Is Stamps.com a Scam?

I see no mention of this but I think this is a scam between the post office and stamps.com. We have been mailing international letters for years and a Number 10 envelope with a couple papers in it (around 6 oz) has always costs us around 98 cents (current cost).

However if I follow the stamps.com site for an international letter to Thailand and it will cost me $5.44 and there is no option for a regular envelope.

I have spoken with both the Post Office who if you call them on it they will say a 6 oz letter gets counted as a package or large envelope but if you don't mention it or if you take it in you will be charged 98 cents.

For me, I don't mind cause I know I can pay 98 cents and not worry about it (they have never been returned) but I feel for all the people who just follow the stamps.com site and presume that its correct and the USPS is making a killing off these people. So sad. :-(

SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM. Beware.

If you have any problems with Stamps.com, just file a BBB report. I have heard that you will receive at least some satisfaction from the company after doing this.

Never really thought about Stamps.com but I have thought a great deal about the extensive shipping experience via eBay/PayPal & the USPS online site. One day last week the USPS online site was not funcitonal so I thought exploring the options associated with Stamps.com would be worthwhile. Like a food I assumed the service was similar to USPS online service but with additional features such as the ability to copy/past an entire address vs the endless fields on the USPS online site. I never even noticed a monthly fee until receiving some information in the mail!

In conclusion, some quick research on the Internet resulted in endless complaints about the monthly fee and difficulty associated with cancelling the service; and guess what, the fee issue and the cancellation issue were both real! The fee had already been charged and the number to cancel the service is operational limited hours.

AVOID STAMPS.COM

And I sent a complaint to USPS also about Stamps.com

My parents have used Stamps.com for their business for years... never had any problems. They got their free scale (which doesn't weight anything over like 5 lbs, so they bought their own scale anyway). My husband and I now have our own small business and are going to be opening a stamps account soon. For right now, we use the USPS website, which does the exact same thing, except it's not as easy to navigate and it's a little more time consuming. They may have horrible customer service, but that doesn't make it a scam. Thecompany does what it's supposed to do. They print stamps.

Stamps.com is the biggest ripoff I've dealt with on the internet yet. I contacted them-their website right next to the USPS and assumed that they were connected with the post office. Whoa. They took a $1.oo out of my account once and then $9.98. No big loss, but they got my bank account number because I truly thought they were connected with the USPS. After finally getting to the USPS website I was informed there was NO connection. And, I received nothing for my $9.98.

I would like to make some comments about Stamps.com For these purposes I should tell you that I know someone who works for Stamps.com. From what I have "heard" Stamps.com is a very good system for people who own a business, or who send out a lot of things (and I mean - a lot). For those who send out just a few things, it's not worth paying for (and the "savings" on shipping are the same "savings" you get from USPS.com).

What you are paying for, in the monthly fee, is the software that allows you to integrate your sales data / address books and so print out addresses and postage at the same time. This works well for big companies, as it saves them man hours.

The problem is that Stamps.com is being marketed to people who don't have a use for the service. The "$45 in free postage" is a great sales tactic to people who send out a few letters or packages. But asside from the initial $5 you have to pay the monthly fee in order to get $10 of postage a month - which is NOT worth it to send out the occasional piece. There are many sales tactics that are completely legitimate (after all, everyone should know to read the fine print before putting in their credit card details, which many companies rely on us NOT doing!) but are possibly ethically questionable. There are many forums with people who complain about Stamps.com, and claim it's a scam. They have over 400,000 happy customers who use them every day - and there are always dissatisfied customers for even the best company.

I guess my message is two things - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is - and that we should all be very careful who we give our credit card details too.

Everything you say is true, but there is one point you missed. The supposedly free scale isn't totally free. You have to pay nearly $10 for shipping on the scale, and you don't find that out until after you have signed up and given your credit card. You can opt out of the free scale, but you have to pay close attention to all the options presented to you when you sign up for the trial. And if you do opt-out, they'll keep bugging you about it until your trial runs out...

Save yourself money And hassle....you can download the Free Shipping Assistant from the Post Office, and do all your labels/printing etc. for Free!
Or, if you don't need yet another program taking up space in your computer, you can also get all the info you need and print postage at the post office website...again, for Free!

^^X^^

I signed up with them not planning on getting any free scale or anything. I just wanted to print a shipping label. Turned out I didn't have any acceptable label paper so that was that. Of course until I reviewed my credit card statement and saw a $15.99 charge on it. I used their feature to close the account, of course they did not close my account when asked. I'm sure that they must have had somewhere on their web site about the subscription fee, but I didn't see anything, and I'm better than most at noticing details like that. None of their emails said anything about me authorizing any monthly charges to my credit card, there was no receipt or anything. Just the fact that many people have missed the bit about the expensive subscription and the difficulty of canceling the account wreaks of a scam to me. I'm attempting to resolve this through different avenues. I think I felt they would be more legitimate since USPS provided a link to their site. I suppose for now on even if I think a place is a trusted site, I better Google their company with words like complaint, scam etc. first.

