Virtually all U.S. eBay and online sellers will be affected by upcoming changes to the postal rates. On March 19, 2007, the Governors of the United States Postal Service approved rate changes effective May 14, 2007: http://www.usps.com/ratecase/welcome.htm

Things are still a bit in flux for some rates, however. According to MultichannelMerchant.com, the USPS Board of Governors asked the PRC to reconsider its pricing recommendations for Standard Mail flats, which they set higher than the USPS had recommended - and are as much as 40% higher than current rates. The publication said "there is no guarantee that the PRC will alter its decision by May 14, the date the rates are to go into effect": http://multichannelmerchant.com/printchannel/postal/PRC-anomalous-03272007

Online sellers have to deal with new postage rates, new ways of calculating postage and automated shipping tools that need to be updated. See our article on dimensional weight rates at: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m12/abu0181/s02

We want to find out what you think of these changes and how they will affect you. Please take a moment to complete a short survey - we will publish the results in the next issue. Thank you.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=35073587336

Once you've taken the survey, you'll be directed to the AuctionBytes blog where we would love to hear your strategies for dealing with the upcoming changes.

My thanks to Steve Weber, online seller, author and blogger ( http://www.weberbooks.com/selling/selling.htm ) for his feedback on the survey before it went live.