New Universal Postal Union (UPU) International Mail Rulings

General
1

Good morning eFour,
Yesterday, when I visited the post office with my recent sales, I was prompted with the question if my dozen or so envelopes contained any goods. I basically said no, that there was only paperwork in side (cards being cardboard, cardboard being paper). The postal worker informed me that starting on January 1st 2020 there are new international rules about what can and cannot be included in international mail, and that basically everything that isn’t a letter or written documents is considered goods and should be send as a parcel.
I have had not heard anything about it till that moment, so I Googled a bit to figure out what was going on.

Apparently, back in September 2019, agreements were made between 192 countries (members of the UPU) (including US, Canada, Japan, Australia, the EU, Norway, Switzerland) that to combat exploitation from the mail services to ship cheaply around the world. As I pointed out, I have not seen anything like this before in any news media until yesterday.

I’ve been reading up on it on the PostNL (Dutch Postal Services) information and basically every postal service in the world is allowed to destroy, return to sender or fine the sender for any shipment they deem to include goods.

Personally I am a bit worried how this will affect our hobby. If we cannot ship single cards around in plain white envelopes for € 1.50 ($ 1.66) and have to charge parcel fees for everything (for us Dutch, that would be € 7,50 untracked (in Western EU), € 9,00 in Southern/non EU, and € 10,00 for ROW, tracked will be respectively € 13,00 , € 18,50 and € 24,30) shipping/buying/selling low value items will become impossible and lock a lot of product out of Europe to start off with. I don’t think many are jumping with joy to start paying €/$ 20.00 for shipment of a single card because of new international postage rules.
How will this affect the hobby for all of us? Why hasn’t this been in the news more prominent because it’s basically part of Trumps Trade War with China and the rest of the world?

[Edit]
On a Dutch consumer rights website it’s mentioned (half way down)that trading cards like Pokémon, Magic the Gathering are considered goods. As well as e.g. concert tickets, CD’s and gift cards

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2

This shit is out of control

3

This could be huge, but I would wait until national postal administrations decide to write down some kind of internal policy.

Anyway, I really cannot believe that they are going to seize and destroy tracked letters.

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It is in effect since January 1st 2020. The Dutch Post (PostNL) has only this information published. Their headline the “Frankeer op de juiste manier. Voorkom vertraging, vernietiging of retour afzender” (Stamp the right way. Prevent delays, destruction or return to sender) kinda says it all. Sadly the website of the UPU is made before the internet and really hard to use and find anything on …

Also, it’s not about the letter itself. It’s about that you’re a not allowed to send anything of value as a letter any more. According to a link I shared from Dutch consumer rights website the only things allowed to be send are bank and gift cards. From what I get from it, any postal service has the right now to open anything they find suspicious and if goods are include allowed to destroy it/fine it/return it.

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This was news 6 months ago, well the part of Our honorable president wanting to pull out. Guess no one wanted to report him winning as I seemed to miss those headlines, UPU buckles to Our honorable president.

That article you linked seems to be a bit hyperbolic and/or misleading.

I did a quick search and can’t find most of the information that site says. Some things I do see, but they are combining two things that happened into one.

First off, your rates seem to be way off, must be crazy Euro rates. We will know soon as everyone will be posting/commenting soon everywhere if this is the norm. I think there will be a slight change for some countries as people send things the wrong way, but not the crazy increases you mentioned. More like the new rate is $2 instead of $1, as in a $1 increase and not double the rate or 3-4 times you quoted.

Rates are changing for packages 4.4 pounds and under, minus normal yearly rate increases and to countries with stupidly cheap rates. So, yeah, this hits basically collectors of pretty much anything but cars.

It seems the rates are only going to start at 70% of domestic rates and raise slowly from there, currently will cap at 80%. Rates from China are crazy cheap, the reason for this change. 4.4 pounds is like $6-7 from China to the US. So, prices will go up but seems like maybe $1-$2 for many countries if that for trading card size packages.

www.supplychaindive.com/news/upu-postal-rate-change/564615/

Stop Act 2018 Trade Act of 2002

This seems to be the reason for the barcodes, it is to stop opioids, well or that is the reason given, but really probably to increase rates. If so, this would really only be a US thing and not worldwide, though everyone could follow suit. This isn’t part of the UPU agreement it seems. I am seeing mentions of the Stop Act from other countries postal sites as the reason for the barcodes not the UPU agreement. So basically, you need to do this for the US but not other countries unless they adopt it. They very well might as if they have to provide the infrastructure to do it to the US, they might pretty much have it to receive mail as well.

govtrackinsider.com/stop-act-would-require-postal-service-to-scan-incoming-packages-from-overseas-for-opioids-ad5d174ad1a9

I am seeing that this is only for tracked mail and starting Jan 2021 from other countries websites.

