USPS Discontinues Priority Mail Flat Rate Large Board Game Box
KEY POINTS:
- USPS discontinues Priority Mail Flat Rate Large Board Game Box due to processing limitations and decreased usage.
- Remaining stock available on USPS-operated The Postal Store and local USPS locations until depleted.
- There is no replacement planned for the Large Board Game Box Mailer.
USPS officially announced it has discontinued another Priority Mail flat rate box (mailer) this month. This time, the Priority Mail Flat Rate Large Board Game Box (SKU: GBFRB) has been officially retired with no replacement.
The mailer was initially introduced in 2010 as a convenience to the board game industry. After a Return on Investment (ROI) analysis, USPS decided that it was “in the best interest of the Postal Service” to discontinue the production of the box.
USPS said the factors in the decision to retire this box included the “inability to run this product on package processing equipment, costs associated with manually processing this product, and reduced customer usage in recent years.”
The Priority Mail Flat Rate Large Board Game Box will continue to be available on the USPS-operated The Postal Store until supplies run out. USPS expects inventory to be fully depleted by the end of January on its online portal.
Shippers that use this box can also check with their local USPS retail locations for any remaining stock. However, this was not a common item stocked by most locations.
Even after USPS runs out, the Priority Mail Flat Rate Large Board Game Box will continue to be eligible for flat rate pricing and shippers can continue using it until they run of the box.
Other USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Retirements
Just yesterday we posted that the USPS Priority Mail Prepaid Flat Rate Stamped Envelopes are discontinued and no longer available on The Postal Store.
The retirement of prepaid envelope mailers seemed to coincide with price increases that went into effect on January 9. Using that mailer now requires shippers to add additional postage to that prepaid envelope to match today’s rate for the mailer. Certainly, it doesn’t make sense to continue a prepaid mailer with the incorrect postage amount.
But unlike the game board box, the flat-rate prepaid envelope mailer is being replaced with a version that includes a forever stamp. That makes the new prepaid envelopes future-proof as shippers won’t have to worry about adding postage the next time USPS raises its rates.
USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Padded Envelope Update
The USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Padded Envelope disappeared from The Postal Store a few days ago, and there was a concern it may also have been discontinued. But the mailer returned today on The Postal Store under a new SKU: EP14PE_X.
We do not have any information on why the Postal Service changed the SKU or why it removed the mailer from its store temporarily. We can only assume it was due to a vendor change that required a new SKU.
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Richard Meldner
Richard is co-founder of eSeller365. He has over 17 years of experience on eBay which includes tens of thousands of sales to buyers in over 100 countries and even has experience with eBay’s VeRO program enforcing intellectual property rights for a former employer. And for about two years Richard sold products on Amazon using Amazon FBA in the US.
To “relax” from the daily business grind, for a few weekends a year, he also works for IMSA as a professional race official.
So disappointed to hear that the board game flat rate box will be discontinued….I ship almost monthly to my relatives in NC, NH, AZ and CA…and this the best box. Do you still have some in stock I can request?
Your best bet would be to visit your local Post office or see if they have added any new envelope or boxes that would fit your needs.
Thanks.
it was a flat rate that saved me $10 for my products. So heading over to fedex and ups. hope USPS enjoys not earning the 12k I spend every year in shipping.
Same with us, we ship 80% of our products on these boxes. We also are going to UPS. We’ve spent over $10k with usps this year so far. They are going to bankrupt themselves doing this.
In the past two years I shipped over 240 boxes of my training aid via USPS flat rate large game box…just ordered plain boxes from Uline and will ship FEDEX.
Bye USPS…I am sure Mr. DeJoy had something to do with this!
So foolish! Could this really have cost so much to produce, that it’s worth losing a multitude of clients that have used this box for years? Doubt it. It can’t cost that much to have these available to order. Maybe if USPS didn’t get rid of all that equipment they once used, they would be able to manage this. Ridiculous!
Perhaps they realized that wise customers could ship other kinds of heavier merchandise in these boxes that would not have easily fit in the regular ‘large’ priority boxes? It’s a bit of a cop-out to blame low customer demand for these boxes when in reality it has appeared that some local post-offices didn’t have them out for customers and sometimes even when specifically asked for, the clerks would say that they didn’t have any and to ‘please order them online.’ Could it have been deliberately setting up a catch-22?
have some of the FRB-GB BOXES that were made in 2020 i do use them for some items that i ship
for now they are not going in the blue recycle can .
i will keep them a as i still need them
It’s hard enough to stay in business and be competitive and still make a halfway decent profit but if these game boxes are eliminated, it’s a huge consideration for me now right now. I purposely resized my product to fit in that box so 11 and half inches by 18” was my new product size. Now what ??