Many eBay buyers object to sellers adding handling charges for their purchases. Sellers who use Internet postage services can hide their actual USPS shipping costs, minimizing potential complaints from buyers.
Stamps.com and Endicia.com both offer online sellers the ability to hide USPS postage costs on packages. Stamps.com added a Hidden Postage feature to its service last week. Hidden Postage allows sellers to print shipping labels without printing the actual value of the postage on the label. The Hidden Postage feature is currently available to Power Plan customers only, for which users pay $15.99/month (users pay for postage separately).
Endicia.com has offered its Stealth Postage feature since last summer, and is available to users of its Premium service, with fees of $15.99/month or $174.05 for the year.
USPS permit holders can also send mail without revealing postage costs. WindowBook offers postal productivity software to work with permit holder accounts (see WindowBooks review in the March 9th issue http://www.auctionbytes.com/pages/abu/y203/m03/abu0090/s02).
For online sellers sending lots of packages via USPS, postage services can boost productivity and might even help keep customers happy!
Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and AuctionBytes.com and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @auctionbytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.
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