Every time I start to pay bills, send cards, etc., I find that I am out of stamps and it takes forever to get to an ATM machine or the post office. I love the "no postage necessary" stickers for returns that come with on-line orders. What if we had similar stickers that we could put on envelopes - except if instead of "no postage due", it contained a code or our name or .. and the post office logged it, and sent us a bill at the end of the month? The sticker could also allow us to choose the method of delivery, if different from standard. I would be happy to pay a cent or more extra for the convenience.
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So these stickers your placing on your outgoing mail are kind of like stamps. Right? You would have to go somewhere and buy them and you'd eventually run out like your stamps. But there are "systems" you can buy that are simular to having a post office in your home. It applies your very own printed "stamp" on your envelope with your own code applied and I believe is hooked to your phone line to charge you each time you use it. I'm not sure what they call these machines, but they work very well.
What I would like is to pay a bit extra and have the post office figure out the right amount of postage. So instead of having ot have different sized postage stamps and have a scale, we could just have a "charge me" stamp. One stamp is easier to hold onto. Think of this as akin to a Fedex account number.
It's called apostal meter.
About a bill me later stamp, except for papaer coded to the customer, how would ilicit duplication or use of the labels be controlled?
One reason, i believe, that people are often out of stamps is that they fear over-purchasing stamps due to possible rate increases which make their stamps obsolete. however, as i explain in my idea, there is no need for rate increases to make old stamps obsolete.
There are a couple of services in existence, such as stamps.com, which allow you to print stamps from your computer. They've gotten better because they slowly negotiated better deals with the post office. At first with them you had to print a full envelope with address label and postage, but now you can just print postage on special label paper that you peel off like stamps. The hassle to the post office of calculating and billing your account would require a hell of a lot of negotiation with the post office and it's not clear it would really benefit them when a postage meter is so easy to get. There are personal sized postage meters too. You rent them along with a nice digital scale at a promotional rate and then when they double your rate at the end of the promotion you complain and talk to several tiers of people until you get the department that gives out the promotional rate again to persistent callers.