Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was really excited when I first purchased this, the 25lb USB scale, and a pack of extra labels. I thought -- no more lines at the post office: Great! On Dymo's and Endicia's web site, they made sure to point out that I could print postage from home for FREE and expressly indicated "no monthly fees." Again, I was very excited. I'm just a casual shipper -- couple packages a year, so a monthly fee (like with Stamps.com) is not worth it in the slightest. Plus, a lot of the stuff you can do for free already anyway; just not First Class stamps. So first I'll cover unboxing and setup: it was breeze except for some sticky labels. Instead of using the CD that came with the printer, I always download the latest version from the web. That installed very quickly and painlessly. Then, I connected the printer and followed the Quick Start guide which was surprisingly well written. I installed the address labels first and completed that in under 30 seconds! Moved onto the stamp labels which proved to be a little trickier. The labels kept feeding in crookedly. The first time I pulled it out, the label peeled off inside the printer and I couldn't get it out. I called tech support and to my surprise, the designers thought about this already and the front panel pops right off easily and the print mechanism separates in two places to get the labels out from where ever they are stuck! AWESOME! I finally figured out that the reason they were feeding crookedly was because of the glue leftover from the sticker that held the roll together. So, throw away the first two labels and you'll be fine. Creating the Endicia account was also quick and easy as well as the Endicia software installation. Now onto the not-so-good... I attempted to print my first First Class stamp -- $0.08 to make up the difference of an old $0.37 stamp. I played around in the software for a while and could not figure out where to type "0.08." I chatted with Endicia support and they told me that the "free" account only permits a small subset of USPS postage. $0.45 and $0.65 first class stamps, postcards, additional postage of $0.01, and flat rate postage for packages. In order to print an $0.08 stamp, I would need a paid account at a minimum of $9.95/mo. At first, I didn't believe this. All their web site talked about was being able to print postage at home for free. Nothing about restrictions. Not even footnotes, asterisks, or fine print. Well, turns out it's true. So, I'm returning everything to Amazon (who is awesome at returns by the way). Bottom line: Great printer and well-thought-out design. DECEIVING ADVERTISEMENT. The only "FREE" postage you can print is the same stuff you can do for free without the printer: buy First Class stamps (any Walmart or other grocery store) and print Flat Rate postage (you can do that via USPS.com). Even PayPal allows you to print First Class Parcel and Media Mail postage on their site for FREE to a regular printer or a label printer (although not this one yet). Suggestion for Dymo/Endicia: Please don't misunderstand, I'm not unreasonable. I fully expected there to be some kind of limit on the free account like: you can't print more than $500/mo or something like that. You have to have something that prevents abuse or use by a business that does a lot of shipping. But having what you've done is simply unforgivable. I would suggest that you change your free account to have a monthly or annual limit of some sort. Something to separate the personal/casual shipper from the business users. Granted very small businesses would fall under the $500/mo idea, but that should be just fine (IMHO) -- they are starting out anyway, why burden them with more expenses? It's really a good business plan anyway. Get someone in on a free limited spend account and as their shipping needs grow, they're already in with you and you get the business because that's what they're already used to and like.