The U.S. Postal Service is harming both publishers and itself with its current ratemaking process, the News/Media Alliance (NMA) charges in a letter to the Postal Rate Commission. “While the Postal Service incurs record losses, Periodicals mailers have been forced to make difficult business decisions ranging from cutting staff to shuttering titles and closing their doors, all of which ultimately harms our society,” the letter states. Since 2021, the USPS has raised periodical rates “generally twice a year by a cumulative total of 47.8 percent,” the NMA writes. “During that time, the portion of those increases due to the additional rate authorities have exceeded the rate of inflation by more than 150 percent.”

Between Nov. 26 and Dec. 30, the Postal Service accepted 11.7 billion mailpieces and packages into the network with an average delivery time of just 2.5 days.* The Postal Service also released FY23 second quarter service performance scores covering Jan. 1 through Jan. 6. Data for the reporting period shows the average time to deliver a mailpiece or package across the postal network was just 2.6 days. Quarterly data included: *First-Class Mail: 89.4% of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 1.6 percentage points from the fiscal first quarter. *Marketing Mail: 93.6% of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fiscal first quarter. *Periodicals: 84.5% of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fiscal first quarter.

Like a post-holiday hangover that just won’t go away, many retailers are struggling with unsold products even after holding New Year sales. According to a new survey of 500 U.S. retailers from e-commerce inventory planning software provider Inventory Planner, 50% of respondents still have goods they cannot sell after post-Christmas and January discounting. Close to half (46%) of respondents say this is a “major concern.” More than half of U.S. retailers (53%) told Inventory Planner there would be ‘dangerous ramifications’ for their business if they failed to sell excess stock.