This will be interesting to follow for the next year. See how it plays out and what the actual rules are and how different countries postal systems handle it. Countries are already starting to fight back against foreign e-commerce taking over. Like Australia imposing the 10% tax on big overseas sellers/platforms. Europe has always been anti foreign market goods with low customs values of 20 euro.

I am actually surprised Our honorable president hasn’t went against Canada/Europe for low customs limits. Maybe there will be a future boon to offset the higher shipping fees for you Europeans.

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I wonder if they are starting to enforce early. Imagine only giving 1-2 months notice at the end of the year and what hell 2021 would bring for packages.

Also, they MAY seize and destroy tracked letters.

What does it say for non tracked, I used google translate, so not perfect. Like I commented above, I only saw these rules coming in for tracked, though price increases for all packages 4.4 pounds or less.

7

This has been the case for us Germans since January 1st 2019.

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Rates been taking straight of the PostNL website. The Netherlands do not have a state controlled post system, they privatized that over 20 years ago and it’s a commercial company ever since. So our rates are high, and get higher each year. They suggest to use untracked parcels as replacement and frankly, an untraced parcel to West EU is € 7,50 up to 350 grams. I cannot change anything about it. I wish we had cheap postal rates as the USPS is offering…

**[EDIT]**I’ve had a reply from CardMarket.com CS:

I’ve tested it out, and from 4 different sellers (each in German, Italy, Belgium) it automatically jumps to a non-tracked parcel fee between €8 and €12.

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I meant not everyone should be seeing the increases like you are seeing, I believe you about your rates.

From what I was able to find, which obviously wan’t everything many countries should see lower rate increases, well maybe.

Or maybe everything will go up. I am seeing only complying with tracked packages, but everything needs a number. Maybe we will all be forced to ship everything tracked and prices will go up for everyone a lot.

And yes, higher prices will make it harder to sell lower priced items. You will have to be able to offer a larger range so people can buy many items.

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Couldn’t find any mentions about a change like this from our postal service, there was a list of changes coming this/next year but nowhere does it say you could not ship items as letters anymore, as long as the maximum height is 3cm and anything more than that will be classified as parcel like always.

But if this rule would be enforced it would be some of the most retarded changes they ever made. For example shipping one single PSA graded card to outside of Europe already costs 7.80€ as a regular first class letter WITHOUT tracking here. Why in the hell would you be required to ship single cards which weights 2-3 grams each as a parcel, literal waste of money and packaging materials.

Hopefully this never becomes a reality here, but even if it did I guess you could still ship light weight letters without adding any CN22 customs declaration form etc. at all and just say that they doesn’t include any items if they ask you about it with no problems.

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news.upu.int/no_cache/nd/member-countries-adopt-new-terminal-dues-system/

I agree, it’s really never been in the news and information is very hard to find. I struggle to find anything solid and if I find something I cannot verify it on either the website of the UPU or for example on the website of BPost, LA Poste or Deutsche Post. How can this ruling be explained if I cannot find any information other than 4 lines on a leaflet, a 4 month old news article but nothing really on any of the websites of surrounding countries.

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The only thing you can find on the site of the Deutsche Post is in the FAQs www.deutschepost.de/de/b/briefe-ins-ausland/haeufige-fragen.html#WarenpostInt

Why can’t goods be sent in letters?
This adjustment is based on a decision of the Universal Postal Union, which regulates the principles of international postal traffic. After this decision, the shipping of documents and goods must now be separated. (google translated)

After some more digging, it turned out, that the Deutsche Post used a “false pretense” to implement those changes on January 1st 2019.

They were afraid of a bigger work load and with that, additional costs. On top they coincidentally changed the measurements for their small international packages to a height of 3 cm (yes that is about 1,18 inches)…
The 2020 changes are nowhere to be found.

Furthermore the Deutsche Post increased the national postage prices last year, because PLEASE READ VERY CAREFULLY, because they were losing customers. And that is not all, CONTINUE READING CAREFULLY! The most used stamp was the 70 ct stamp (normal envelope up to 20 g or 0,7 oz) and they increased the price to 80 ct, so far so bad.
Now a lot of people already had many 70 ct stamps at home and wanted to buy additional 10 ct stamps. The Deutsche Post did not anticipate that and could not meet demand for half a year!! (I talked to 3 bigger post offices here in BERLIN) and they received no more than 20 sheets of 10 ct stamps per week, there are 10 stamps on a sheet.)
I hope you don’t mind me letting a little steam off.

But this really puts life into perspective, some want to become a Pokemon Master, some want to be the Pirate King, but I, I just want to be a Monopoly.

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That’s why I stopped buying any stamps. I let the post office stamp my letters with whatever they’re currently charging.

