May 31 rates turn up in post offices on May 20

When United States post offices opened for business Wednesday morning, May 20, all point-of-sale equipment had been reprogrammed to automatically calculate prices on customer purchases at the new postage rates.

The problem is, those new rates don't go into effect until May 31. Many sales rung up at the post office window on Wednesday, however, were coming up with an incorrect total by applying those new rates prematurely.

Postal customers who contacted Linn's reported that postal clerks were aware of the problem and were manually calculating fees to circumvent the inaccurate computations.

USPS spokeswoman Sarah Ninivaggi told Linn's Stamp News that the Postal Service "inadvertently pushed the new prices associated with the May 31 Price Change into production for all Retail/POS locations."

Ninivaggi confirmed that the Postal Service was aware of the problem and expected to resolve the situation as soon as Thursday morning (May 21).

Apologizing to USPS customers, Ninvaggi added, "If a customer has been overcharged, [they] should save their receipt and take it back to the local Post Office where the item was purchased. A retail clerk will assist them with receiving the appropriate refund."

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