It just gets weirder. I thought I’d heard it all when that West Virginia newspaper editorialized that the ‘forever’ stamp was a ’sleazy strategy’ on the part of the USPS to hoodwink the innocent consumers of West Virginia. Now a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe explains how the stamp is actually a scheme to benefit the wealthy!

The class system in postage stamps

Update: But wait! There’s more- the Corvallis Gazette Times gets points for noting that the real story was the rate increase, not the ‘forever’ stamp, but they lose them quickly for a couple of clueless comments: -

-”What does it say that the U.S. Postal Service actually rolled out its idea for a “forever” stamp in May 2006, and it’s only now being delivered as news? ” Ummm, aren’t you the people who deliver the news? Are you saying you weren’t paying attention back in May?

- “Unresolved is the question of how often and whether “forever” stamps will be updated with new, different editions at the same rate.” OK now I’m not being sarcastic here- I really have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Is the editor afraid that the stamps will always use the same design? Why would you need “new different editions”. All the PO does when the rates go up is to start selling the ‘forever’ stamps at the new rate. We’ve already done that several times with the Breast Cancer stamps. What does he think is “unresolved”.

- Last and certainly not least, there’s this puzzler:”U.S. stamps already are valid forever; it’s the postal rate that changes with increasing frequency. But with no denomination on the forever stamps, perhaps we won’t notice it as much. In fact, our guess is that the Postal Service is counting on that.” Yeah, I guess the fact that I’ll actually have to pay for the stamps at whatever the current rate is wouldn’t be enough of a reminder.

‘Forever’ stamp’s real value is marketing

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 8:07 am and is filed under postal, rate increase, stupidity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.