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Same here man. But they do not have the extra stamp system, you’re either lucky or not when sending out with an older stamp.PostNL has raised the stamp price to € 0,91 per January 1st, it was € 0,87. At the introduction of the euro back in 2002, stamps were only € 0,39. Service went down, 4 instead of 6 delivery days a week and more and more rulings. Prices go up because “due to costs and lower usage of the postal service”. Analysis already say that in 2021 we’ll pay € 1,00 for domestic mail. And we have no alternative, because the only alternative we had has been bought by PostNL last year and will be fully merged into them over the course of the upcoming months. Sadly… the European Union and the European Commission likes to dip their fat fingers into everything, except the postal services.

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I noticed my cards sent in top loaders and plain white envelope to the states were not making it as frequently (from Canada). I switched to card savers and it seems to have worked in fooling the card sorters.

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I bet the best “loophole” would be to buy a bulk a mount of like birthday cards for super cheap and then place your Pokémon card in the birthday card. This way it would not be able to be detected at all. The added cost of the birthday card would be much cheaper than the crazy high shipping costs they’re adding.

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I used to ship like this, but birthday cards push the weight past 20 grams for one single card so I stopped doing it.
Today at post office (different location) the employee told me that having a return address is mandatory as well with the new ruling. Sadly, she couldn’t provide me any written information with all the guidelines I have to follow now…

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After a lengthy discussion at the post office they refused to ship my plain white envelop with 1 semi-rigid in it. The employee said that “yes, we used to do it like this”, and “no, we are not allowed to do so”. The post office is able to get fined if they let things through.

I just took down all my eBay listings for single cards and got straight onto mail with CardMarket, because shipping singles for €6,00 or more ain’t gonna make any sales.

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Thank you for this information!

@genosha so you’re in contact with Cardmarket? I’m interested in the outcome! I also sell on there and ship almost everything in small bubble envelopes.

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Decided to look into this because it seems like a pretty fascinating topic.

Some background:

The UPU holds regular meetings (“congress”) every 4 years where they talk about a bunch of mail related issues. The last regular congress was held in 2016. In this session they decided that they needed to introduce a new classification of mail items. This new classification separates “documents” and “goods”. They also decided to remunerate “all letter-post items containing goods as small packets rather than on the basis of their weight and format, with effect from 1 January 2018”.

With that, the UPU redefined the term “letter-post” to describe four distinct categories:

  1. Small letters - items containing documents only, with minimum dimensions of 90 x 140 mm, maximum
    dimensions of 165 x 245 mm, a maximum weight of 100 g, and a maximum thickness of 5 mm.

  2. Large letters - items containing documents only that cannot be classified as small letters and with minimum dimensions of 90 x 140 mm, maximum dimensions of 305 x 381 mm, a maximum weight of 500 g, and a maximum thickness of 20 mm.

  3. Bulky letters - items containing documents only that are classified neither as small letters nor as large letters, with minimum dimensions of 90 x 140 mm; maximum dimensions of 900 mm for length, width and depth combined, with the greatest dimension not exceeding 600 mm; and a maximum weight of 2 kg.

  4. Small packets- letter-post items containing goods. The applicable size and weight limits are the same as those for bulky letters.

Here’s their diagram of it:

https://i.imgur.com/c2qjkrp.png

Notice the now clear distinction between documents and goods and the lack of a letter option for delivering goods.

So whereas previously you were able to ship goods as small letters (as long as they met the weight/format requirement), this new change introduced two new categories: bulk letters and small packets. The main driver behind this change was so that countries can be more fairly reimbursed since generally “the cost for small packets is higher than for documents”. And also, of course, because countries realized that they could make more money since a lot of letter-post items flowing through their postal systems were goods.

So January 1st, 2018 rolls around and this new plan is approved for implementation (this doesn’t mean it’s actually implemented yet). The actual target date for implementation is January 1st, 2020.

So, between these two dates a couple of things happened. In September 2018, an extraordinary congress was held. News media likes to refer to these as “emergency” meetings. This congress was held and they made some further clarifications to the renumeration system. Shortly afterwards in October 2018, the U.S. decides that they don’t like the proposed renumeration rates and they threaten to withdraw from the UPU. Typically, any changes to these rates would have to be discussed at the next UPU congress (scheduled for August 2020). And based on these discussions, new renumeration rates could come into effect in January 2022 at the soonest. The U.S. obviously can’t wait this long and the UPU is panicking at the idea of the U.S leaving so they hold another emergency congress in September 2019. Here, they came up with a compromise where the U.S. is happy so everyone else is happy (well except for international Pokemon card sellers). The end.

TL;DR: You need to ship goods as small packets now because countries want more money. :blush:

Sources (in order of relevance):
www.docdroid.net/scjWdMz/2.pdf
www.docdroid.net/ntcaQoP/1.pdf
news.upu.int/no_cache/nd/frequently-asked-questions-third-extraordinary-congress/
www.upu.int/en/activities/integrated-product-plan/about-integrated-product-plan-ipp.html
www.upu.int/en/the-upu/congress/past-congresses/2018-extraordinary-congress.html
www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-38/

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