Stamps.com Mailing Software: Is Free Membership Offer a Scam?
*Special Offer $80 Value
*$25 in postage
*$50 Digital Scale
*$5 Supplies Kit
*Free 4 Week Trial Membership
Have you seen the promotional advertisements for the above bonus offers? Are you familiar with Stamps.com?
You have possibly seen ads for this company online or in your postal mailbox or email folder, as they seem to be distributed both widely and frequently. Maybe you or someone you know has even been suckered by them.
Stamps.com is the "approved (USPS) licensed vendor" known for boasting its money and time saving Postage on Demand Do it Yourself PC Postage Printing Services. The Stamps.com, for $19.99/month offers postage printing capabilities directly from your home or office PC.
As the company loves so to advertise, members of Stamps.com have the opportunity to calculate and print their own postage. They can additionally generate professional looking address labels based on contact information they can enter fresh or otherwise import form MS Outlook or QuickBooks to name a few compatible organization management programs. Members can also receive discounts on Express and Priority Mail.
While these above mentioned aspects of the infamous Postage on Demand Service are undoubtedly enticing benefits of a Stamps.com membership, this apparent USPS affiliate does not present the whole story in their numerous pieces of advertising material.
While I'd be hesitant to call Stamps.com an outright scam, I warn fellow consumers to be weary of this company's promises. I can attest as a former member of this PC Postage Printing Company that everything is not all that it may seem. The exciting, too good to be true promotional offers are pretty much exactly that. Many of the promotional ads and product explanations (aka sales oriented "informative" website information) and FAQ section is extremely misleading.
Stamps.com may very well be a useful service for businesses who find themselves constantly going back and forth to the post office all day all week long, but unless you are planning to do a fairly enormous amount of PC postage printing the Stamps.com program is probably not worth it.
At the very least, if you have at any point considered taking advantage of this promotional free trial membership offer to join Stamps.com, I would encourage you to at least do some deep research on the company and service to obtain an accurate understanding of what your $19.99/month plus postage and home printing costs is really getting you. And more importantly what it is not.
Below I will clarify several of the sneaky ways in which Stamps.com uses misleading advertising techniques to lure customers into signing up for their membership services. There exists endless advertising and website material to comment on so I focused on the free 4 week trial membership offer, the accompanying promotional bonus gift claims and a few general attributes that Stamps.com brand seems to want to be known for, organized by each misleading claim, in no particular order of importance. Following each promised feature I've outlined the discrepancy and revealed the actual cold hard truths.
From a former member to potential new Stamp.com members, here are the straight facts about Stamps.com as I experienced first hand.
First, let's address the promotional sign up offers, such as the one advertised on http://www.stamps.com.
*Free 4 Week Trial Membership:
This is a courteous gesture by Stamps.com to let new members check out their PC Postage printing services before committing to a paid membership. What they neglect to tell you is that some of the promised bonuses that are advertised in the promo ads you have likely responded to in order to claim this great opportunity will not be available to you until after your free trial has expired and you have signed on as a paying Stamps.com member.
Examples are the featured $25 Amazon Gift Certificate bonus sign up gift, $25 of free postage, or fill in the blank with one of several promotions being offered by the company via direct marketing in the postal mail, internet ads or email solicitations.
*$25 Postage Offer:
Yes, you can get $25 in free postage from Stamps.com; that is, with a giant catch included. Read the fine print and you will learn that only $5 of this supposed $25 postage offer is available as implied in the promotional free trial membership. In order to obtain the remaining $20 you must stay a paid member for two months after your trial period is over to be eligible to receive $10 postage credit for each of those months.
What Stamps.com also fails to mention is that it seems one must jump through hoops in order to use even the five dollars worth of free postage, without first ordering a minimum amount of postage on your credit card where the amount just so conveniently happens to exceed five dollars. In my case, I could not seem to find a way to get that free $5 postage credit without first buying $10 worth on my own. This scenario, then, leaving me with $15 in postage to use up before the 4 week free trial ran out. This scenario, then, leaving me with $15 in postage to use up before the 4 week free trial ran out.
*Free 5lb Digital Postal Scale worth $50:
That's funny. A 5lb digital scale directly from USPS Postal Store either online or at the local post office is $34.95, and even a 10 pounder is only $39.95. Check on Amazon.com Marketplace and you're likely to find even a better deal.
*Option to Cancel Anytime:
Another factor to keep in mind, which is common with many of these types of free trial membership offer programs, is that if you don't keep up with your billing cycle from the start, it is very easy to forget to cancel this trial that you only planned to experience for 30 days and then terminate. Before you know it a month has passed, you get a membership charge and then you don't want to waste it so you then plan to cancel next time around. But of course you forget once again next month and next month and the next month, etc and that is how these companies offering free trial memberships take advantage of consumers.
*Stamps.com advertises outstanding customer support:
To begin with, this apparently exceptional customer support which by the way Stamps.com claims members are lucky to receive full access to free of charge (as if a member would expect any differently) is available Mon-Fri 6am to 6pm (pacific time). It's obvious Stamps.com goes above and beyond to give customers many convenient opportunities to reach them with issue or comments.
And don't get me wrong, this excellent customer support is without a doubt friendly and competent. However it seems as though account reps for Stamps.com have been thoroughly trained in sneaky sales tactics, which seem to perfectly fit with Stamps.com overall approach to obtaining and keeping consumers business.
Calling customer support to cancel your membership? Good luck. Those reps will try every trick in the book on you until you either agree to accept another free month trial membership extension or otherwise lose your patience and become belligerent. These people do not budge. And the worst part about it is that in most cases, especially for individual consumers trying Stamps.com as opposed to business users, most people are likely to resort to canceling their membership while they still have free postage waiting to be used in their account, or free bonus gifts like an Amazon Gift Certificate or a mysterious $50 postal scale still lingering out there somewhere in the mail in a very long delivery process. This position makes it all the more easier for the Stamps.com Customer Service Representative to lure you into signing on for another month. Free, of course, but then comes the vicious cycle again of charge after charge on your credit card each month when you forget to cancel the account.
*And finally, I will end this list with an additional misleading claim which can be found on the Stamps.com website under FAQ "What is Stamps.com?" Here is a direct quote:
"No special hardware is needed. Once your mail or package is ready to go, simply hand it to your mail carrier. It's that easy!"
I have only two things to say about these apparent benefits of paying $19.99 to be a member of Stamps.com PC postage printing services.
First, no special computer hardware is needed, that's true but physical equipment in the form of a postal scale must be bought in order to run this Stamps.com do it yourself postage printing from home operation. Additionally, notice the elusive manner in which this explanation on Stamps.com official information webpage is upfront and all too ready to address the fact that okay, fair enough, no hardware in a computer sense of the word is needed (though one more thing to ponder is what in the world type of computer hardware would possibly even be relevant for this besides a printer and if they were indeed referring to a printer than surely the entire Stamps.com product package would consist of a giant printing accessory which would then render the "Start printing from home right away" benefit completely impossible.)
But notice how this happy "no hardware needed" claim tends to sort of disguise or help Stamps.com sneakily dodge the additional fact that on the other hand there is quite a significantly large and temperamental software application required to use these advertised products and services. One must install the Stamps.com software program on their computer in order to take advantage of the membership.
Not only does this Stamps.com software contribute to added clutter on your PC but because all of your information is stored on the computer you use most often, it requires a somewhat intensive process to transfer it all to an additional computer. Additionally, if you have security software such as a Firewall or Antivirus programs installed you may encounter difficulty accessing your Stamps.com account. Finally, as an added bonus, the Stamps.com can potentially cause problems with your internet connectivity.