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While the U.S. Postal Service said Monday it would raise standard mail rates by an average of 2.9% in May, a closer look at the rates shows some that will go up more.

Just the same, mailers Direct Newsline spoke to generally felt they would live with these increases--especially after last year’s hikes that raised some rates by 40%.

Of course, this year, the USPS was largely required to keep the hikes within certain limits after the passage last December of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), the long-awaited reform legislation. One thing the new law requires is price caps tied to the rate of inflation, which is now pegged at 2.9%.

According to Charley Howard, vice president of postal affairs at Harte-Hanks, a cursory look at the new rates suggested that the USPS raised the prices more for letters than flats (catalogs).

For example, some rates for automated letters at the 3-digit and 5-digit level-which accounts for most-went up as much as 4.19%, well above the average 2.9% average quoted by the USPS.

Standard flat rates generally went up between 1.37% and 2.29% but Howard thought the USPS should have cut those after last year’s whopping increase-which was as much as 40% in some cases.

"Within standard mail, it appears that the postal service attempted to give some relief to flat size mailers who got hit so hard in last year’s increase," said Don Harle, vice president of postal affairs, Diamond Marketing Services and co-chair of the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee, who also noted that letter rates went up more than those of flats.

Harle praised the PAEA because it more or less guarantees small predictable yearly rate increases.

"It is a strong signal that the USPS recognizes the economic distress in the catalog industry," said Hamilton Davison, executive director of the American Catalog Mailers Association, in a statement. "We had a huge rate increases last year. Catalog mailers have been scrambling since. We saw a significant downward adjustment in catalog mail volumes in the last quarter of 2007."

Even nonprofit mailers, who were largely spared here, experienced some rate hikes well above the average, although nothing like the increases some nonprofits experienced in last year’s rate hike.

Case in point: non-flat machinable rates, which apply to nonprofits that mail out such premiums as greeting cards and rosary beads will go up by around 7%, said Tony Conway, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers.

That’s because those mailings cannot be processed automatically and must be processed manually. He noted that many organizations are working with vendors to create automation-compatible mailing packages.