Advancements Help Lick Postage Problems

Los Angeles Times - Wednesday, February 10, 1999

Busuness Tools
Advancements Help Lick Postage Problems
Electronic meters can refill automatically via internal modem, and soon you'll be able to download postage from the Internet to your home computer.
By LAWRENCE J. MAGID, Special to The Times

he mechanical postage meter is about to go the way of the crank-up telephone.
If you don't have an electronic meter, you had better start shopping around. The U.S. Postal Service will stop refilling mechanical postage meters March 31. High-speed mechanical meters (that imprint at least 45 mail pieces per minute) were phased out at the end of 1998.
Electronic meters, according to the postal service's Web site, "are far more secure, therefore protecting our postage revenues." All postal service meters must be rented. For security reasons, the postal service doesn't allow customers to buy its meters.
The good news is that electronic meters are easy to use and refill. And, starting later this year, you won't even need a postage meter. The postal service has authorized a number of companies to let businesses print their own postage using a standard personal computer and printer.
Pitney Bowes, which has been in the postage meter business since 1920, offers a full range of electronic postage meters including the Personal Post Office, designed for small businesses and home offices (http://www.pb.com). The electronic meter, which you can lease for $19.95 a month (or $24.95 a month with an electronic postage scale) can be refilled automatically by phone. You don't have to hook it up to a PC for a refill--the device has its own internal modem that it uses to add postage to the meter. The Stamford, Conn.-based company offers a free 90-day trial period. If you return it within 90 days, you pay only for postage.
Neopost (http://www.neopost.com) offers a meter for $18.95 per month that you take to the post office to refill. Or for $23.95 a month you can rent a meter from the Hayward, Calif.-based company that you can reset by phone. Unlike the more automated Pitney Bowes meter, it requires you to make a voice call to get a code that you enter into the meter.

* * * If you're willing to be on the leading edge of technology, you soon can forgo leasing a postage meter and use your PC to print postage. No, I haven't come up with a way to cheat Uncle Sam out of 33 cents, but the postal service has authorized several companies to offer systems that let you download postage and print it using standard computer printers.
Pitney Bowes is one of those companies. The company is now testing its ClickStamp program that will allow users to purchase postage over the Internet and print envelopes and labels with a digital signature called an Information Based Indicia, or IBI. The IBI can be printed directly on the envelope in the same pass as the recipient's address.
Pitney Bowes may be the dominant player in the postage meter business, but it will have plenty of competition when the post office rolls out PC postage later this year. E-Stamp Corp. (http://www.estamp.com), a Palo Alto-based company, plans to specialize in providing postage directly to PCs via the Web and via desktop software that works by itself or within Microsoft Word and other applications. E-Stamp's Internet Postage service is expected to be available nationwide by the middle of the year.
* * * If you use Word now, you may already know about the envelopes and labels command on the tools menu. With it, you can easily print both the address and return address on a business envelope. E-Stamp's desktop software will add a postage icon to the Word tool bar that will let you print postage at the same time. Before you can print postage, however, you must first go to E-Stamp's Web site to pay for it and download it.
Santa Monica-based Stamps.com is now testing a software-only system (no extra hardware required) that the company hopes to launch by the end of June. Stamps.com (http://www.stamps.com) will allow users to download free Windows software and within 24 hours of registering, users will be able to purchase postage electronically. The postage you buy is stored on Stamps.com's server. When you're ready to mail, you must use the software to connect to the Internet before you can print envelopes or labels. Pricing hasn't been finalized but "will probably cost about 10% of your postage purchase," according to Jeff Green, vice president of marketing.
Neopost also plans to offer three types of electronic PC-based postage systems. Its Simply Postage product, which costs $17.95 a month and is available now, lets you purchase postage from the company's Web site. Once the postage is downloaded to your PC, you plug a small electronic postage meter into the serial port to transfer the postage from the PC to the meter. The product comes with one free download a month. Additional downloads are $5 each.
Neopost's PC Stamp product, which is being tested, is a small hardware "secured metering device" that attaches to your PC and stores the postage that you buy over the Internet. Like E-Stamp and Pitney Bowes products, it allows you to print postage directly from your printer. The third product, PostagePlus (http://www.postageplus.com) is an Internet-only postage printing solution similar to Stamps.com's offering.
The other option, of course, is to forget about postage and send everything by e-mail. But unless you're on the Starship Enterprise, that option is pretty much limited to words, pictures and, in some cases, music and video. But stay tuned. I'm sure someone is working on it.
* * * Lawrence J. Magid can be reached via e-mail at larry.magid@latimes.com.