{"id":11152,"date":"2008-05-04T16:53:49","date_gmt":"2008-05-04T23:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2008\/05\/04\/11152.html"},"modified":"2008-05-04T16:53:49","modified_gmt":"2008-05-04T23:53:49","slug":"postal-rate-change-and-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2008\/05\/04\/postal-rate-change-and-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"Postal rate change and Forever Stamps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

US postal rates are changing on May 12<\/a>. Some prices are going up, some are going down, but the most obvious change for most people is that the cost of the first ounce for a First-Class Mail letter is going up from 41¢ to 42¢.<\/p>\n

This change has provoked a certain amount of discussion in comments on an old entry of mine about the Forever Stamp<\/a>, including some comments that contradict statements made by USPS employees when the Forever Stamp was first released. In particular, I had seen information to the effect that a Forever Stamp could be used only for very specific purposes, on very specific kinds of mail, but commenters were saying that wasn't true.<\/p>\n

So I poked around on the USPS website for a while, but I couldn't find specific answers to my particular questions. They don't provide a lot of detail about how the Forever Stamps work, at least not on any pages I could find when I searched their site.<\/p>\n

This morning, I was looking at a news release on their site titled \"Every Time a Bell Rings... Another Forever Stamp is Sold<\/a>,\" which gives some information but doesn't quite answer my question. So I dropped a note in email to David Partenheimer, the media contact listed on that page, using the email address provided on that page. I figured I probably wouldn't get a response at all, and that if I did it would probably take a week, given how busy I would expect the USPS's main media contact to be just before a rate change.<\/p>\n

Instead, I received a detailed response less than three hours<\/em> after my query. On a Sunday afternoon. That<\/em> is dedication; I'm very impressed.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Mr. Partenheimer explained (I'm paraphrasing) that the limitations on the use of Forever Stamps that I'd heard about aren't real. You can use Forever Stamps on anything you want to mail.<\/p>\n

To put it another way: at any given moment, if the cost of a one-ounce First-Class Mail stamp is n<\/var>¢, then a Forever Stamp is worth n<\/var>¢ in postage. You can put a Forever Stamp and some additional postage on a two-ounce letter. You can put several Forever Stamps (and additional postage if needed) on a five-ounce letter, or on a package. And so on. It's just like regular postage, except that its value increases as rates go up.<\/p>\n

Sounds like it's time to stock up on Forever Stamps.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US postal rates are changing on May 12. Some prices are going up, some are going down, but the most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}