The June 30 postage rate increase will push younger Americans, at a faster rate, away from first class mail when paying bills. The diversion will accelerate the U.S. Postal Service’s financial crisis, according to a Direct Marketing Association survey.
More than half of the respondents under age 25, and 42% of those between 25 and 34 said the rate increase will lead them to look for bill payment alternatives, such as electronic bill payment
“Whenever the economy recovers from a recession, bill paying by mail usually rebounds ” said DMA economist Peter Johnson. “But this survey showed that many Americans don’t want to keep paying bills by mail.”
Johnson conceded that not every survey respondent had Internet access though most had the desire to find an alternate way of paying bills.
In 2000, bill payment, or transactional mail, accounted for 49.1% of all first class mail. The DMA argued that because the USPS’s business operations are based on a volume-growth model, it is ill-prepared for a generational crisis that reduces the use of first class mail by those who represent tomorrow’s high-volume bill payers.
The telephone survey, conducted in mid-May by Opinion Research, Inc., Princeton, NJ, queried 1028 Americans aged 18 or more.
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