What do all the USPS Flat Rate and Calculated listings mean?

GarageSale
1

Using GS 7.0.4 for Mac Yosemite.

  1. I want some listings to offer a Flat Rate Envelope for $6.45 as listed on the USPS site, but all the Flat Rate Envelope choices #0 thru #6 (and the one unnumbered before #0) all say $5.80, which is the old price. If I choose “Calculated,” I’m afraid the cost will be higher since it’s not using the Flat Rate envelope.

  2. What exactly do the different numbers after “Calculated” and “Flat Rate” mean, even those that have the same price?

Couldn’t find this addressed before but feel free to offer a link if it has. Thanks!

2

I’ve only briefly tried GS 7 and don’t have access to it now as I am currently using a Mac with Mavericks installed, but my thoughts based upon GS 6.9.8 are:

I think perhaps those numbers could refer to the 7 different sizes of flat rate envelopes, one of which is Priority Express. Search in browser for “envelopes” on the page below.

https://store.usps.com/store/browse/subcategory.jsp?categoryId=flat-rate-shipping

If you choose “Calculated” then the rates should should be calculated to the buyer’s zip code. Some services such Media Mail and Priority Mail Flat Rate will have a calculated price that is the same for all zip codes. If on the on the other hand you use “Flat Rate” then that is what you are going to charge regardless of what the actual USPS prices are.

If you use calculated then I seem to recall there are two choices in your eBay references - you can show customers the retail rate or your discounted rate that you obtain by being a trusted seller on eBay.

3

Thanks for taking the time to reply! I was already aware of how the calculated works on eBay and USPS envelopes and sizes–only two or three have the same price; GS lists all 7 of them as $5.80 which is incorrect. (In fact, even the $5.80 is wrong as the rate was raised.)

For the calculated, my query is just GS specific; we’re also given 6-7 different choices on GS, and none are explained.
Hopefully we get some clarification! :slight_smile:

4

GarageSale doesn’t have any knowledge about the different shipping rates charged by the shipping services. There is no special logic behind the rate text field. Chances are, that $5.80 was the last value you entered into that field, so it just stays there until you enter something different.

5

Thanks for the response. But that brings up two more questions:

  1. Why would it list 7 different choices (#0, #1, #2, etc.) if they’re all the same price?

  2. How do I get rid of the errors and all those numbers? Obviously I can’t use the $5.80 and it doesn’t make sense to have seven of them. :wink:

Thanks,
Mike

6

Can you post a screenshot of the seven different choices? Not sure what you mean.

7

Sure thing. See the blue bar (#21,21, then underneath it, choices numbered 0 thru 6, yet all with the same [old] postage rate.

Also, I thought since GS works with eBay and eBay uses the USPS data that it would update the correct values.

ScreenShot GarageSale 2016-10-10.jpg1623×975 199 KB

8

I see. This popup shows so-called “shipping profiles”. These are pre-defined shipping rules which are mostly automatically created for each user by eBay. Hence the cryptic name.

When used, these profiles override the shipping settings you specified in GarageSale.

You can view and edit these profiles on the My eBay page. GarageSale does not create or alter any of these profiles, nor do we know what shipping rates are specified in them.

Hope this helps somewhat.

9

It helps quite a bit, Ilja! The account does not belong to me so I wasn’t aware of the profiles to begin with. Now that I know where they reside I can hopefully change/streamline/get rid of some or all.

Greatly appreciate your assistance and patience.

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