posted on August 7, 2001 06:39:29 PM
The official answer is "YES", you do still need to hand any international packages that require a customs form to a USPS retail clerk.
I live in a very small town and had a nice talk with my postmaster about this and she said it was OK for me to drop mine in the box. (With customs form affixed) If you live in a small town and/or have a friendly postmaster who will work with you, they might let you drop them in the box.
My postmaster is so happy that I don't tie up the line at all anymore! Endicia is awesome!
gamecock
[ edited by gamecock on Aug 7, 2001 06:40 PM ]
posted on August 7, 2001 06:40:28 PM
I posted a more comprehensive discourse in another thread, but I'll be darned if I can find it now <g>! I got this info by tracking down the USPS/FAA coordinator for the San Francisco airport operations center.
Under 16 oz: Custom form is only required if you are shipping merchandise. If you are shipping merchandise, then include the customs form.
With or without the customs form, you can drop this package in any collection box, give it to your carrier, or take it to the PO. The offical rule is that you should take it to the PO, but I think the reality is that you can skip the PO if you are below 16 oz and know that you have prepared your customs form properly.
Over 16 oz: You MUST have a customs form regardless of what you have in the package. You MUST take the completed package to the PO so they can round stamp a) the customs form and b) the area around the indicium.
The reason for the round stamps is this: The USPS/FAA team that loads the planes will return the package to sender if they don't see the two round stamps. They want some assurance that there was "eye contact" between the shipper and a PO official before they put the package in the cargo area.
Other suggestions:
1. Include a very readable return address on your package. That makes the FAA folks feel a bit more comfortable.
2. In Endicia, when you are looking at your international shipping rate options, check for the prohibitions on certain goods for the destination country. For instance, you can't ship bees wax to France (and don't ask me why <g>!
HTH
Harry Whitehouse
Endicia
P.S. Endicia users will see a new version alert when they run their software this week. This release contains the new single ply Express Mail label format (no more multi-part express mail labels!), a new EMail utility to you can EMail your customer with the Delivery Confirmation PIC code and the date you shipped, a new postage log export facility which allows you to move this information into Excel or Access for whatever internal accounting needs you might have, support for some new label configurations, and a host of other small tweaks and improvements.
[ edited by HarryWhitehouse on Aug 7, 2001 06:43 PM ]
Dazzle kept asking me if I wanted to archive my data leaving the last 25 alone. After awhile I got tired of that message so I went ahead and archived the data.
I believe it is under epostage as the file name, but it doesn't have the DC number or any details other than the name and address.
Is the the archive file and does it delete all the other data fields?
There were MANY shipments that were not yet received and all of them disappeared from my log as it only kept the last 25. Some days I will ship 20-25 in one day and I use media mail a lot and sometimes they take 2+ weeks to get to the East Coast...
I did find that about 20-30 of the time, media mail going to the east coast will arrive in 3-5 days like priority mail, but for the most part, it is still 7-14 BUSINESS DAYS from coast to coast.
Does the Express Mail label use the blue arrow labels?
The longest section of the Blue Arrow (6 inches) is too short to fit the EM label. It's all delivery option checkboxes required by the USPS.
There are several solutions here.
1. We just created a Green Arrow label which has the same overall dimensions as Blue Arrow, but the main label section *is* longer (7 inches) so as to fit the new EM format as specified by the USPS. You can use the new Green Arrows for Priority Mail as well, so they are "backwards compatible" so to speak.
2. If anyone has ordered Blue Arrows from us in the last 60 days, we'll send them 50 Green Arrows free of charge upon request. If you do a great deal of Express Mail, you probably should order Green Arrows the next time around since you can use them for both PM and EM.
3. You should try this first as a "test print", but it's very possible that you could print the Express Mail label format on a Blue Arrow label (in this case the printed information would spill over from the main label panel to the next smaller panel -- the one with the blue arrow printed on it). Then, you could apply both label panels to your package -- aligning them on the package. The alignment won't be critical because this part of the label simply has the "Saturday, Holiday" and other delivery option checkboxes.
Dial-A-ZIP.com was down over the weekend .
Yes, this server has been acting strangely over the past three weeks. It's a fairly old QUAD server, so we are in the process of replacing it with a new generation CPU. Should be in place this week.
If users do have problems reaching any one of our ZIP+4 servers, here's what you can do.
Go to the File menu, choose Preferences, then Address Verification. Change
the ZIP Station address. Some valid servers are:
www.dial-a-zip.com (the default)
www.envmgr.com
www.fastforward.envmgr.com
Best regards,
Harry
[ edited by HarryWhitehouse on Aug 13, 2001 01:00 PM ]
[ edited by HarryWhitehouse on Aug 13, 2001 01:00 PM ]
[ edited by HarryWhitehouse on Aug 13, 2001 03:18 PM ]
!