 2014, new USPS rates will be immediately available with no software update needed. StarShip customers using Pitney Bowes already automatically qualify for Commercial Based pricing for applicable Competitive mail classes for even more savings.  As part of the rate change, packages weighing 5 lbs. or less, Commercial Base rates (Zones 1-8) are decreasing an average of -0.3% or -$0.03 per piece.

For more information on the USPS module, please visit our website at:

https://www.vtechnologies.com/shipping-software-usps-pitney-bowes/