I am currently buying labels on Amazon platform but due to recent “postage assessment” issue, I am thinking to find another way to buy labels but still get “Claims protection” and “OTDR protection” badges.
Please let me know which other platforms I can use ?
Try pirateship.com. I have used them for the past few years, after using stamps/endicia for many years. PS has NO monthly fee.
PS offers no claim protection, so if you really need it, you may have to stay with Amazon.
The point of claims protection is that you only get it if you use Amazon’s shipping. You can integrate Amazon’s shipping with other platforms so you don’t have to buy it directly from Seller Central, but you are still buying the same labels, just through a different interface.
The only way I can think of would be to have your own USPS or UPS account and integrate them with Amazon which should still offer claims protection, but I don’t do this so I don’t know if/how this works in detail.
OTDR protection only happens if you 1) have SSA turned on, 2) have AHT turned on, and 3) use Amazon Buy Shipping (or Veeqo).
Note on #2 that the shipping label has to be purchased with Amazon Shipping.
Unfortunately, it would appear that it’s still not possible for most SoA Accounts to integrate a USPS Postal Account into Amazon’s BSS/MSS (‘Amazonese’ for “Buy Shipping Service”/“Merchant Shipping Service”), as we can see by the choices being directly-limited to UPS & FedEx on the Carrier account (link, Seller Central) (prev. titled “Carrier Preferences”) Dashboard.
The available evidence from various discussion venues suggest that that particular lack of capability has been a bit of a bugaboo for many 3P Sellers for quite some time…
The labels I get from Amazon platform start with tracking number : 930012078771xxxxxx
so, even if I integrated my store to e.g. pirateship.com, does it mean that the labels I print will still have 930012078771xxxxxx ?
the labels I print from Endicia.com start with 9400xxxxxx, none of them are seized by post office for postage assessment.
The only item we’ve had undelivered due to assessment-was a USPS PRIORITY EXPRESS (VERY expensive book), postage purchased through AMAZON. Deducted $$ from our account as usual-but a P.O. hub in Spokane wouldn’t deliver the parcel, after arriving there from Tucson overnight. Our buyer had to drive 30 minutes to Spokane, pay for additional shipping at counter price-he was hot-so was I….
We’ve had no such issue w/ Stamps. Our tracking also begins w/ 94….
I’ve used Pirate Ship-but their cliche, Yo-Ho-Ho, Me Hearties, grates. Plus I invariably make a mistake while pasting tracking numbers from PS- my near vision, even w/ permanent long-vision cataract lens isn’t the best. Someone tell me if PS can now be set-up to transport tracking to AMZ as does Stamps/Endicia. The last time I used PS, they didn’t/couldn’t.
I’d be glad to cancel Stamps. Commercial membership presently costs $600 yearly for more than 15 labels a month and their service, since sold to Thoma Bravo/Auctane is worse and worse! .
I use Endicia and pay $19.99 a month
Wonder if you were grandfathered in at that monthly rate? Know you’ve been selling longer than we have. With our luck, would change to Endicia-which we used for several months years ago-and the new management would raise the rates next day.
We used Stamps for at least a dozen years @ the $19.99 rate till changed in Dec. Didn’t save us from the big increase!
I seem to remember a few months back there was an announcement about an increase if you wanted something or other which I did not want to pay extra. It might have had to do with record keeping, but I never trust anybody else with record keeping.
I do like the click-to-copy-tracking right after you print a label.
Edited: I thought maybe I should check – I see I am actually paying $20.99
Yes, All day yes
My fallback shipping method is PayPal now Shipstation.
Shipstream is a competitor shipping service that has a similar name to PayPal’s service, which is called the PayPal Shipping Center. Before September 18, 2025, PayPal’s shipping service was powered by ShipStation and was accessed through a separate URL, paypal.shipstation.com. However, as of that date, PayPal has transitioned to their own new platform, the PayPal Shipping Center, which is no longer powered by ShipStation.
PayPal now has it’s own shipping which is no longer powered by ShipStation (ShipStream).
Thanks. Haven’t needed a backup recently,
There is a little known secret that if you have an eBay account you can get a FREE stamps account. We still have ours but I use Pirate Ship because I find it easier and we don’t need Amazon integration as we are 100% FBA. I don’t mind the Yo hoho laddies.
-Ana
I am so unlucky, this postage assessment issue happens AGAIN yesterday Saturday 18th !!!
This happened to me on 9th. I stopped using USPS for 3 days, then I started shipping via USPS for small number of packages during the past week and did not have any issue, thus, I shipped much more packages yesterday BUT here I am : most of the packages are held by USPS again.
Though you didn’t mention it, assuming these are AMAZON labels?
yes, they are Amazon Buy shipping labels. I have been very cautious the past week, start with 2-3 packages each day (Tuesday to Friday) and did not find any issue. So, yesterday (Saturday), I thought Amazon solved the issue and started shipping lot more. I am very wrong.
Makes us wonder if the pattern is your weekend shipments?
It is strange that you have this issue and we do not. Our issue is just how USPS.com is reporting (actually not reporting) our first scan until the following day. The first scan shows up on Amazon before USPS shows it on their online tracking. Our issue is all of the time since the last July price change.
We would be interested to know if your issue is pattern to just the weekend labels or even if it was being triggered by a certain volume for a certain period of time. It would be interesting if it was just happening in certain regions of the country (because it doesn’t appear to be everywhere).
Just a thought:
When you ship “more” parcels, are you using a postal scan form (USPS Shipment Confirmation Acceptance Notice) which are scanned only once per form.
Don’t know if this could be the problem but we have sometimes had issues when submitting these at a different P.O. We counter scan all parcels-and no matter how many we have, our present post office scans each parcel individually.
Different P.O.’s and their branch managers may have different views on this form. The ones we have used lately want their counters to reflect MORE activity-and one P.O. even refused the form, saying supervisors wanted them to “look” busy to THEIR higher-ups. When we used the forms, some tracking acceptance was delayed on the parcels. Not all, just a few– though the whole idea is to scan ONCE-scan ALL
