I have a seller's account on eBay and Half.com, so I ship several packages every week. Up to this point I mostly used USPS, because Media Mail is the least expensive method of shipping books, and all labels I have printed on a regular letter-sized paper using regular B&W laser printer. It is a hassle; you have to cut the label from the rest of the page, and attach it to the package with scotch tape or packing tape.
So I have bought a used Eltron LP2442 Direct Thermal Printer on eBay, which is used to print standard size 4"x6" self-adhesive shipping labels, and according to a description for this and most other similar printers are used by most companies to print high-volumes of shipping labels. I have installed the drivers I have found on UPS site for use with UPS shipping and was able to print UPS Sample labels.
However, all my attempts to get it to print USPS labels generated through PayPal failed. I have tried multiple drivers, and different settings with no success.
If any knows how to setup LP2442 (also known as LP2443, LP2543) to work with PayPal Shipping I would greatly appreciate ANY help.
I would also like to say few words to PayPal Technical Support:
As the main intermediary for payment and shipping on eBay you should make it easier (and as affordable as possible) for sellers to sell and ship on eBay and Half.com. I am not a business guru, but making it easier and less expensive to ship items sold through eBay and Half.com should only improve business.
Your online label printing supports ONLY the following printers:
-Zebra LP 2844-Z, TLP 3842, HT-146, TLP 2844, TLP 3844
-Brother QL-500, QL-550
-DYMO LabelWriter 330 & 330 Turbo
-Pitney Bowes LPS-1
Only Zebra printers can print 4"x6" shipping labels, which is the most common (and therefore least expensive) size of commercial shipping labels. These printers costs several hundred dollars if bought new, and you have restricted your customers to using them if they want to speed up their postage printing and labeling. It is ok to pay $300-$400 for a printer for a company that ships several thousand of dollars worth of merchandise a week, but it is prohibitively expensive for occasional or low volume seller.
There are older thermal printers, like LP2442, LP2443, LP2543 which can be purchased on eBay for $20-$30 which work just fine with UPS even now (UPS provides driver support for older label printers), but do not work with USPS via PayPal. It is a matter of providing driver support for older printers, which should not take any significant effort/expense on a part of PayPal, since all these capabilities were developed for PayPal by Pitney Bowes.
A senior manager, or executive at PayPal (or eBay, since PayPal is owned by eBay) should ask their Pitney Bowes liaison to widen the Label Printer support to include older printers. They do not even have to provide support for every Label Printer under the sun, just to most common ones.
