Underpaid Postage Label Email

Colorado Bricks

Today I got an email from Paypal :
"A discrepancy has been identified for a shipping label on your account and additional postage is due at this time. The information entered during label creation didn’t match the information captured by our shipping partner USPS during the shipping process.
You won’t be able to print any more shipping labels using PayPal until the underpaid postage has been repaid."

I checked the order, it was a single "Beam Frame 5 x 11 (64178)". I selected 4oz like I always do. I checked the details of the adjustment and I see
Recorded weight 0.25lb
Actual weight 0.86lb

This feel like extorsion, they are asking me $2.21, there must have been another package with it...at least it will still a first class weight...
Fighting it would be probably be useless and I can't really wait for the problem to be fixed to print another label...

Jiries

I never use PP label and I always use 2x8 label sheet and manually copy and paste the buyer address on it and printed out. Do you really need to use PP labels.

Emporiosa

@Colorado Bricks this is quite common and happens with other carriers as well like Canada Post here, as well as UPS (I find it happens ALL the time with UPS when I ship to the US). I wish you luck should you choose to fight it, but I haven't heard of many (or any) that win these kinds of battles with the mail carriers.

Colorado Bricks

@Jiries, you don't need to but it makes you life easier in the US. Everything is tracked and printing from PP automatically notify the buyer of the tracking number.
If a package is has "Underpaid Postage" but not by printed paypal, USPS will not deliver the package until the recipient pays the adjustment which is worst for a seller's perspective.

@Emporiosa , I had one adjustment by UPS and they were right, now I know that a 20x16x4 box is really 20x16x5. I actually have to add a 1" height to all my box sizes when calculating shipping.

Calibrick

Interesting... I did get an underpaid postage message also once (it was one of those RIGHT on the edge of the next ounce), but USPS simply deducted the extra ounce from my PayPal account and paid themselves. I print all postage for USPS via PayPal, and also have a USPS account, so that may be the difference?

qwertyboy

@Colorado Bricks This sometimes happens when another package is "stuck" to yours. They both get weighed by the automated system as being one shipmment, and your label is scanned. So to the system it looks like that one shipment (which is in fact two parcels) has been underpaid.

Niek.

HeartlandBrix

This happened to me earlier this year. The e-mail you got from PayPal should have included some ID codes unique to your transaction. You need to e-mail [email protected], explain why you think it's an error, and include those codes from the original underpayment e-mail. USPS will open a help ticket for you. The USPS e-mail says something like the issue should be resolved in a couple of weeks, but with the strain USPS is under right now with short labor, it'll probably take much longer (I waited three months).

Eventually, though, they'll go back through their records (USPS photographs every package that goes through their distribution centers, so I've been told), and if they're at fault, you'll get an e-mail that says the difference has been credited back to your PayPal account. You'll get a message from PayPal, too, saying your account was credited.

DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME GOING THROUGH PAYPAL to resolve this!! They'll direct you to USPS.

Hope that helps!

HeartlandBrix

Follow-up. I forgot to mention that you'll still have to pay the overcharge now to get your PayPal account unlocked. It really upset me because, like you, I felt like I was being extorted for something I *knew* was right, but other posters on many other forums have summed it up as "a risk of doing business."