Ah'm wid da gub'ment

an Ah'm here to he'p you....

Well, sometimes that may be true. 

Read on:

I wonder how many of the on-line postasge vendors realize that they are already out of business;  and as soon as their customers become familiar with this offering from the United States Postal Service they might as well go ahead and close their electronic doors and liquidate inventory (or would that be "e-nventory"?).

Since e-postage's beginning it has had two principal advantages over conventional stamps--advantages that have made the additional cost worthwhile for many.  First, there was the obvious convenience of being able to buy "stamps" 24/7 regrdless 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 by the U.S.P.S. to be "metered postage"  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 which weighs 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), neither can you drop it in a free-standing mail box located rightoutside 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 are as exasperating as a slow-moving post office line that one is standng 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.

And the conventional wisdom is wrong, because according to the U.S.P.S.'s "Bible"--tjhe 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 metered postage 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] 

And for many, that convenience alone has been worth the extra cost of e-postage. (One of the largest private-sector on-line-postage vendors, 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.

But then the U.S.P.S.--in what was, for them, a surprisingly cutting-edge move--came out with "Click-N-Ship", 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.  If you use this method for Priority Mail postage the U.S.P.S. will throw in Delivery Confirmation for free, as well as (3) give you Priority Mail shipping envelopes, boxes, and tape at no cost and, as icing on the cake, (4) there's no registration fee or minimum monthly cost for these services.  Outstanding!

Two elements of the Priority Mail service offering have the potential of being real bonuses for eBay shippers:  By using the Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope and/or (ditto) Box a seller can send a parcel to anywhere in the country (including Alaska and Hawaii) regardless of weight for a fixed fee of $3.85 for the envelope or #7.70 for the box (actually, boxes:  They come in two shapes of roughly the same volumetric capacity), and that price includes online tracking and Delivery Confirmation (if the postage is purchased through Click-N-Ship.)

So tell me again why I would want to maintain an account with one of the private-sector online-postage vendors??????

Sometimes, when the moon is right, it seems like maybe the government is there to help....