The website is not very impressive other than it is fast. The home page is just annoying, I have the few pages I use bookmarked to avoid the home page. I call the web tech (800-344-7779) a lot, most of the people there are very nice (there’s one girl who is totally not).

This business of shipping on the day the label is printed is a bit of nonsense and inconvenience. If the label is no longer valid or shippable, the USPS should automatically refund the money. Oh, they didn’t agree with that! I spend upwards of $6,500 a year on Click ‘n’ Ship (direct), I ship 5 to 10 packages 6 days a week. That is a lot of using the USPS website.

My biggest suggestion is they get 4 or 5 people that use their site everyday to tell them where and how they could make it a lot more user friendly.

I strongly encourage everyone to call them, they have to write suggestions and complaints and give you a confirmation number. They won’t do anything about your suggestion (trust me!) but they will document it.

As for the date thing – never had a problem here if it was a day off. PayPal always plugs in todays date, which I try to catch. Yes, there’s something to be said about the USPS being a bone headed inflexible behemoth, but I dare say that you’ll play heck getting a small package across the country for $5.15 any where else. If they go out, we’ll all be damn sorry.

I don’t think most people are out to defraud USPS. USPS seems to make it increasingly difficult to do business with them.

On at least three occasions recently, I have inadvertently printed electronic postage with PayPal on Sunday, only to have to void the label and reprint it for the following day. Sure, PayPal could rectify this programmatically. I have used Stamps.com, and their software will default to the next appropriate mail date after a cutoff time. (And yes, it does skip Sunday for most classes of mail.)

A couple of months ago I shipped an iPad via Priority Mail. I printed postage with Click-N-Ship. I started to walk to the post office, which is about half a mile away. On my way to the post office, I ran into a postal carrier, so I handed the package to her. (I live downtown, so I run into carriers fairly easily.) When I tracked it the following day, there was no scan, so I was a little worried, but it ended up getting processed the following day – the day after I handed it to the carrier. No big deal, but it illustrates how the actual ship date may not match the printed mailing date. I don’t know if the carrier didn’t make it back to the post office in time for processing or was delayed for some other reason, but had the USPS rejected the shipment because the printed date had passed, it would have been an annoyance.

On a separate topic, it is aggravating that only the smallest of items fit into postal drop boxes. The 13-oz. rule does not apply to electronic postage. I needed to ship a CD in a cardboard package that was about 1.25” thick. It would not fit through the drop slot at a box at the post office, so I had to park and walk inside. Yes, I remember when the 13-oz. rule went into effect and the reasons for it, but USPS should be doing things to increase ease-of-use, not make it more difficult for 99.999% of honest customers.

R :

