The new US Postal Service stamp simply does not solve invitation mailing problems.

Greetings Magazine reported that during a ceremony at the National Stationery Show in May, the US Postal Service released a sixty four cent “Butterfly Stamp” that is a flat rate for up to one ounce regardless of the shape of an envelope. It does reduce the price of a square envelope and eliminate the need to bring a greeting card to the post office. However, because most invitations and their enclosures exceed one ounce, weighing at the post office and adding additional postage will still be required.

The most important issue of all is that the Post Office is unwilling to standardize a policy of hand canceling. Machine handling contributes to the ruination of invitations. Customers can invest thousands of dollars to achieve that perfect reflection of their taste in an invitation, only to have it ruined. The Post Office has as much as risk to lose revenue as invitation retailers. This discouraging practice of not assuring that a piece of mail with valuable content reaches the recipient in the condition it was sent is bad business. Customers cannot even pay for the extra care. This apathy only encourages sending less expensive invitations which involves less postage or even moving to electronic invitations.

I both wrote to and called the postmaster in Washington and received more apathy. Perhaps a collective effort is in order.