Endicia vs. Stamps.com

[stevid1]

I strongly suggest before you make a decision between Stamps.com and Endicia that you test their tech support wait time. Call them both up and push the number for tech support and see how long it takes. This is really important because if you have a problem and you are in the middle of doing shipping you need someone there within a reasonable amount of time to take care of problems - and they do happen with both companies. I am moving my business from Endicia to Stamps.com because I had a small issue and have had to wait 30 minutes to talk to someone. While I did not need tech support often, this unacceptable wait time does not work for me. Good luck

[neutron spin]

I started this thread awhile ago. I eventually started shipping with Stamps.com and couldn't be more pleased. The tech support they provide is top notch and and the software is quite easy to use. UPS was more expensive and my shipping costs have dropped using the USPS plus they need the business!....Just my two pennies...

[brianv]

I am currently using stamps.com to fulfill orders for a small eCommerce site. It's affordable enough, but in my opinion the website sucks. There are lots of little bugs, and now you have to download a plugin just to print postage. Who knows if it will even run on Linux now.

Before the plugin, it used to require Acrobat Reader (which I don't use), but I was able to trick the browser into not using reader. I tried the Windows software once and couldn't figure out a way to print the labels with the layout and size I needed, hence the need for me to use the website.

Endicia is a little cheaper for what I need and I"ll be evaluating that next. Ultimately, I'll be building out a custom fulfillment system so I'll probably go with whichever product as the best API support in the end.

[brianv]

I strongly suggest before you make a decision between Stamps.com and Endicia that you test their tech support wait time. Call them both up and push the number for tech support and see how long it takes. This is really important because if you have a problem and you are in the middle of doing shipping you need someone there within a reasonable amount of time to take care of problems - and they do happen with both companies. I am moving my business from Endicia to Stamps.com because I had a small issue and have had to wait 30 minutes to talk to someone. While I did not need tech support often, this unacceptable wait time does not work for me. Good luck

Stevid1, yeah I can see that. Not an Endicia customer yet, but hung up the phone after waiting about 1 min. for SALES to answer the phone. You know if sales doesn't pick up right away, customer service won't be good.

Stamps.com customer support is admittedly pretty good. That said, every single time I had to call them up it was in regards to their crappy bug-infested web site.

[felis]

I'm using Stamps.com and I'm very unhappy. Just yesterday, I gave up waiting for tech.support after about 15 minutes. They use two-tier support, where a (useless) frontline agent picks up the phone pretty quickly, keeps you occupied for a while by asking meaningless questions, then transfers you to a real support person. This second transfer could take a long time.

In the mornings their site is overloaded to the point of being unusable. If you need to look up the shipment history, wait till after business hours.

Their software is buggy. Latest version has standard Windows copy/paste function turned off - the answer from support was "this is known issue and will be fixed in the next release which could tale a while so for now please roll back to the previous one". The QuickBooks plugin (my only reason to use them) dies on international addresses, sometimes taking QB with it.

I strongly suggest against Stamps.com. Any other service is better than it.

[gardenpond]

Has anyone figured a way to automatically get the Endicia/USPS generated tracking number back to eBay?