USPS announced a planned price increase for competitive products, to go into effect on July 12, 2026 aligned with the Market Dominant price change, but NOT ALL competitive products will see an increase.
- USPS Ground Advantage Commercial: Ounce-based rate differentiation will be eliminated to align with the original Parcel Select rate structure. This change results in an average price increase of 11.8% for this category.
- Post Office Boxes: Competitive PO Box prices will increase by an average of 3.0%.
- Parcel Select Forwarding and Returns: The fee will increase from $3.80 to $6.00
- Address Correction Service (ACS): For customers using Shipper Paid Forwarding/Return, the price will increase from $3.20 to $5.40
Some pretty big changes to Hazardous Materials (HazMat) are being introduced. USPS says this is necessary to disincentivize undeclared hazmat shipments.
- HazMat Noncompliance Fee: A $50.00 fee will be charged for any competitive commercial product if HazMat is detected but was not appropriately declared or labeled by the customer.
There are also classification changes proposed;
- Dimensional Weight Divisor: lowered from 166 to 139 inline with the rest of industry.
- Addresses API: USPS currently has an Address API, but in July intends to launch an Enhanced Address API with new technologies.
USPS states that these changes will allow for competitive products to cover their attributable costs and contribute at least 8.0% to the USPS institutional costs as required. These still need to be approved by the PRC, but the compliance requirements in competitive are much lower than in Market Dominant.
