Stamps.com: No advantage for the private user
Written: Jan 02 '01
| Site Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Setup Ease: |
 |
|
|
| Full Review |
Stamps.com is a service that sells... stamps. You pay a monthly fee (10% of the amount of postage printed, with a minimum fee of $4.49) and you can print your postage on your own printer. That's the simple premise. They also let you try the service for free for one month, and as an incentive they offer some free postage (I got $10 worth of free postage for the first month; you can get up to $25 depending on your referral). You register with them, give them credit card information (so remember to cancel in time if you plan to do so after the first free month or they'll start charging) and download a small application.
Now that I have an ink jet that actually works and doesn't rip envelopes, I figured I had to try this service for myself. After all, I figured, you can't have too many stamps. Like toilet paper, they eventually get used. But I figured wrong. No, I wasn't wrong about the toilet paper, but I sure was wrong about postage from stamps.com.
Three other things persuaded me to do this. The first is that I send a lot of overseas letters which cost 60 cents. I hardly ever bother buying 60 cent stamps, so I end up paying 66 (two 33 cent stamps), which adds up. So I figured I'd be able to print 60 cent stamps and thus save 6 cents per letter. Yep, wrong again.
The second reason is that the price of domestic stamps is about to go up by one cent, and I figured I'd be able to print out the extra penny and continue to use my 33 cent stamps until I run out (instead of running to the post office and buying 1 cent stamps). You got it: wrong again.
The third reason is that I'm about to redo my whole system (reformat drive, clean everything and reinstall) so this is a perfect time to try all sorts of programs from various companies. If these programs do more damage than good, or don't uninstall cleanly, they won't interfere for long and I'll know better later. Hey, at least this reason to try the service did not end in disappointment.
Well, as is quite clear at this point, I'm not keeping this service. Not that it's ALL bad. In fact, if I had a business I would consider this service... or at least I wouldn't dismiss it as easily. But since I pay bills online and have already sent all my holiday cards the only stamps I'll be needing in the near future are overseas rates, which are not available on this service (ugh!). And mind you, there was nothing on the registration or information page that would have tuned me in to this fact. Furthermore, you cannot print the extra postage and use a traditional stamp alongside; your only choices in printing postage are whole priced stamps. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Below are the features and the problems with this service.
Features:
1. print postage from your computer
2. include your return address
3. addressbook features make it easy to include addressee's address
4. include images in return address or stamp
5. ability to print on various envelopes and labels (including the capability to print on a specific label on a page so you don't waste unused ones)
6. priority mail/packages/etc.
Oops:
These are in no particular order:
1. You have to send a periodic letter to the company's headquarters. So the first 33 cents they took without asking.
2. Can't print overseas stamps because this service does not have an agreement with international post (that's what they told me). Makes sense, but I wish they had made it clear from the start. It completely eliminates my main reason to use this service. [While I was composing this and waiting for the epinions down time to be over so I can post my review I found some international stamps information on stamps.com; but I didn't see how it applied to this situation... I believe it is an attempt to sell this service to Europeans for domestic postage in their countries, but I'm not sure.]
3. Can't print additional postage or anything but whole stamps (so I can't use it to add the 1 penny to my 33 cent stamps when the rates increase). Traditionally, stamps (until used) are similar to currency. If you bought pre-stamped envelopes you can add postage to them and use them with new rates. Obviously, the fact that you're not paying the post office directly (but instead paying the service stamps.com) makes all the difference in the value of the postage you're using.
4. Dated stamps. Once you print a stamp, apparently, it is only good for a month or so from the date you printed it (and the date is part of the stamp). WHY is this necessary? Once you pay for a stamp you should be able to use it whenever you want. This, in case you didn't already figure it out, makes your incentive free postage only good for a month. What you don't use you lose, and you can't just print out a bunch of stamped envelopes without the addressee's address.
5. Waste 2 envelopes anytime you re-configure the printer. That's just a pain. Couldn't they print the samples on regular sheets with the outline of an envelope?
6. If you're a private user you're not likely to have a scale for letters at home. How are you supposed to find out the postage price of a package you're sending? Obviously there are ways to do it, but none that don't cancel out the benefit of printing postage at home. Couldn't they at least give us some obvious rates of common packages (e.g., CD's or VHS cassettes? Such packages are always the same weight, so stamps.com could have provided customers with a list of common package weights and hence postage costs).
7. Anything but a simple envelope (of the features I discuss above) uses labels. Who among us keeps a variety of avery labels handy for every occasion? I used this service on a greeting card size envelope; there wasn't a perfect selection so the information printed rather awkwardly on the card.
8. I'm not that keen on stamps.com having access to my list of addressees. Who knows what they are doing with that information? I really see no reason why postage wouldn't print without an addressee.
Conclusion
Unless you send a LOT of mail, all in the United States, in the most common envelopes, this service will do you little good. Basically, as a private user you will not use most of the features I list above. You probably won't even have a chance to use up all the free postage they offer as an incentive.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
ngurevic
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Naomi Gurevich
Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 26 members
About Me:
I finished my Doctorate (in Linguistics) and had a kid. now what?!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.