When I first looked up stamps.com in google, I was a little taken back at a lot of the negative feedback they have received. I mail packages fairly often and recently I had two packages that totaled in value to $180 break during shipment. Of course, I did pay the .50 some cents to insure it but I was not sure if it was going to take months for my claim to be approved like it does for usps. I called customer service yesterday and after 1 week of filing my claim they informed me that my check was mailed the day before. I understand where people are coming from with the "underlying" charges and stuff, but in my opinion there is a lot more that stamps.com charges you the 17.99 monthly subscription for than just a mere "convenience". For me, it saved me $180 and I was able to get it a whole lot quicker than normally.

I received a 5" X 6.5" flier in the mail with a CD inside and info about the service. It said NOTHING about a monthly fee. I was surprised to see that on my user profile. I then Google'd and got this web site which is very helpful. Unfortunately, I now have to waste a lot of time to cancel this thing, and I'm sure it'll cost me something. Thanks for all the info.

Your summary on stamps.com was exactly the same as I experienced, except my charge was $15.99 a month. Like you, I didn't realize there was a monthly charge to get the $40 in "free" postage they offered. When I saw the charge on my credit card statement, I called the same day to cancel and rejected their additional offers to stay another month for $9.99. Unfortunately, because they bill "in arrears" that meant by the time I saw the charge, I was already into the next month and will be charged another $15.99. So to get $15 in "free" postage, it will have cost me $32. I wish I had been more careful in reading their offer.

I just hope they don't continue charging my credit card monthly, as some people on the internet complained about.

I came to this article after making an online purchase and receiving a shipment notice saying I could track the shipment via a stamps.com link. In the three days since I have neither been able to access that link nor the root of the stamps.com site so I was wondering if it was legitimate. My browser simply reports that it cannot connect to stamps.com. I am therefore encouraged by this article suggesting that stamps.com is at least somewhat legitimate. I hope to receive my purchase delivery in due course.

I just found the credit charges on my bill for 15.99. Unfortunately I signed up using a card that is on auto pay, that I rarely use, and hence I never check the statements. Perhaps that's stupid, but year end, I review things and found I'd been hit for 12 mos of $15.99, having tested the system in the first month for personal use, using less than $5.00 of postage.

1) I too, had missed the $15.99 recurring fee, which in NOWHERE in the WELCOME email. I would have NEVER signed up for that had it been clearly noted.

2) What's written above confirms it is somewhat hidden. Moreover, when the 4 week trial ended, again NO EMAIL was sent saying I would now be billed $15.99 / month.

3) I just canceled and when I complained that I never received emails about recurring billing as it happened, was told I had selected to not receive any billing notices at sign up! I looked through the stamps.com interface for this function, and the only options I could find for receiving emails from them were the ones I normally ALWAYS turn off -- the options to receive spam on special offers from the company. Those were all selected as affirmative, yet the recurring billing statements supposedly selected by me as turned off? I suspect like 1) above, these options are obscure.

CONCLUSION: STAMPS.com probably gets a decent about of revenue from people who try the service and are unaware of how much they are billed by keeping very quiet about it. It strikes me as being deliberately sneaky about what you're actually signing up for, and tries to get you to not receive billing notices for as long as possible.

I managed to get 3 mos refunded, but that's all they'd budge. May take it up with Discover who I used for billing.

What I used of stamps.com worked nicely, but for a home user being charged this monthly fee, or a $9.99 lesser package that was offered when I canceled -- is a ripoff vs. going to post office and buying stamps.

Otherwise, I FEEL TOTALLY SCAMMED.

I signed up for stamps.com mainly for the free scale. The description of the scale did not mention that it only works with their program and hooks up only to your computer not to an electric wall plug. I canceled before the free trial period expired so I was only out the 9.99 that it cost to ship the "free" scale.
If anyone knows of a program I can down load to make the stamps.com scale useful, please post.

There is a way to get both: the Free 3 months Membership and a $100 deal. Also, if you are an ebay seller, guess what? The membership is lmited, but it's 100% Free!
Yes, they may or may not have been upfront about the monthly fee, but I would have never expected this service to be free to begin with. When you are using the software, simply go to "My Account" and you can see everything about your fees.

