0

Buy your Postage from Amazon?

samantha

December 20, 2019 20:26

None

Follow

The Art of Books will soon be releasing some new functionality for Amazon sellers.  You will soon be able to buy your postage from Amazon from within your AoB account.  

We'll be releasing this to your beta accounts, which, for newcomers, can be accessed by replacing the 'www' part of the site URL with 'beta' and hitting the return key.  Once you're logged in you'll be able to access the various settings/functions/toys that we've put into production to be tested before fully documenting and making it live. But, I digress.. 

Where was I .. ?  Oh yes..  New toys y'all!  More to follow in the days to come.

 

PS... For those of you who especially brave ..  I do have a URL for you if you'd like a peak, but you should understand its still rough edged and flaky on the label print portion.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

13 comments

• 
  samantha December 31, 2019 13:47 Official comment

  Just a note to let you know I forgot a minor detail..   Before you can buy postage from Amazon through AoB you'll need login on Amazon and navigate to the shipping settings management section in your Amazon account where you'll go through and accept the terms and conditions for each shipping service.  For your convenience use this link..

  https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/shipping-manager/terms-and-conditions.html

• 0
  
  rohebooks December 20, 2019 23:29

  Great, but I have no use for this if I can't use my Zebra 2844 thermal printer for it. And in the coming years, the less dependent my business is on Amazon.com the better.

   

  Chris

   

• 0
  
  samantha December 27, 2019 18:49

  Thank you for the interest and the comment.  With the most recent version, it currently auto-prints and auto-marks the order as shipped, and also will save the id so the label can be reprinted for a time (it eventually expires on Amazon).  

  There are multiple labels we can send as part of the request .. currently the setup is ‘shipping service default’ which, if my thoughts are right, just pulls whatever your settings are on Amazon,  but it's looking as though we can specify a couple, including ZPL, which is the file format for the Zebra.  That’s actually a file that downloads to the computer vs displaying in the browser.  Not sure if that's what you'd want but it's theoretically available.  But, you can expect that a lot of this will be ironed out during the beta release and finalized before the full release.  

  If you'd like to see what is there currently please login on your beta account.  You'll find the Buy Shipping link on the ship page in the Status column (first column on left).

• 0
  
  winston February 21, 2020 21:54

  Is there an advantage financially to buying postage from Amazon, compared to a company like Endicia?

• 0
  
  samantha February 24, 2020 15:57

  Based on what I've seen thus far there is no real advantage financially.  It's more convenience rather than price saving.  And I believe that Seller Fulfilled Prime listings are required to buy the postage from Amazon for those items when they sell so our inclusion of this option for sellers is definitely intended to give you that one-stop convenience.  

• 0
  
  northcoasttradingpost February 27, 2020 00:03

  OK, I give, how do I bulk ship with Amazon?  I can't seem to find anything in Ship settings and the Bulk ship page seems the same.  I'm hesitant to try and Bulk Ship on Amazon site expecting the numbers to come across into AOB but im thinking thats how it must work?

• 1
  
  northcoasttradingpost February 27, 2020 18:47

  Eagerly looking forward to try Amazon Shipping . I had an instance 2 days ago where someone said they had not received a product but tracking showed it properly delivered. Amazon stated that if i had used their shipping instead of Endicia then they would have covered the return. Amazon seems to be cheaper than Endicia now also.

   
• 0
  
  winston February 27, 2020 19:12

  Hi Joe,

  I'm curious how Amazon is cheaper than Endicia. I use Endicia and I'm always on the lookout for better rates. Thanks!

  JD

• 1
  
  northcoasttradingpost February 27, 2020 19:20

  I've just been comparing since the new rates went into effect and I've seen many times where Amazon was $.05 cheaper.  It's not much but in this business every bit counts.  I'll try to find some specific examples and share here.

• 0
  
  winston February 27, 2020 19:30

  Thanks so much for your reply, I appreciate it!

  JD

• 0
  
  northcoasttradingpost March 02, 2020 20:33

  Using this method of shipping from AOB so far allows for a combination of Media Mail and Bound printed Matter which saves money.  I am working with AOB to try and make this workflow quicker but i think it is very promising.

   

• 0
  
  lakecountrybooks March 09, 2020 02:07

  Three things:

  1. Amazon will only cover INR claims if you buy postage through them WITH SIGNATURE CONFIRMATION. Delivery confirmation alone won't cut it.

  2. Bound Printed Matter is for items that contain advertising, like catalogs and magazines. NOT BOOKS.

  3. I've found insurance rates to be better through Amazon than Endicia, and Endicia just raised their insurance prices. So if you're sending something that needs to be insured, Amazon is worth looking at. I personally haven't noticed a difference in postage rates, but I've stepped away from Seller Fulfilled Prime for a while, so I haven't been buying shipping through Amazon for about a month.

• 0
  
  tbrockett1 April 26, 2020 18:54

  I normally use Dazzle by Endicia. On Friday Dazzle stopped working and I spent 4 hours with Endicia Tech. It still doe not work. I even tried installing it on another computer. That worked once and then quit. So I needed to print labels for all my orders. Since most come from Amazon I went there. That worked ok but was slow. So I contacted AoB and Samantha told me about the new option to purchase Amazon postage for Amazon orders.

  That option works very well and will make a fine addition for AoB users. One problem I ran into was that AoB generates a mailing label as a PNG file. It would be very helpful to have a PDF option as well. PNG will not print on older Zebra label printers like the 2844. PDF's will.

  A second helpful addition would be to store multiple labels to the same PDF file. Then I could process my Amazon shipping, one order at a time, and print the labels all at once. It would be nice to save the PDF file too in case I needed to reprint a label.

  Two last notes:

  1) Media Mail prices are the same on Amazon as on Endicia.

  2) The Endicia label is far better than the Amazon label. Endicia checks every address against the USPS database and corrects them. Amazon is "garbage in - garbage out". Endicia also adds USPS Carrier route numbers for quicker sorting at the Post Office and faster delivery. Amazon does not do that.

  I also use Paypal to produce USPS Media Mail labels. Their quality is as good as Endicia. I cut and paste the tracking number from Paypal emails to the AoB ship page.

  Thanks Samantha and AoB for all you do to make our businesses more successful.

  Sincerely,

  Tim Brockett