Just a question regarding Metered Mail (like ESE uses)

[sin-n-dex]

OK, so the story is, my shipper Stallion Express sent a notice recently that they will not accept any third party postage items. (Some stamp sellers are not allowed to sell postage to people outside USA, so Stallion wants to make sure none of those stamp purchases get handled by them in their cross border shipments). This includes my sticking postage stamps on envelopes to send cheap things too (technically they have no reason to refuse them, but they're updating the portal to force me to buy postage from them if I use their services to ship).

So that brings me to my question on metered mail... ESE is metered mail and there's something with the QR code that allows the item to have minor amounts of tracking as it's automatically sorted through the mail system. I know you can track this ESE code on parcelsapp website, but not on USPS.

Stallion is also selling metered mail that looks like this:

Is there any way to track this information? There's a number on the right hand side and Stallion assigned a serial number of sorts to the shipment, but there's no link attached to it for me to track it anywhere. (They say it's an untracked service, but ESE is not really supposed to be tracked either but you can track it on parcelsapp, and on eBay).

I did try to see if I can track on parcelsapp but I only dropped off the letters this afternoon, so they aren't in the mailstream in the US yet, so I don't have accurate information that they can't be tracked, just that I can't track them right now.

My gripe about the change Stallion made (not allowing me to use ESE) is I lose that $20 insurance on lost shipments. (And Stallion doesn't offer any insurance if there's no tracking, but their cost for tracking is 8.54 CAD for California, which is not worth it on a $10 banknote). I didn't cash in on that often, perhaps once every two months I had to make a claim for something a buyer said they didn't receive. Due to the lost insurance I'm going to be making changes in my store to require more items to go with tracking to mitigate losses on things that tend to "go missing".

C.

[wastingtime101 · Accepted solution]

That looks like a regular postage stamp from stamps.com or like you'd get at a USPS kiosk, or other sources that sell printable stamps.

No, it does not include any level of tracking like ESE does.

[sin-n-dex]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

That looks like a regular postage stamp from stamps.com or like you'd get at a USPS kiosk, or other sources that sell printable stamps.

No, it does not include any level of tracking like ESE does.

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Thanks for replying. The indicia comes from Stallion Express (but similar to a kiosk stamp as you said).

I was hoping the numbers on it would have some reference somewhere like ESE (at very least for me to see what happened to it).

Sounds like some items will have to be returned to the B&M store (and they've offered to sell off some of my postcard collections for me so I'm not wasting time with singles), and I'll be adding tracking to some nominally valued items since the $10-20 range is what seems to get lost in the mail most frequently (too frequently for me to believe they're actually lost).

C.

[wastingtime101]

It's an IMI-compliant (Intelligent Mail Indicia) stamp with a 2D barcode. The barcode contains info like destination zip/address. It's scanned by USPS and they may be able to trace it internally, but the info is not made available externally because it's an untracked service.

From the shipper's side, it's the equivalent of sticking a postage stamp on an envelope.

Stallion is probably forcing you to use stamps purchased from them at least in part because they profit from those purchases.

[a_c_green]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

It's an IMI-compliant (Intelligent Mail Indicia) stamp with a 2D barcode. The barcode contains info like destination zip/address. It's scanned by USPS and they may be able to trace it internally, but the info is not made available externally because it's an untracked service.

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As I understand it, the eBay Standard Envelope mailings are followed (I hate to call it "tracking") via updates from USPS routing machines that are reading the Intelligent Mail Barcode when sorting envelopes. The IMB is that weird little row of 65 vertical stroke marks, 4 different possible marks in each position, usually added just below the ZIP code on an envelope. It has no connection to the stamp in the upper right corner.

Ref: https://postalpro.usps.com/node/217 

Waaaay back in the day, I think Microsoft Word (or similar) was capable of printing your #10 business envelopes in a simple inkjet printer, and one option you could add was the IMB code just below the ZIP code of the envelope address. I don't know if that really speeded up delivery, but it was neat to be able to do that at all. For reasons I don't understand, they dropped that option from later versions.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Metered mail is irrelevant

This quote from the post by @a_c_green is relevant

the eBay Standard Envelope mailings are followed (I hate to call it "tracking") via updates from USPS routing machines that are reading the Intelligent Mail Barcode when sorting envelopes. The IMB is that weird little row of 65 vertical stroke marks, 4 different possible marks in each position, usually added just below the ZIP code on an envelope. It has no connection to the stamp in the upper right corner.

The IMB code is possible on all Letter Mail but may not be appropriately usable for tracking on other than ESE and similar services.

Is there some other company you can use as an alternative to Stallion Express. Their rationale as you have stated it makes them seem indifferent to their customer needs.