When you print shipping labels through PayPal... Where do you get the labels? Do you buy the click n ship labels through USPS? Do you pay some kind of fee over and above the shipping charge to use the service? Do you have to buy a special scale to weigh your items? I looked for answers to these questions at PayPal, but didn't find them. If you know where the answers are and prefer to direct me there, that's fine too. Thanks in advance.
You just print the labels on regular printer paper on the paypal site and tape them to the package. I suppose yoe could use sticker paper but plain paper works fine. Paypal akes the money out of your account at standard postage rates. I either use the digital scale at work or an old candy scale at home. You round up to the nearest ounce so it doesn't have to be super accurate.
You need to have an accurate scale in order to ensure that you are applying the correct postage. I have an old balance beam postal scale that measures half-ounce increments to one pound, a remnant of the past when air mail and international mail were priced in those increments. I've used a kitchen scale for weights up to five pounds successfully by calibrating it against the lobby scale at my local post office. For heavier weights, bathroom scales are not accurate enough! Of course if you use flat rate priority mail envelopes/boxes, you don't need any kind of scale.
Excellent! Thanks for the answers. I have a small scale that I use to weigh 1982 Lincolns. It shows the correct weights to within 1/10 gram, so it's plenty accurate for mail. I just didn't know if it needed to be something that was approved by the USPS. I've had the same problems with the post office here that were discussed in a previous thread. I'm looking for some way to accurately predict my shipping costs and it's difficult when the people behind the counter are not all on the same page.
The sticker paper I use I bought on Ebay...it is FEDEX shipping label blank forms, only 1/2 is a peel off sticker, the rest you save for your records, 1000 to a box, pretty cheap if I remember too
If you've got a Dymo labelmaker handy (I use a 330), you can buy 99019 labels (I bought the cheap third party stuff -- works great). The one I bought was 150 labels/roll -- I bought 4 rolls for something like $25 shipped. Would do it again in a heartbeat. No receipt, but I usually trashed those anyway...
