Silk Road forums

Discussion => Shipping => Topic started by: Green Camel on March 26, 2013, 03:31 pm

Title: Stamps, Online Postage or SmartStamp - which one do you use? (UK)
Post by: Green Camel on March 26, 2013, 03:31 pm
I've been using Royal Mail's Online Postage to to print postage. However, there are multiple issue with it. Too many to list here - but if you've ever used it, you know! Basically, it's shit.

I've been considering SmartStamp. The subscription costs £5.99 a month (or £59.99 a year). It's actually a Windows application that, in the same way as Online Postage, lets you print postage from your computer.

A couple of questions:

1) Does it work with Tor?
2) Does it work on Linux through wine?
3) Is the user experience much better?

Sadly, they're not accepting new subscriptions at the moment, so I won't be able to try it out for a while. It's seems great though - being a SR seller, PPI and franking are obviously out of the question.
Title: Re: Stamps, Online Postage or SmartStamp - which one do you use? (UK)
Post by: reich on March 26, 2013, 06:48 pm
Correct me if I'm wrong but don't both online postage and smartstamp require a direct debit or credit/debit card to pay for them? Even if you manage to get a card that either isn't linked to you or is anonymous you are leaving a large trail of what you've been doing. I would imagine that either the printed postage methods have barcodes or serial numbers that can be traced back to the account used to buy them (Makes logical sense as it would massively help against fraud). In addition to this if you are ever caught and they find that the card you've bought online postage on that week has a list of purchases going back say 5 years and for large amounts of postage then they've got pretty much proof of how long you've been doing this for.

Not to mention if they can trace these printed postage letters/packets if one gets caught then it may be possible to flag all future orders from that postage account.
Title: Re: Stamps, Online Postage or SmartStamp - which one do you use? (UK)
Post by: RoxiPal on March 26, 2013, 07:21 pm
It's generally a bad idea to print postage online because the carrier saves all of the data for every package you send.  Same with USPS in the USA, all of your transactions are saved for months and years.  If you must, get new accounts every month or after you have passed a certain number of packages sent out.

Please use the advice... However, RP would never wholeheartedly recommend any online postage, stamps are your friend.
Title: Re: Stamps, Online Postage or SmartStamp - which one do you use? (UK)
Post by: Green Camel on March 26, 2013, 08:10 pm
Correct me if I'm wrong but don't both online postage and smartstamp require a direct debit or credit/debit card to pay for them? Even if you manage to get a card that either isn't linked to you or is anonymous you are leaving a large trail of what you've been doing. I would imagine that either the printed postage methods have barcodes or serial numbers that can be traced back to the account used to buy them (Makes logical sense as it would massively help against fraud). In addition to this if you are ever caught and they find that the card you've bought online postage on that week has a list of purchases going back say 5 years and for large amounts of postage then they've got pretty much proof of how long you've been doing this for.

Not to mention if they can trace these printed postage letters/packets if one gets caught then it may be possible to flag all future orders from that postage account.
I've been using non-reloadable anonymous Visa numbers. Once the money on one Visa number has been used up, you can open another account on royalmail.com and break the trail.

I've had a few packages intercepted but no way were the rest affected. Packages getting flagged based on QR code is theoretically possible of course but I don't see Royal Mail doing it in the near future, if ever.

I'm not going to use stamps again. I did in the beginning and found it impractical. Buying 60p, 87p, £1.28, etc. stamps in bulk also costs quite a lot of money. Tbh, I still have quite a lot of 'make up value' stamps, which I never used.