2006-10-10 Woozle emails Endicia

Message, 2006-10-10

I need to print a small amount of additional postage ($5.05) on a package which has already had a Dazzle label printed. Is there any way to do this through Endicia?

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The remainder of this email is basically some related suggestions for your software development team; I would greatly appreciate it if you could forward it to them. (It also explains the circumstances in more detail, in case you need more information to answer my question.)

What happened was:

• Entered an international address to ship to
• I couldn't see what the postage amount was on the layout viewer (too small, with my layout, window size, and screen resolution), so I pressed the "print" button -- knowing that it would show me all the details and allow me to change the "postage type" before actually printing the label
• I pressed the "international info..." button on the print dialog box, which brings up a dialog box that seems to be the easiest for me to use when deciding what type of postage to use
• I selected "international airmail letter" as the "postage type"
• I selected "airmail letter post" as the subtype in the list
• I clicked ok
• I pressed the "print" button
• I got the printout, and realized it was for the wrong amount of postage, apparently because the changes I made in the "international info" dialog did not affect the "print" dialog

I downloaded your InstaPostage software (which seems to run fine under Win98SE, by the way), but it seems to want to only print "stamps" of particular preset values. I could probably find a set of values which adds up to $5.05, but this seems unnecessarily difficult (although I would be more tempted if InstaPostage included a utility for figuring out the minimum number of available "stamps" to reach a given value of postage).

Some suggestions for your software:

In Dazzle: If the user changes the selected postage amount in the "international info" dialog box and then presses "OK" to exit (not "Cancel"), Dazzle should do one of the following (from most preferred to least preferred): (a) change the selected postage type/rate in the print dialog without asking, (b) advise the user that they have changed the postage amount, and confirm that they do want to change it, (c) warn the user that the postage amount shown in the box they were just looking at is different from the actual amount chosen and that they need to change the amount in the print dialog as well if that is what they intended. (Option A seems to me what the user should expect, since there is clearly a "cancel" button as well as an "ok" button, but I included the others in case there is some reason you can't do it that way.)

Also in Dazzle: remove the "one reprint" restriction. At least once, I have attempted to print an expensive overseas label only to find that something was wrong and the print job got completely lost... and then upon fixing the problem and retrying, the same thing (or a different problem with the same results) happened again. No way to get a refund because there was no physical printout; I had to do a completely new label and spend the money again (I suppose what I should have done is reprinted the successfully-printed label and claimed it was the unusable one... but I dislike dishonesty, even to achieve an honest goal i.e. getting my unused postage back). NOTE: When I print postage at usps.com, I get a PDF which I can retry printing as many times as necessary. Unfortunately, they don't support many classes of mail, which is why I use Endicia.

In InstaPostage: Either (a) allow the user to enter arbitrary postage amounts (such as $5.05), or (b) if there is some legal reason why arbitrary postage amounts can't be printed, provide a utility to calculate the smallest number of "stamps" necessary to reach a given arbitrary postage amount, and to automatically print "stamps" for those amounts.

When will Dazzle be available for Linux?

Thanks for an excellent product.

Reply, 2006-10-12

Q: How do I print additional postage in Dazzle, my current label does not have sufficient postage?

A: Follow these steps:

1. Open Dazzle
2. Open the label template used to print the original postage label if it does not appear on the screen.
3. File > Print
4. On the 'Print' window click the 'Postage Options' button.
5. Click the 'Corrections' tab.
6. Click the 'postage correction amount' box.
7. In the box provided type the additional dollar amount you need to add.
8. Click 'ok'.
9. On the 'print' screen you will see the words 'postage CORRECTION' and the amount you entered on the previous 'Corrections' screen.
10. Click 'Print' to print this amount.
11. Add this to the same side of the package as the original label.

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