Everyone is going on about how the USPS is deliberately doing this, but forgetting that the postal service has been declining for a long time now. It got decent as the internet mail-order boom happened, but has fallen again. Volumes have been falling for letters, machines get turned off, no one really remembers last year when they got little mail but now that the system is handing 1960s era first-class again for a short time, it buckles and everyone goes "O M EFF and GEE you're doing this on purpose!" No they're not. They're just unable to handle demand.