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Light print shipping labels

My printer ran out of ink and I have no way to get to another one today (The date of shipping on the label). The label printed a light blue and it's still readable for a human. Would it be okay to darken a shipping label with an ink pen or should I just use the label as it?

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Light print shipping labels

Technically, IMpb labels are to be black on white IIRC, but pretty much no one but super fussy PO worker with issues will care in practice as long as it is readable.

The potential problem could be the tracking barcode and the 2d barcode at top being machine readable - no way to know.

Inking in the label text is probably not a good idea - might make it look like an attempted forgery, and odds of you being able to get the tracking barcode line widths correct is low unless you are extremely careful (the line widths are critical parts of the encoding).

The shipping label date is again technically to be observed, but in practice doesn't matter except to PO employees with axes to grind. (the machines don't care)

If you don't have to ship today to meet eBay handling time, I'd wait if you can get ink tomorrow and print another label.

Note that you only have 24 hours to reprint an eBay (or PayPal?) label. If you can do a reprint label now to a PDF file, you could print that tomorrow or whenever you have ink, otherwise you will need to print a new label tomorrow if the 24 hours is up (and void this one - you have 5 days to void)

It's your call on how dark the blue print is and guess at how readable the label is, and which way to go. If it makes it past humans and machines can read it then all good.

If an automated scanner somewhere along the way can't read the barcode, it could get misrouted and delayed or lost until a human intervenes.
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Light print shipping labels

I shipped a package like that. I figured it should be okay. I mean, they tell us not to put tape over the bar codes, yet every package I get, it has tape over the bar codes.

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Light print shipping labels


@shadytay wrote:

My printer ran out of ink and I have no way to get to another one today (The date of shipping on the label). The label printed a light blue and it's still readable for a human. Would it be okay to darken a shipping label with an ink pen or should I just use the label as it?


You cannot darken the barcode, only the buyer's address.

Void the label and go to a Post Office whenever you can.

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Light print shipping labels

>>I mean, they tell us not to put tape over the bar codes

Millions of pkgs with properly taped over barcodes delivered successfully demonstrates that is not an issue. In the early days of scanner technology it may have been problematic, but that is no longer the case, and eBay and USPS haven't let go of the old warnings.

Labels with light printing could be an issue though. How light before there is insufficient contrast for barcode readers to distinguish barcode lines from the background is unknown, which makes shipping a pkg with a poorly printed label a gamble.
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Light print shipping labels

I had the same problem. At the post office the barcode could not be scanned. The postal employee behind the counter reprinted another label for me. I do not know if all post offices will reprint labels for you. I go to a small town post office where postal employees are friendly and helpful.

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