Consumers Increasingly Upbeat About The Economy

The United States Postal Service filed notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) of price changes to take effect July 10, 2022. The new prices, if favorably reviewed, include a two-cent increase in the price of a First-Class Mail Forever stamp from 58 cents to 60 cents. The proposed prices, approved by the Governors of the U.S. Postal Service, would raise First-Class Mail prices approximately 6.5 percent which is lower than the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual inflation rate of 7.9 percent as of the end of February. The price changes reflect a judicious implementation of the Postal Service’s pricing authority provided by the Postal Regulatory Commission. If favorably reviewed by the PRC, the single-piece letter additional ounce price would increase to 24 cents, the metered mail 1-ounce price would increase to 57 cents and the price of a postcard stamp would increase to 44 cents. A one-ounce letter mailed to other countries would increase to $1.40 cents. The Postal Service is also seeking price adjustments for Special Services products including Certified Mail, Post Office Box rental fees, Money Order fees and the cost to purchase insurance when mailing an item.

Through the first three weeks of the third quarter, the average time for delivery of a mailpiece across the postal network was 2.4 days. Third quarter service performance scores covering April 1 through April 22 included: *First-Class Mail: 93.4 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an increase of 5.5 percentage points from the fiscal second quarter. *Marketing Mail: 94.9 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the fiscal second quarter. *Periodicals: 87.0 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of 5.5 percentage points from the fiscal second quarter.

Bob Hoffman is a man worth listening to. Especially when he’s talking about advertising. Bob is an adland icon. The founder of the Hoffman/Lewis agency in California, he has created campaigns for McDonald’s, Shell, PepsiCo, Bank of America, you name it... The century-old Greater San Francisco Ad Club made him their “Ad Person of the Year” in 2012. And now Bob Hoffman is the man exposing the vast fraud of digital advertising. He has spoken out about a world where a single “bot” computer programme can generate a billion fraudulent ad impressions a day, without that ad ever having been viewed by human eyeballs. This great swindle is on track to become the second largest source of criminal activity in the world by 2025, second only to drug trafficking, Hoffman suggested recently. Click Read More below for additional information.