Sorry, but I just came across this site. I was a team member at Compaq Computers that developed all of the behind the scenes web services for Click-N-Ship in the late 1990′s. The stuff is damn impressive at the back end. At that time I recall that many USPS officials (and union members) were very much concerned about how allowing end users to generate indicium (the printed postage) would alter and impact USPS operations, such as measuring the effectiveness of delivery times (hey, since you may be generating an Express Mail label outside of the USPS control, we don’t want your lack of following postal instructions to cause the package delivery to take longer than the Express Mail guarantees – gee that might affect how the unionize employees at that facility get scored and affect their salary raises and bonuses). Also, the recipient can claim a refund if delvery was not prompt enough. Get the point? You are screwing with some blue collar’s job and livelihood and the profitability of the USPS. Maybe we should not go through with this Click-N-Ship brainstorm and make you stand in the postal line every day Mr. Internet Salesman.
Also, you may be giving false hopes to your package recipient, who thinks you already mailed the package when you really have not yet done so. There is not always an acceptance scan done when you drop off your package. This varies upon your venue.
Also, to sweeten the public acceptance of printing their own postage, the USPS throws in discounted delivery confirmation, etc. So you do have an incentive to follow the instructions (i.e. save a few cents and your convenience of not standing in the long customer line at a post office). Are the few rules in place too hard for you to follow.
And for the record – there ARE many metropolitan Post Offices that do process and sort mail in the back rooms on SUNDAYS (Saturdays too, actually 24×7 in a few regional sorting centers), so if you dropped off your package or put it into the slot on Sunday, it may actually begin movement for delivery on Sunday. While I feel your pain, is it too much trouble to select the actual ship date when you print your postage labels (especially when you know you will not go by the Post Office on Sunday). If this is beyond your capacity, then may I suggest you print the label without postage, and buy a big sheet on stamps and lick away when you are in the mood to enter the packages into the mail stream.
Sorry, this is not rocket science, but it is also not “Shipping For Dummies” either. Using a computer and sophisticated software that interfaces with the second largest business in the world (behind Walmart) requires a bit more understanding on your part than that of the Walmart greeter.
For those that have gotten away with sloppy procedures in the past, please do not complain that it took awhile for some savvy postal employee to recognize the game you are playing. (I.e. hey I will sell you this item on eBay and although I will charge you Express Mail postage, I will generate the label but mail it several days later and you can complain at your local post office and get your shipping costs refunded, thus saving you money and making me one of the folks on eBay that you will love to purchase from because my total costs beat my competitors, all because we are taking advantage of the dumb ole dinosaur USPS which should have gone outta business years ago, blah, blah, blah).
Sorry for the rant, but there are two sides to this story, and while I have some (but not much) sympathy for you printing the wrong ship date on a label, it really takes no effort for you to do things right the first time. Get with the program or go stand in line.

I’m sure there are plenty of reasons for why it is the way it is but it is not a user friendly system. And the user is who you should ultimately be trying to satisfy….

When I am mailing 20 packages it’s a PITA to have to check and double-check each and every little box to make sure the info is correct. Time is money and spending all that time on something that should be straightforward is ridiculous. At least EBay automatically changes the shipping date to the next day when it detects that it is past 4:00 in your time zone. No such thing on the USPS site. You could print a label at 11:59 PM and it would still have a ship date of that same day.

Also, you may be giving false hopes to your package recipient, who thinks you already mailed the package when you really have not yet done so. There is not always an acceptance scan done when you drop off your package. This varies upon your venue.

Also, to sweeten the public acceptance of printing their own postage, the USPS throws in discounted delivery confirmation, etc. So you do have an incentive to follow the instructions (i.e. save a few cents and your convenience of not standing in the long customer line at a post office). Are the few rules in place too hard for you to follow.

And for the record – there ARE many metropolitan Post Offices that do process and sort mail in the back rooms on SUNDAYS (Saturdays too, actually 24×7 in a few regional sorting centers), so if you dropped off your package or put it into the slot on Sunday, it may actually begin movement for delivery on Sunday. While I feel your pain, is it too much trouble to select the actual ship date when you print your postage labels (especially when you know you will not go by the Post Office on Sunday). If this is beyond your capacity, then may I suggest you print the label without postage, and buy a big sheet on stamps and lick away when you are in the mood to enter the packages into the mail stream.

Sorry, this is not rocket science, but it is also not “Shipping For Dummies” either. Using a computer and sophisticated software that interfaces with the second largest business in the world (behind Walmart) requires a bit more understanding on your part than that of the Walmart greeter.

For those that have gotten away with sloppy procedures in the past, please do not complain that it took awhile for some savvy postal employee to recognize the game you are playing. (I.e. hey I will sell you this item on eBay and although I will charge you Express Mail postage, I will generate the label but mail it several days later and you can complain at your local post office and get your shipping costs refunded, thus saving you money and making me one of the folks on eBay that you will love to purchase from because my total costs beat my competitors, all because we are taking advantage of the dumb ole dinosaur USPS which should have gone outta business years ago, blah, blah, blah).

Sorry for the rant, but there are two sides to this story, and while I have some (but not much) sympathy for you printing the wrong ship date on a label, it really takes no effort for you to do things right the first time. Get with the program or go stand in line.