[GeneralQuestions] Shipping anon with USPS First Class. How does one ensure their pack isn't being lumped in with Standard Post?!?

I would never pretend to be an expert on things USPS, but I do know and have learned enough to successfully ship/vend for the better part of the last year.

Typically I send out Priority but have recently opened up the door for other options.

Let's say a 'flat' pack (yellow padded) is going out. It weighs 3 ounces, and I want to include tracking. What I had done is to pick up a 400 pack of track labels and many, many $.49c Forever Stamps.

When the pack ships it has, say 5 Forver Stamps to cover both the actual shipping fee of, in this case $1.40 (3 ounces) and an additional $1 to cover the tracking.

So... 5 stamps, track label and its time to drop off. I suppose my question(s) are, what identifies this as First Class mail and keeps it from defaulting to Standard Mail?

I ask as I have had a couple recently with severe delays (10-15 days in transit. While others are arriving in 2-3-4.

Did the few with extreme delays merely lack a few pennies of postage to account for the First Class rates? Is there a better stamp one would use to signify this pack is going First Class?

I have searched and searched and have picked up some good tips on the way, but nothing that will assist in answering this.

Additionally, I am wondering just howmany vendors use Print At Home shipping as their method of choice?

Is the best route to go Click 2 Ship with a fake Paypal and pre-paid?!?

This has been driving me NUTS.

Any insight, info or links with either of those is greatly appreciated.


Comments


[2 Points] throwahooawayyfoe:

what identifies this as First Class mail

the first class forever stamps do that job.

Did the few with extreme delays merely lack a few pennies of postage to account for the First Class rates?

no. that's just usps being shitty. if something gets misrouted along the way, it's obviously gonna take a little bit longer to get back on track and get where it's going. to help avoid this, ask that your customers use their full zip+4 and use a font for your address label that can be easily read by a machine (try using an OCR font. They're created specifically to be machine-readable).

Is there a better stamp one would use to signify this pack is going First Class?

no. first class forever stamps are first class forever stamps.

Is the best route to go Click 2 Ship with a fake Paypal and pre-paid?!?

you can if you'd like. but that seems like a hassle when you can just use stamps paid for with cash.


[2 Points] jungletek:

Hey, so this is not entirely on-topic, but you mentioned print-at-home shipping labels. FWIW, if you weren't already aware, most printers embed info on the printed page, usually using yellow ink printed in microscopic patterns, enabling someone (think LE) to link the printout to a (known) printer.

Google 'printer microdots' for more info...


[1 Points] lalal00psies:

My experience with usps and ebay ..lately I have had 2 first class letter envelopes take 10 and 8 days to make it like 400 miles due east of me..crazy. The advantage that click and ship has is it prints a barcode that the usps machines read and hopefully it goes in the right mail stream. The tracker codes you have to pay for are not tied to the address or tell the machines its first class or whatever, and it seems like they have a tendency to just go as slow as possible. But its random as hell. Usps is completely unpredictable.