NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, January 2004
The Post Office Does E-postage
Thinking of trying e-postage? Read this before you sign up
by “Mac” McWethy
Special PIBMUG Correspondent
deemac@cox-internet.com
(click to email author)


I wonder how many of the on-line-postage vendors (such as Stamps.com, Estamp, P-B “ClickStamp”, etc.) realize that they are already out of business, and as soon as their customers discover the latest offering from the United States Postal Service they can go ahead and close their electronic doors and liquidate inventory (or would that be “e-nventory”?).

Since its advent there have been two principal advantages to e-postage over conventional stamps that have made the additional cost worthwhile for many. First, there was the obvious advantage of being able to buy “stamps” 24/7 regardless of the weather or whether it was a holiday. True, what was produced was not really a stamp—it was typically an adhesive label made on your computer’s printer—but the fact that it was considered to be “metered postage” by the USPS yields the second—and for some, much bigger—advantage: Avoiding the lines at the post office.

Conventional wisdom holds that if you want to mail a parcel weighing over a pound you must physically hand it to a postal clerk at a post office. You cannot mail it from your home (unless you’re well-known to your mail carrier) nor can you drop it in a free-standing mail box located right outside the post office (no matter who you know). You must get in line and hand it to a clerk at a retail postal counter during normal business hours.

And few things can be as exasperating as a slow-moving post office line that one is standing in for no reason other than to hand a package—which may have already been weighed and stamped—to a clerk. Renewing your car tag may come in a close second, except during the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season when the line at the post office stretches from here clear over to there. There’s no close second, third, or fourth when that happens.

Meter me This, Batman
Well, the conventional wisdom is wrong, because according to the USPS’s “Bible”—the Domestic Mail Manual—only packages weighing more than 16 ounces and bearing (adhesive) stamps must be handed to a clerk. Postage lawfully printed by your PC is “metered postage” and packages bearing same can be mailed by dropping them in any collection box or by having your mail carrier take them away.

Citation: Mail “weighing 16 ounces or more must be presented at a post office retail counter if postage is paid with adhesive stamps” [DMM Section D100.2.6] but in the case of metered mail “…First-Class Mail, Express Mail, and Priority Mail may be deposited in any street collection box or post office.” [DMM Section P030.11]. Both references are available on-line at the Postal Explorer Web Edition; http://pe.usps.gov/

For many, that convenience alone has been worth the extra cost of e-postage (Stamps.com, for example, has a monthly fee of 10% of the face amount of the postage printed with a $4.49 minimum; you buy the right to print postage by means of charging an amount of money you select—$10, $25, etc.—to your credit card and then you draw down on this amount when you subsequently print postage.)

Clickity Click
However: Now comes the USPS with “Click-N-Ship” (its own brand on on-line e-postage, available at http://www.usps.com) which allows anyone, after proper registration and establishment of a username and password, to not only print regular postage but also:

(1) shipping labels with e-postage affixed on

(2) either full-sheet adhesive labels or just plain ‘ol paper which is attached to the package with spray adhesive or tape; if you use this method for Priority Mail postage

(3) the USPS will throw in Delivery Confirmation for free as well as give you Priority Mail shipping boxes and tape at no cost and, as icing to the cake

(4) there’s no registration fee or minimum monthly cost for these services! Outstanding!

So tell me again why I would want to maintain my Stamps.com account? Sometimes, when the moon is right, it seems like maybe the government is there to help…

Be Careful
One final cautionary note: if you choose to terminate your account with one of the free-market internet postage providers, you would do well to first confirm the date when the next billing cycle begins; learn when the account would be de-activated; and find out how long the account would remain accessible (for purposes of copying the address book, purchased-postage records for tax purposes, etc.) after the close-account instructions are given. Logically, it should remain available to you for as long a time period as you are required to pay for.

Not following this advice (and thereby gaining the wisdom that qualifies me to offer it), I terminated my Stamps.com account on Monday, February 3—the first business day in February. Although my account was deactivated immediately (making it impossible to access it for the purposes mentioned above) I was nevertheless charged the full minimum monthly fee for the month of February. Had I known that this would have been the effect I still would have closed the account—I just would have made sure that I got all the data I needed from it and shut it down three days earlier.

Copyright © 2003 by "Mac" McWethy.
Reproduced with permission. Prior to relocating to that gray area between “retirement” and “unemployment”, Mac was an Assistant City Manager for 13 years and a Facilities Manager for a community mental health system for 10 years. He has a Masters in Public Administration. Article reproduction coordinated by Steve Bass, author of PC Annoyances: How to Fix the Most Annoying Things about Your Personal Computer, O’Reilly Press. http://snurl.com/annoyances

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