I take issue with a recent [letter to the editor] published in DM News May 14 by Postmaster Garry Smith titled the “Price is right.”
The cost of mailing should not be dictated solely by costs, but by the market. The new rate structure in my mind is being driven by a bunch of bean counters instead of market forces at play.
It is apparent that Standard Mail is keeping the U.S. Postal Service afloat and should be marketed as a viable product for direct marketers to use. Instead, what does the PRC and the USPS commissioners do? Raise the rates 20 percent to 40 percent for flat-size mail thereby dissuading mailers from mailing and growing their respective businesses. If this isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of, may God show me a rainbow to chase after.
Why can’t the USPS invest in new and better equipment to process flat-size mail thereby cutting their hefty labor costs? The real culprit here is their extremely high labor costs. They have too many layers of management and not enough foot soldiers.
It is interesting to me that since the new rates I have not received one promo piece from the USPS touting direct mail. Have they given up? Also, it was not too long ago that they pushed three-dimensional mail and the high rate of ROI using this type of mail. No more – the shaped-based rates have killed this.
Case in point, I have been working with a client in the United Kingdom sending out a small three-dimensional piece that prior to the rate case was being mailed out at $0.429 at a presorted First Class Mail rate. Now, the short-sighted bean-counting USPS wants to charge us $1.13 at a so-called discounted parcel rate.
These new rates have effectively killed the marketing campaign here in the States and means thousand of lost postage dollars to the USPS and lost business for my company as well.
Let all of us who make a living using direct mail scream loudly at the USPS that we are not going lay down and play dead while the USPS runs roughshod over our industry.
Preston Lawrance
Principal
Lawrance Direct LLC
Manchester, NH
