Click-n-ship: Deception?

If you stumble on to, or hear about the United States Post Office service called Click-n-Ship, be careful. There is something you should know…

If you are not familiar with Click-n-Ship, let me explain. The post office offers you the service of being able to purchase your postage online at home. You enter the type of mail you are sending (envelope, package, etc), you enter the weight and shipping information — and then they calculate out the cost. Next, they print out a label for you right there on your own printer. You cut it out, paste it to your package and drop it in the mail.

Isn’t that a great idea? No more having to wait in line at the post office. You can do it all from home. What is not to love?

The problem: You are paying for this service, but they don’t directly tell you. I only realized it after entering several different weights for different packages and they all came back telling me they were the same price: Priority Mail for $3.85. It didn’t matter than one package was 2 oz., another was 4 oz. and the last weighed nearly a pound. I knew something was up…

Essentially, the Click-n-Ship’s cheapest charge for all packages under a certain weight is $3.85. They don’t forewarn you about this either. You have to figure it out on your own, or do some close reading on their website.

Instead of paying $3.85 for my last few packages, I actually could have mailed them for $1.06 or even less!

Nice, wouldn’t you say??

From now on, I am going to buy dollar stamps at the post office and keep them home. Then I am going to weigh my packages myself, use their online postage calculator (not Click-n-ship) and write my own labels.

Why would I want to do their work and then pay them for it? H E L L O.