Domestic Competitive Products Pricing and Mailing Standards Changes

<RULE> POSTAL SERVICE <CFR>39 CFR Part 111</CFR> <SUBJECT>Domestic Competitive Products Pricing and Mailing Standards Changes</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Postal Service <E T="51">TM</E> . <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Postal Service is amending <E T="03">Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service,</E> Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®), to reflect changes to prices and mailing standards for competitive products. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective</E> January 19, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven Jarboe at (202) 268-7690, Catherine Knox (202) 268-5636, or Garry Rodriguez at (202) 268-7281. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This final rule describes new prices and product features for competitive products, by class of mail, established by the Governors of the United States Postal Service®. New prices are available under Docket Number CP2025-1 on the Postal Regulatory Commission PRC website at <E T="03">http://www.prc.gov,</E> and on the Postal Explorer® website at <E T="03">http://pe.usps.com.</E> The Postal Service will revise <E T="03">Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service,</E> Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), to reflect changes to certain prices and mailing standards for the following competitive products: • Priority Mail Express®. • Priority Mail®. • USPS Ground Advantage®. • Parcel Select®. • Extra Services. • Return Services. • Mailer Services. • Recipient Services. • Other. Competitive product prices and changes are identified by product as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Priority Mail Express</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Prices</HD> Overall, Priority Mail Express prices will increase 3.2 percent. Priority Mail Express will continue to offer zoned and Flat Rate, Retail and Commercial pricing. Retail prices will increase an average of 3.2 percent. The Flat Rate Envelope price will increase to $31.40, the Legal Flat Rate Envelope will increase to $31.65, and the Padded Flat Rate Envelope will increase to $32.25. Commercial prices will increase an average of 3.2 percent. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Priority Mail</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Prices</HD> Overall, Priority Mail prices will increase 3.2 percent. Priority Mail will continue to offer zoned and Flat Rate, Retail and Commercial pricing. Retail prices will increase an average of 3.2 percent. The Flat Rate Envelope price will increase to $10.10, the Legal Flat Rate Envelope will increase to $10.40, and the Padded Flat Rate Envelope will increase to $10.85. The Small Flat Rate Box price will increase to $10.65, and the Medium Flat Rate Boxes will increase to $19.15. The Large Flat Rate Box will increase to $26.30 and the APO/FPO/DPO Large Flat Rate Box will increase to $25.05. Commercial prices will increase an average of 3.2 percent. <HD SOURCE="HD1">USPS Ground Advantage</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Prices</HD> Overall, USPS Ground Advantage prices will increase 3.9 percent. USPS Ground Advantage—Retail prices will increase 4.9 percent. USPS Ground Advantage—Commercial prices will increase 3.2 percent. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Parcel Select</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Prices</HD> The prices for Parcel Select Destination Entry will increase an average of 9.2 percent. The prices for USPS Connect® Local will increase 5.4 percent. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Extra Services</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Adult Signature Service</HD> Adult Signature Required and Adult Signature Restricted Delivery service prices are decreasing 10.2 and 10.4 percent respectively. The price for Adult Signature Required will decrease to $8.40 and Adult Signature Restricted Delivery will decrease to $8.65. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Return Services</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">USPS Returns Service</HD> There are no structural changes to USPS Returns Service. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Mailer Services</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Pickup on Demand Service</HD> The Pickup on Demand® service fee will remain the same. <HD SOURCE="HD2">USPS Tracking Plus Service</HD> The USPS Tracking Plus® service prices will increase on average between 11.1 and 152.5 percent. <HD SOURCE="HD2">USPS Label Delivery Service</HD> The USPS Label Delivery Service <E T="51">TM</E> prices will increase 24.0 percent to $1.55. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Recipient Services</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Post Office Box Service</HD> The competitive Post Office Box <E T="51">TM</E> service prices will increase an average of 5.7 percent within the updated price ranges. