To slash costs, the United States Postal Service will implement a plan that will mean be slower service, much slower service. CBS News writes:

Almost 4 of 10 pieces of first-class mail will see slower delivery, according to Paul Steidler, senior fellow at the Lexington Institute and an expert on the postal service. That “means mail delivery will be slower than in the 1970s,” he said, calling DeJoy’s plan “disastrous.”

Starting tomorrow, the postal service’s current three-day delivery standard for first-class mail — letters, bills, tax documents and the like — will drop to delivery anywhere within the U.S. within five days. In other words, Americans should now expect that letters and other mail could take up to five days to reach their destinations, and vice versa. 

“It’s the least fortunate who will be hurt hardest by this. Everything in American society is getting faster, it seems, except for the mail delivery — which is now going to get slower.”

Paul Steidler, Lexington Institute

Louis DeJoy’s Postal Service will lose $160 billion over the next decade and this cost cutting/slower service plan is aimed at negating that loss.

The plan will hit the west coast particularly hard. To see how you will be impacted, please go to this link provided by the Washington Post.

And it’s also going to cost more to ship packages over the holidays. CNET writes:

From Oct. 3 through Dec. 25, the US Postal Service will increase the cost to ship parcels from 25 cents to $5 depending on the delivery service you pick and the distance the parcel has to travel. Note that this price increase is not for letters — the post office just increased the cost of stamps in August (also see below for more on that). 

The Postal Service defines a “parcel” as anything that isn’t a postcard, letter or flat (a large envelope, newsletter or magazine). A box of cookies, for example, would be a parcel.