US House Members Want Details On USPS Competitive Practices

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee want details from the U.S. Postal Service on its competitive practices to see if online sellers such as Amazon may have an unfair advantage over other retailers due to ongoing relationships with the USPS, according to EcommerceBytes.

A May 13 letter from Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Mark Meadows, both members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, indicates the request to have the postmaster general turn over data about the agency’s competitive practices.

The USPS lowered rates last year on the parcels it ships, placing it in more direct competition with FedEx and UPS. The Postal Service has also been campaigning to get eCommerce shoppers to use the service when returning purchases to retailers.

Among the data requested includes: Sunday deliveries, which is done through Amazon partnerships, and has been around since 2013. Of course, if there is a price hike in store for USPS, it could wind up hitting Amazon in the pocketbook if customers defect to other services or temper demand for Sunday mail.

The Committee is demanding that Postmaster General Megan Brennan shed light on the service’s moves in the parcels industry – where it has seen an increasing percentage of its profits as “traditional” mail shipments, where it traditionally has held a monopoly, decline.

Competitive products now represent nearly 23 percent of all USPS’s revenues, double the percentage of seven years ago, the Committee stated in its letter – and while the USPS is able to compete in the marketplace it is not allowed to effectively subsidize its competitive parcels business with its monopoly mail business, which includes First Class Mail.

The Committee gave Brennan two weeks to produce data from 2008 to 2014, and wants details on how USPS calculates costs, Post & Parcel said Friday (May 15).