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Personal Pages of Fred Van Bennekom | home
Personal Pages of Fred Van Bennekom | Audi A4 Car Timing Belt Quality | IRS and USPS Click and Ship | 184 Indian Rest, Harpswell, Maine | Airport Security Line Queues
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IRS and USPS Click and Ship
I do small volume shipping for my business -- mostly for my Customer Surveying Guidebook -- and one of the great productivity enhancers I've found recently is the USPS's Click 'n' Ship program. I can print postage in my office for Priority Mail shipments and put the item in my mailbox for pickup by the carrier -- regardless of the weight. While I do like my local postal service employees, I would just as soon avoid a trip to a post office since all three near me are 4 to 5 miles away. Plus, delivery confirmation is free. Addresses can be stored for resuse. And since it's typed, I don't have to worry about a well intentioned postal service employee misreading my state code, crossing out the correct zip code, and writing in the zip code for the state code he thought he read. (Yes, that did happen to me. I have pretty good handwriting, but I'm very careful with shipping now!) Overall, the value proposition is compelling.
So it's tax season now. I've got my two tax returns to ship. For the State return I have a PO box number. Great. I can use Click 'n' Ship. (I added the Electronic Signature Receipt for a total of $5.15 of shipping cost.)
But then there's the IRS. No street address. One problem with Click 'n' Ship is that the street address is checked against a data base that the postal service has. Not a problem 99.9% of the time. It did cause a problem when I shipped sometime to a campus address, in part because the local post office had student give their address in a format contrary to the way the postal service
Then there's the IRS... They don't provide street addresses "for security purposes." Mind you, the IRS building to which I'm shipping sits on a state highway next to the interchange with a major Interstate highway. The building is fully visible from the road. There's a big illuminated IRS sign out front that advertises for seasonal work -- and displays the temperature 6 degrees above the actual air temperature. (I may not think much of Audi quality, but I trust the car's thermometer.) I've driven by that building literally 100s of times; we have friends who live nearby.
But I can't have the street address for security reasons. Absurd. Ridiculous. If this is what passes for security at IRS, we are in trouble.
So, I shipped the tax return from the Post Office, 1st class certified mail with return receipt -- for $5.34.
A few other minor gripes about Click 'n' Ship...
Loading the java software that is needed can be problematic. I hit a bug, but the tech support people got me through it. I understand it's now much tougher to get live tech support.
If you use Click 'n' Ship and need to claim a refund for postage that didn't print, be aware that they use "Label Number" and "Confirmation Number" synonomously. They tell you to provide the Label Number, but on the receipt and email confirmations, there is no Label Number. When I told them this, I got one of those excuse email responses:
Dear Customer,
It called the label number because it refers tot he (sic) Delivery Confirmation number for Priority mail or the Tracking number for Express Mail. Since they are two different types of numbers the are generally classified as the Label Number.
USPS Internet Customer Care Center
icustomercare@usps.com
They just don't understand good form design -- or the value of Beta Testing! If you're listening USPS, I volunteer!
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