Sellers are reporting major technical problems with USPS Click N Ship, a service they use to print online postage, with one avid user calling the glitches “the biggest ecommerce story of the month.”
Last week, the service had an outage, reported on Ecommerce EKG and on the website, IsItDownRightNow.com.
One seller had written on Wednesday, “My small business is now at a standstill. I have packages that need to go all over the US, Canada, Australia & Hong Kong and can’t do anything. Unfortunately, I already charged my customers for the online shipping rate, and I’m not willing to cover the difference of paying at the post office, which is a lot for big packages. So… nobody gets anything, and I’ll get a poor rating cuz of it. Arrggghhh!!!”
An EcommerceBytes reader wrote this week, “Since Wednesday I have not been able to print any shipping labels using the USPS web site for Click-N-Ship. This is death for any business that relies on using the regional rate priority boxes. One can print shipping labels with PayPal but not for Regional Rate Priority boxes, which a lot of businesses use extensively.”
He said he has been forced to use medium flat rate boxes, which are much more expensive. “I didn’t figure that extra money into my price,” he said.
Now it appears some sellers are seeing Regional Rate boxes return, but say they’re being overcharged. “After selecting Priority Mail Flat rate option, my total came to $44.95!!! Not the usual $5.05,” said one user.
We sent an inquiry to the USPS this evening upon learning that the problems were ongoing.
