Stamp Out Stamps.Com
Written: Jul 10 '00
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I fell into the trap of the $25 free postage offer this past winter. I guess I should have been more cautious when reading the terms of the offer because the $1.99 per month minimum service fees begin to add up over time. Later on in this review I will tell you how to cancel your Stamps.com account, which is "confidential" information you are not supposed to know unless you call customer service and wait for an hour to speak to someone to tell it to you.
One of the biggest drawbacks to Stamps.Com is the inflexibility of the software. It reminds me of America Online - lots of cute graphics and buttons, but hard to use and always doing something I didn't ask it to. Sometimes it changes the address on something you want to mail and there is no way to change it back to the correct one. What if you want to just print up a bunch of 33 cent stamps on labels and save them to stick on envelopes by hand? You can't! You have to type in each address one by one and out comes the postage and the mailing label. I also found the process of configuring my printer to be difficult. Stamps.Com is supposed to work with a wide variety of inkjet and laser printers, but my HP Deskjet 820 (a fairly popular printer) seems to always mangle any envelope I feed it. If the postage misprints it is unusable and you have to waste money trying to get Stamps.com to give you a refund.
Because the software was so difficult to use, I didn't use it much after the first month. However, I never bothered "cancelling" my account because I figured that I wouldn't be charged anything if I didn't use anything. And if I was charged "service fees" they would come right out of my account's balance, not as charges on my credit card I actually had to pay for. Oh how I was so wrong. Each month I didn't use the service I was billed $1.99. After seeing this I thought to myself that I should cancel my account, but I couldn't figure out how to do this using the software. So I basically gave up for a while and let the charges go on my credit card. Stupid me.
A couple days ago I finally got ticked off about the credit card bill so I called Stamps.com customer service. After waiting for 59 minutes I spoke to a very rude representative who told me how to cancel the account.
This is how you have to go about the cancellation process.
1) load up the software and login to your account
2) click on help
3) click on the index tab
4) type in the word "withdraw" and hit the "Display" button
5) click on the "I want to close my account button"
6) fill out a short questionnaire telling Stamps.com why you want to cancel
7) tell Stamps.com that you really want to cancel your account
8) finally, uninstall the software
[Notice how you can't just click on a "cancel" button to close your account. That would make sense so it obviously was not considered when the software was being designed...]
Well, there you have my two cents. You might like the supposed simplicity of Stamps.com but you will wind up paying for the "convenience" it supposedly gives you with its cranky software. I think I forgot to mention that there is a special "Stamps.com online store" where you must buy the special fluorescent labels and other supplies you need to use the service. It is obvious that the Stamps.com company assumes that everyone will love the service and that nobody will ever want to cancel, so they make the process very difficult for that reason. I hope nobody makes the awful mistake I made this past January when I signed up for Stamps.com.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Cornell2000
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Member: Justin A. Nachod
Location: Ithaca, NY
Reviews written: 70
Trusted by: 36 members
About Me:
I am a junior at Cornell University, majoring in microbiology/pre-med.
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