As all our US customers are well aware the USPS is currently struggling with unprecedented mail volumes. To address this the USPS is implementing a fairly significant price increase for packages on Oct 18th. A number of other international mail services have already done something similar earlier in the year or have plans in place as the increased volume of mail is not a US only thing. In general we hate raising prices particularly at this time and as you may recall we were forced to raise prices for new signups earlier in the year to deal with shipping price increases that happened early in the year.
So we've put some thought into it and we've decided to leave the new signup prices for US customers where they are and continue to offer free shipping worldwide. This will impact our profit margin but our hope is that by holding the line on prices we can continue to grow our market and keep the business growing through the crisis.
Now for the bad news - As you may know our policy of not increasing prices has included maintaining the legacy price for subscribers even if the new sign up price increases. The size of the price increase from USPS makes it impossible to 100% maintain this policy going forward as we would be losing money in some cases which is obviously not viable. So starting on Oct 18th we will be raising the legacy minimum monthly subscriber rate to $13/month for US subscribers only. We are targeting this price increase to be a small as possible and impact the smallest number of people as possible because we understand this is not the time for price increases. To be clear we are only raising the prices in the US and only for monthly subscribers. The new sign up rate is $15.50 so this price increase still represents a significant discount over new signups. We really hope you understand.
If you want to avoid the increase there are a few loopholes that you can use to avoid it. The first is to switch from the monthly to the quarterly subscription. Since the quarterly ships only once every three months an increase in shipping costs impacts it less so we can hold the price on the quarterly. The other thing you can do if your subscription renews after the 18th is move it to earlier in the month - this will allow you to miss the increase on the first month at least.
Thanks again for your understanding we really do appreciate your continued support.
John
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