David Aguilar
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The New Year is bringing along a new pricing structure for shipping letters and postcards through the U.S. Postal Service.
Beginning January 26, customers sending a standard one ounce First Class letter will be paying an additional 3 cents. Currently the price of a stamp for a one ounce letter is 46 cents.
The pricing change also increases the cost of additional ounces by one cent from 20 cents to 21 cents.
Postcards sent through the Postal Service will also see a one cent increase, bringing the cost up to 34 cents from 33 cents.
The Governors of the Postal Service voted on Sept. 23, 2013 to approve the increases to postage rates above the usual annual increase that is related to changes in the Consumer Price Index, an average used by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics to measure changes to prices paid by urban customers for consumer goods and services.
According to the Postal Service, stamp prices have stayed consistent with the average annual rate of inflation of 4.2 percent.
In a letter to Postal Service customers, Board of Governors Chairman Mickey Barnett said “of the options currently available to the Postal Service to align costs and revenues, increasing postage prices is a last resort that reflects extreme financial challenges.”
The increase to postage rates is expected to generate $2 billion in annual revenue for the Postal Service.