Advantages and Disadvantages of Postage Meters

Through the Internet, more and more budding business entrepreneurs have begun to establish their own business online. There are generally two kinds of businesses that are set up buy online business entrepreneurs over the Internet. The first offers a wide range of services to potential clients. The other is the selling of different kinds of products to customers from all over the world. Unlike a typical shopping mall or grocery, these goods would need to be mailed to the customer availing of the product. It is for this reason that postage meters have become extremely important for anyone setting up a store over the Internet.

What is a Postage Meter?

A postage meter refers to a mailing system that allows online business owners to directly print the postage paid onto a label which they can attach onto the package to be delivered. Postal meters have the capability to calculate the exact amount of postage that would need to be paid by the sender of the package or mail based on the weight. The postage is also calculated as to whether this would need to be sent via regular mail or by rush mailing.

Advantages of Postage Meters

The growing popularity of postal meters is primarily due to the many benefits that its users have experienced. Here are just some of them:

Convenient Shipping. Postage meters would allow you to print and pay for the postage of your package right from your home office. This would mean lesser trips to the local Post Office and waiting in line to have the products your customers purchased to be delivered to them.

Handles all kinds of mails. Postage meters have the capability not just to print out labels for all packages. You can also print out the postage directly on envelopes if you are sending mass volumes of mails. You are also able to specify the handling of these mails, whether it would be bulk mailing, first class mailing or even rush mail.

Accurate amount all the time. No need to worry about paying too much or too less for the postage rate. Postage meters come with a scale to allow you to print out the correct amount for the package based on the size and weight.

Disadvantages of Postage Meters

Although it is unquestionable that postage meters do provide a number of benefits to its users, there are a number of different disadvantages that the users would need to face. Here are just some of them.

Manual updates for postal increase. Once in a while, the United States Postal Service increases the amount of postage that would need to be paid depending on the package. Unfortunately, postal meters are not automatically updated. The only way for this to be updated is to contact the leaser of the postal meter to have this done manually.

Lease contract fees. Postal meters cannot be purchased as part of government restrictions. Instead, they are leased out for long-term use by private companies. While postal meters do save you money in terms of providing accurate postal rates for every label printed out, you would need to pay the leaser corresponding fees to use this.

Troubleshooting done by representatives only. Government regulations mandate that only the authorized leasers of postal meters can fix up common problems you are bound to face using this. This does not provide immediate resolution on the part of the user of the postage meter. While waiting for a representative to fix the problem, they would have no choice but going back to the traditional way of sending packages by going to the local Post Office for this.