08:54 – Barbara was over at her sister’s house yesterday, when I was struck by a cunning plan. I asked if Al would be willing to let me borrow his Windows laptop overnight, to which he kindly agreed. So I waited until this morning in case we got orders overnight, and then fired it up and attempted to pay for the postage labels in my cart. No joy. I got the same “payment method declined” error message on Al’s Windows laptop. Apparently, it’s not Linux that USPS hates. It’s me personally. USPS will not accept payment from me using any credit card or PayPal on any computer running any browser. I even tried creating a new USPS account and re-entering the label data. When I tried to pay, I got the same error.
Costco says my new Windows notebook system is to arrive tomorrow. It probably won’t work either. But I already have a stamps.com account set up, so I’ll install their client software and just start using stamps.com to generate my postage labels. They charge $16 per month, which’ll probably be less expensive than paying USPS directly because stamps.com discounts postage.