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Premium Forwarding Service</HD> Premium Forwarding Service® (PFS®) prices will increase between 2.5 and 6.1 percent depending on the specific price element. The enrollment fee paid at the retail counter for PFS-Residential will increase to $26.85 and the PFS-Residential, PFS-Commercial, and PFS-Local enrollment fee paid online will increase to $24.70 per application. The price of the weekly shipment charge for PFS-Residential and per container charge for PFS-Local will increase to $27.80. <HD SOURCE="HD2">USPS Package Intercept</HD> The USPS Package Intercept® fee will increase 4.9 percent to $18.35. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Other</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Address Enhancement Service</HD> Address Enhancement Service competitive product prices will increase between 8.4 and 9.1 percent. <HD SOURCE="HD2">IMpb Noncompliance Fee Renamed</HD> To encompass all the compliance qualities included under the current IMpb Noncompliance Fee, the Postal Service is renaming the IMpb Noncompliance Fee the Package Quality Noncompliance Fee. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Intelligent Mail Matrix Barcode</HD> The Postal Service is requiring mailers to add a supplemental GS1-DataMatrix (2D) Intelligent Mail matrix barcode (IMmb) to domestic shipping labels to improve package visibility. The placement of the IMmb will be in the address block to the left of the delivery address. Optionally, a mailer may place a second IMmb in the lower right corner of the shipping label. The Postal Service recommends using the second IMmb on all labels. The addition of the IMmb barcode will provide the Postal Service with a greater opportunity for the package to be scanned providing customers with better visibility of their packages. The Postal Service will also update Publication 52, Hazardous, Restricted, and Perishable, Matter, for consistency in barcode application. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Live Animal and Perishable Handling Fee</HD> The Postal Service is implementing a Live Animal and Perishable Handling fee. This fee will be assessed on all live animals and perishables ( <E T="03">e.g.</E> fruit, meat), entered at retail and commercial Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, and USPS Ground Advantage prices. The Live Animal and Perishable Handling fee is nonrefundable once the piece is entered in the network. The Live Animal and Perishable Handling fee is in addition to the current Live Animal Transportation fee provided in the Notice 123—Price List, when applicable. The Postal Service will also update Publication 52, Hazardous, Restricted, and Perishable, Matter, to provide detailed information on the fee requirement. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Hazardous Materials Shipping Label Markings</HD> The Postal Service is revising the current requirement to include the hazardous materials icon (“H”) in lieu of the service icon on a shipping address label when mailing eligible hazardous materials. Items containing mailable hazardous materials addressed to an APO/FPO/DPO, the USPS territories and possessions, and the Freely Associated States, are excluded from the requirement to include the hazardous materials icon in lieu of the service icon on a shipping address label. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overweight and Oversize Item Fee</HD> The Postal Service is increasing the overweight and oversize item fee to $200.00, to continue to deter nonmailable volumes from being entered in the network. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Resources</HD> The Postal Service provides additional resources to assist customers with this price change for competitive products. These tools include price lists, downloadable price files, and <E T="04">Federal Register</E> Notices, which may be found on the Postal Explorer® website at <E T="03">http://pe.usps.com.</E> The Postal Service adopts the described changes to <E T="03">Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service,</E> Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), incorporated by reference in the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations.</E> We will publish an appropriate amendment to 39 CFR part 111 to reflect these changes. <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects in 39 CFR Part 111</HD> Administrative practice and procedure, Postal Service. </LSTSUB> Accordingly, the Postal Service amends <E T="03">Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service,</E> Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), incorporated by reference in the Code of Federal Regulations as follows (see 39 CFR part 111.1): <HD SOURCE="HED">PART 111—GENERAL INFORMATION ON POSTAL SERVICE</HD> <REGTEXT TITLE="39" PART="111"> 1. The authority citation for 39 CFR part 111 continues to read as follows: <HD SOURCE="HED">Authority:</HD> 5 U.S.C. 552(a); 13 U.S.C. 301-307; 18 U.S.C. 1692-1737; 39 U.S.C. 101, 401-404, 414, 416, 3001-3018, 3201-3220, 3401-3406, 3621, 3622, 3626, 3629, 3631-3633, 3641, 3681-3685, and 5001. </REGTEXT> <REGTEXT TITLE="39" PART="111"> 2. Revise <E T="03">Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service,</E> Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM)</HD> <STARS/> <HD SOURCE="HD1">100 Retail Mail Letters, Cards, Flats, and Parcels</HD> <STARS/> <HD SOURCE="HD1">110 Retail Mail Priority Mail Express</HD> <HD SOUR ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 45k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━