Holiday shipping costs more as KC's mail lags
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Holiday surcharges have been in effect at the post office since October, even as the Postal Service district that covers Kansas City trails the national on-time rate.
Why it matters: Holiday packages will cost more to ship through mid-January, and locals may want to mail them earlier than normal.
Zoom in: The Kansas-Missouri postal district delivered about 81% of two-day First-Class Mail on time from April through June, compared with about 88% nationwide, USPS data shows.
- That fell short of the agency's 87% goal, though the district beat its target for mail that takes three to five days.
- USPS's public district reports don't cover Priority Mail or Ground Advantage, the services that now have surcharges, so there's no public data on how reliably those packages arrive in KC.
By the numbers: At the post office counter, Priority Mail now costs 50 cents to $1 more for packages up to 3 pounds, depending on distance.
- Ground Advantage costs 50 to 75 cents more for the same packages, and businesses shipping at commercial rates face surcharges too.
- The surcharges, which USPS says help cover extra handling costs, run until Jan. 17 and don't apply to stamps.
- USPS added similar holiday price hikes in the past two years.
Flashback: A 2024 inspector general audit requested by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) found deficiencies at all three Kansas-Missouri district facilities it reviewed, including delayed mail and package scanning problems.
The latest: The USPS Inspector General's Office led a law enforcement operation at KC's mail processing and distribution center Sept. 9, as customers complained that their mail was bouncing between metro distribution centers.
- The office called it a "targeted initiative" aimed at "suppressing criminal activity" and said it made several arrests and recovered a stolen firearm.
- A former employee who worked there for 11 years said management had left trailers of already-processed mail sitting in the yard.
The other side: USPS and the inspector general's office didn't respond to Axios' requests for comment.
What's next: To get gifts there by Christmas, USPS recommends mailing Ground Advantage packages by Dec. 17 and Priority Mail by Dec. 18 within the contiguous U.S.
- Kansas Citians may want to bump that a couple of days earlier, just to be safe.