Anyone using USPS to ship? Need help quickly! :)

Hi, i'm having a bear of a time with shipping... and i don't know how to resolve... hoping someone has been down this road and can give me some insight.

I've set up USPS and have the API working.
I have the weights for the products.

but.... here's my problems...

1) how do you set the weight for the packaging? if you include it into the product weight, then if a customer orders 2 of that item and it fits in the same packaging, the weight doesn't add up right.

2) say i customer orders ... idk, 2 glasses, the weight is over the first class, so it goes to priority, but on the east coast (where we are) the cost is way lower than on the west coast, so on east coast orders we would ship priority mail and on west coast orders the cheapest would be flat rate. So how do you get it to display the flat rate price in the appropriate size box, just for the places that is more expensive than Priority?

good lord, there's got to be an easier way to figure out shipping!

3) i know PS4.5 doesn't have the ability to print shipping labels, but has anyone found anything that can export the shipping info that can then be imported into the ClickNShip on USPS site?

Thanks for any info/help on this

1) Power store doesn't allow for adding the packaging weight, the packaging weight should be pretty negligible and should not effect the over all shipping.

2) Power store doesn't allow a way to dynamically select the shipping method.

3) I havent used the USPS ClickNShip service, so i don't know what data they require, but you could use PHPMyAdmin to access the order record in the database and export the shipping info.

Hi Jason, yes, that is what i thought, the packaging shouldn't really factor in... BUT it is, and we are getting crap from the post office and complaints from the customers.

some of the people at the postoffice, let it slide if its a couple of ounces off, but others are such pains, they want it "EXACT".... and since we're doing 1st class, and priority the prices are all based on weights, i know that 1st class goes by ounces, but priority i didn't think really mattered if it was a couple of ounces off. So i went in and bumped up the weights slightly....

Well, then it gets weighed at the post office and comes in cheaper than what the customer paid for shipping, and naturally they see the postage cost, so then they write in with nasty emails.... and its not even alot that its different, its always less than $1-2....

Shipping is driving me nuts!!!!!

The code that calculates the shipping from the web site is a shipping estimator. The exact price can only be calculated once the packaging, dimensions, and exact weight are taken by the shipping carrier. All shipping APIs warn that the exact shipping amount may not match the amount returned for these reasons. The best you could do is label it "shipping and handling charge" and then call the difference the handling charge.

you would have thought that the USPS tech people would have told me that! they are driving me crazy..... but i seem to be getting pretty close and i put a disclaimer up that there are fees that are paid that don't actually show on the "postage stamp" .... what a pain! :)