No More 33-cent Letters

N E W  Y O R K, Jan. 7 -- As of today the cost of mailing a first-class letter is one penny higher at 34 cents — enough to increase traffic at some post offices Saturday but not quite enough to worry most post office customers.

“It’s just a penny,” said Barbara Gill, a graphic artist in New York City. “It doesn’t matter. If it was five cents instead of one cent I’d be a little more concerned.”

New postage rates for several categories of mail changed today, but the first-class letter rate usually gets the most public attention. The average household is expected to spend about 15 cents extra a month on letters.

To make sure people can still use their left-over 33-cent stamps, the post office has sent four billion one-cent stamps to the 38,000 post offices across the country and the many more shops and newsstands that sell stamps. So far, only a handful of post offices and shops have reported a shortage in one cent stamps, the post office says.

In addition, some 7.6 billion 34-cent stamps went on sale Dec. 15, but don’t show the new price since they were printed in advance of the official increase.

The post office decided to make the change on a non-business day to ease the transition and avoid confusion. Officials say there’s no formal grace period for letters with 33-cent stamps currently in the system. But a letter dropped in a mailbox Saturday or even today with a 33-cent stamp, but not picked up and postmarked until Monday, should be delivered. Letters sent as early as Monday without enough postage will probably be returned to the sender.

Rising Costs, Falling Revenues

Preparations for the rate changes started more than a year ago as the postal service looked ahead to a future of more fax machines and e-mails, where so-called snail mail would carry a smaller portion of the world’s communications.

“There are several reasons that we’re raising rates. One is basically the cost of doing business — you know — utilities, labor costs. We have to pay employees to process and deliver mail,” said Larry Dozier, a post office spokesman. But on top of that “ we project that by the year 2005 we will have lost about $17 billion from customers using the Internet rather than first-class mail.”