I just want to share my story in hopes that other people will STAY AWAY from this site unless they want a huge headache.
Short story long, I signed up for a free trail, called to cancel before I got charged and got coaxed into getting another month free. (also you can ONLY cancel via phone, no option to cancel online). This month I forgot to cancel on time and went a few days over. So this month wasn't free and I cut my loses and learned a $15.99 lesson. Account canceled. Then I notice next month I have another $15.99 charge to my account. I call and they don't know what happened but promise to refund me the money in 7-10 days. over 2 weeks later I call again and speak with a supervisor who promises to have it actually returned in 3-5 days which I'm still waiting on. And when she went to give a confirmation #, it was exactly the same as the one I got when I called previously. I asked her about that and she just said 'oops sorry, I'll give you another one'. What kind of a business won't return fraudulent fees? Unbelievable.

LEASE DO NOT EVER DO BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY!

After several years of supposedly cancelled account (it started with a "free 30 day trial" which tagged along with another purchase, and after not only PROMPTLY cancelling this service.. but ALSO getting charged month after month, multiple phone calls and promises that "this time it is REALLY REALLY cancelled" .. just to be charged the very next month... I finally had to cancel my Credit Card.

Not ONCE during all the months they charged me did I EVER receive ANY KIND OF PRODUCT OR SERVICE, nothing at all. No promised trial pack of some kind which is supposed to explain their services, and different options of customizing, whatever they do.. nada! Their software kept crashing and I was unable to install it on my comp, even after multiple tries. Contacting support for that was pointless, as they only leave you on hold for 45min or more, couple of times it was over an hour and I just gave up on their "help" with their own software, opting instead to cancel it before my "FREE TRIAL MEMBERSHIP" (WHAT A JOKE!) expired.

So after closing the CC .. I figure they finally can't charge me anymore for zero service provided, right? OH HOW WRONG!!!!

It is now YEARS after the fact, and these money hungry thieves, pretending to run a stamp business, have just somehow found my 75 year old MOTHER'S CHECKING ACCOUNT, which has a debit/credit card, and on which account I am listed as a Power Of Attorney (NOT an account holder) in order to translate for her, since she speaks very little English.... and THEY JUST SMOOTHLY STOLE $233.35 OUT OF HER CHECKING ACCOUNT - which only ever holds her SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK, the entire pension she lives on - $800! Stealing $233.35 is QUITE a big deal for her and because of their greed and unscrupulous tactics - my mother will now be unable to pay her heating & electricity bill.

Thanks so much, STAMPS.COM .. you greedy bastards!!! Ruining people's lives for no reason at all.. promising cancellations of accounts and then waiting for years before you slap a $230 charge on someone's relative's checking account -- WHICH NOBODY GAVE YOU ANY KIND OF PERMISSION TO DO!!! And all this for what? Never have we received so much as a single STAMP, nothing, absolutely zero product or service of any kind.

I smell lawsuit. And something tells me it will be a class-action, as I'm not the only one they've done this (or similar) to.

I will MOST DEFINITELY pursue EVERY avenue available to me and my mother in the State Of California .. from the Better Business Bureau, to Postmaster General of the United States, to Consumer Protection Agencies (as many as I can find that will hear me out), to Court... as well as those ever-popular local TV channel Investigators (I hope there will be others in California eager to tell how this shady company scammed them too, so that we can have a nice big segment of exposure on the local television stations (yep, plural, I do not intend to stop with just one locality!).

They have finally done it to someone who has nothing to lose, and who is pretty well pissed off about their tactics. I would like nothing better than to see this company of scammers shut down for their unscrupulous practices and ripping people off, people who CANNOT AFFORD TO BE RIPPED OFF!!! People who live day-to-day on their SSI checks, and often go without food, unable to afford gas to even visit their local food bank.. yep, that's who they stole from this time!! Just such a person. And they took $233.35 exactly, which could have paid PG&E bill and afforded some much needed food for my mother!

Thanks for letting me tell my story! STAY AWAY FROM STAMPS.COM PLEASE!!! THEY NEVER EVER STOP, NOT EVEN WHEN THE YEARS PASS AFTER CANCELLATION OF YOUR ACCOUNT WITH THEM.. THEY JUST HOPE THAT:
1. you will not be paying attention to your bank statement;
2. you will let it go, if its a small amount like $15 or $17 and trust them when they tell you its been cancelled;
3. they KNOW most people don't have the record of the transaction number of that long-ago cancellation after so many years since the service was supposedly cancelled... so basically they will come up with the standard "hey, you never cancelled" story.. since "you have no proof". BULL!!! This WAS cancelled, and the money will be returned, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER! If it takes extreme measures, so be it, like I said - I have absolutely nothing to lose! But do they? And is it worth those $233.35?? They need to ponder that one VERY seriously.

Bob, Thanks for the well written synopsis of stamps.com. I certainly appreciate the time and effort that you obviously went through to inform people of the site.