Amazon Rolls Out USPS Shipping Rate Hike a Week Early

Amazon sellers got a surprise on Friday when they printed USPS Media Mail shipping labels. Instead of costing $3.19, Amazon showed the rate as $3.49.

A seller reported the issue on Ecommerce EKG, writing in part, “On my Shipments on Friday July 1st Amazon charged me the new rate by USPS, but they aren’t suppose to be effective until July 10th.”

The problem has yet to be fixed – a reader experienced the problem on Sunday evening: “I just printed a shipping label for an order I sold on Amazon 10 Oz Media Mail which should be $3.19 and was charged 3.49 – the new rate that starts on July 10th.”

Sellers also reported the problem on the Amazon discussion boards. “Postage increase is supposed to happen July 10th. Looks like the Amazon programmer dropped the zero,” a seller wrote.

One seller who responded pointed to another issue they encountered when trying to correct for the problem. “When I go into my many templates and start changing the shipping charges so that I am not LOSING money on shipping I get this message,” they wrote, posting the following message:

Shipping Template Freezing

Abnormally frequent updates to ship charge in your shipping templates have been identified in the past 24 hours. We temporarily disabled shipping template updates and creation until 07/02/2022 11:23:55 to protect customer experience.

It’s not unusual for sellers to encounter issues when the Postal Service changes rates, but it is unusual for the problem to occur a week before the scheduled change.

The timing – the Friday before a major holiday weekend – was unfortunate. If anyone has seen Amazon’s acknowledgement of the problem, please let us know.

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