The new USPS price changes are almost herer. The new prices are effective January 28, 2013. Ashli Uphoff has created a quick comparison of the current and the new prices which will be available at the January 11th Lunch and Learn or you can view it here.

Statement from Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe:

Congressional Inaction Heightens Postal Service Financial Crisis;
More Aggressive Cost Cutting and Revenue Generating Measures will be Considered

The 112th Congress adjourned without having passed postal legislation. Such legislation could quickly restore the Postal Service to profitability and put the organization on a stable, long-term financial footing. This lack of action is disappointing.

The Postal Service has worked closely with the Congress over the past two years to advance a framework for a viable business model that will allow us to quickly respond to the evolving needs of our customers. As a result of frequent communication with Congressional leaders, we have modified important parts of our five-year comprehensive business plan, including the pace of consolidation of mail processing facilities, to give Congress maximum flexibility to make needed legislative changes. Unfortunately, Congress has not enacted these changes. As we sought to provide solutions to enable legislative change, we pursued cost-reducing and revenue-generating activities. Over the past two years we have reduced head count by approximately 60,000 career employees. We have consolidated 70 of our mail processing facilities. We moved to reduce hours at many of our Post Offices. We also have worked to substantially increase our package volume along with introducing a same-day delivery service.

As we look to the coming year, we are on an unsustainable financial path. We are currently losing $25 million per day, we have defaulted on $11.1 billion in Treasury payments and exhausted our borrowing authority. The Postal Service should not have to do business this way, which has undermined the confidence of our customer base and the $800 billion mailing industry we serve. We will be discussing with our Board of Governors a range of accelerated cost cutting and revenue generating measures designed to provide us some financial breathing room. 

We encourage the new 113th Congress to make postal reform an urgent priority, and to work steadily toward the quick passage of reform legislation. We will continue to work with leaders of our House and Senate oversight committees and all members of Congress to help make this happen.

The Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) is available on Postal Explorer (http://pe.usps.com/). To subscribe to the DMM Advisory, send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Simply indicate "subscribe" in the subject line.

ACS™ is an on-piece address correction service that allows mailers to receive change-of-address (COA) and other reasons for non-delivery electronically and reduces the number of manual (hardcopy) address notifications.

Coming in January 2013, SingleSource ACS™ removes the need to handle different ACS notice file formats when dealing with Full Service ACS™, OneCode ACS^®, and Traditional ACS™. With SingleSource ACS, all of the ACS notices are combined into a single file format and provided to mailers via Electronic Product Fulfillment (EPF).

SingleSource ACS can:

For more information, please refer to the new SingleSource ACS Technical Guide available on RIBBS at https://ribbs.usps.gov/acs 

The Postal Service is extending the deadline for the mandatory use of Intelligent Mail package barcodes (IMpb) to January 28, 2013, from the previously announced deadline of January 7, 2013.

The January 7, 2013, mandatory-use date was first announced in the September 27, 2011, Federal Register final rule (76 FR 59504-59512) and also in the November 17, 2011, Postal Bulletin (PB 22324).