In the fiscal year ended September 30, 2015, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) generated sales totaling more than $1 billion from its online store. Total post office revenues for the fiscal year were nearly $69 billion.
The relatively small portion of total revenues is due to combination of factors. Most of the services offered online do not generate revenues: package tracking, scheduling a pickup, hold or forward mail and estimating postage costs. Revenue is generated by sales of stamps, premium forwarding services and printing shipping labels for domestic and international package shipments.
For the 2015 holiday season, the USPS expects to deliver more than 15.5 billion cards, letters, flats and packages. In addition, it is projecting that approximately 600 million packages will be delivered between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve — an increase of 10.5% over 2014 volume.
The USPS is also offering real-time delivery notifications. Customers who sign up for alerts at the USPS website can receive an email or text notification for select packages within a few minutes of the delivery scan.
The postal service has posted a list of mail-by dates for this year at its website. Tuesday, December 8, for example, is the USPS deadline for shipping packages first-class international service to all international destinations except those in Africa and Central and South America. For those regions, Tuesday is the USPS deadline for getting packages delivered by Priority Mail Express International service.
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