PayPal & eBay Shipping with Unlisted USPS Flat Rate Box Options

[PlaygroundMusic]

We ship a lot of products internationally and when I used the PayPal Shipping Label service recently, there was no option for the USPS Priority Mail Small Flat Rate Box. There are actually 4 or 5 flat rate boxes available from USPS but PayPal only supports 1 or 2. There's a BIG price difference between a medium and small box. Will there be support for the other shipping options in the future? Until then, we'll keep using Shiprush/Endicia via Blackthorne

[boroboy135]

Jason - three months have gone by and still no action from PayPal on this problem. PLEASE what is the problem to make a change to cover probably two of the most popular size Flat Rate boxes?

Can you at least give us an update on this?

Thanks

[debk255]

for lightweight smaller items, unless they are inexpensive and you don't mind replacing them or refunding if the parcel never arrives,  I would recommend using the priority flat rate envelopes or sm. flat rate boxes when shipping your international items.   

This is less expensive than reg. priroity mail for international shipping, & offers you the advantages of  tracking, delivery confirmation and includes insurance up to 63.00 value for a parcel of 1# or less. 

Sadly, even if you can prove you shipped the item, pay pal will NOT offer you seller protection if the item arrives damaged or never arrives at all.  Buyers can claim they never got the item, and even if they did, pay pal will yank the funds from your account if the buyer does a pay pal dispute.  The delivery confirmation helps prevent that.

-Deb

[Eagleness]

I wrote to PayPal regarding this issue about five months ago and they assured me that it would be done.

I gave up!

However, I do use the Flat Rate Envelope option for the SMALL FLAT RATE BOX, same price and it work!!!  I've done this many times.

[dnisenoff]

Pay Pal and Pitney Bowes need to get it together. Effective 1-4-2010 there is now a 5 cent difference between flat rate envelope and flat rate small box.

[HoustonShipper]

In case anyone was thinking of trying to get the Post Office to push PayPal to fix the problems, informing USPS about the lack of support at PayPal also gets nowhere, even when it's phrased in terms of "They've got it so messed up that people are going to be printing labels for the wrong amount, and often that amount will be too small".  USPS won't try to lean on payPal at all.  I suspect that Pitney-Bowes wants PayPal to pay them a pile of money to rework the interface; my experience with that company has been abysmal from a cost-effectiveness standpoint over the years.  And if that's the case, and if PayPal made the mistake of contracting with them in a manner that doesn't give them a readily available way to back out and seek another solution provider, then they're hosed...and so are we.

Paypal, at this point, either needs to just tell us up front that they aren't going to fix interface and that we should get an Endicia account if we want to use all of the postal rates available, or get the bloody thing fixed.  Saying it's "going to" be in place "by" November 2009 (yes, they actually said that in an email...this past week) is just an outright insult; it shows that they can't even be arsed to sent a response that isn't a brain-dead form letter, let alone truly address our concerns.

[boroboy135]

I was doing the same thing, using the Flat Rate Envelope for Small Flate Rate boxes> Now that the rate has changed and the envelope price has been reduced I'm afraid if the Postal Service scans the box it will be sent back marked "insufficient postage"

What I've done is opened an account with USPS and I now deal direct with them on "Click n Ship". Of course it would be much more convenient to do it on the Ebay website but obviously neither Ebay or PayPal is listening to their customers or are addressing our needs.

[debk255]

yep.. .this has been an ongoing problem since the day they introduced the flat rate boxes.  Pittney Bowes is the one responsible for programming the features in pay pal shipping, and they definately have not kept up with the USPS changes in this area.  Since pay pal cannot seem to get them to make the necessary changes, I'm thinking

If we all contact that company directly and put pressure on them, it might happen faster.

My solution for this problem is rather than paying another service monthly for shipping, I set up an account with USPS directly.  This is free.

  This allows me to print not only the right postage for the small and large flat rate boxes, but also for the priority international packages as well.   Doing so directly from USPS also gives me a LOWER POSTAGE RATE on the international parcels and puts a bit of money back in my pocket.

I just make sure to bring the delivery confirmation into pay pal (if that is how the customer has paid)  remove the "print shipping label" feature from the transaction, print out a packing slip and put that tracking right into pay pal.  It automatically comes over into my ebay info and is displayed (and supposedly sent) to the customer as well

Hope this helps you all.

-Deb

[lee_beery]

I had the same problem.

I contacted paypay via telephone.

You can ship through ebay instead of paypay by doing the following on ebay.

On ebay, go to My ebay,

then Accout,

then site preferences,

The Shipping Preferences,

The select  "Pay for shipping and print U.S. Postal Service labels on eBay",

and you will be to select Small/Large Flat Rate Boxes and will not be re-directed to Paypal to print the shipping Labels.

[lee_beery]

search for "Solution to USPS Small/Large Flat Rate Option Not Listed, Only Medium Listed"

to find solution.