A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service told EcommerceBytes that a database migration on the agency’s Click N Ship website on July 16th was the cause of technical issues that online sellers experienced, and she extended an apology to customers.
The USPS extends a discount to sellers who purchase postage online. So when its Click N Ship service went down earlier this month, it was a time-consuming and costly problem for merchants who use it.
USPS spokesperson Darleen Reid delivered the following statement via email:
The U. S. Postal Service would like to apologize to our Click-N-Ship customers for any inconvenience they may have experienced due to an overnight database migration which took place on the evening of Tuesday, July 15th leading into the morning of Wednesday, July 16th.
Specifically, the migration caused a software defect that prevented customers from correctly viewing and printing labels for Regional Rate Boxes (A/B/C) that had already been paid for. When we were made aware of glitch the USPS temporarily removed the Regional Rate Box offering until the functionality could be corrected.
Additionally, the migration also caused a third-party software component that helps to manage the flow of data to perform slowly, particularly during high-transaction peaks. This component was replaced and performance has improved dramatically.
Both issues were completely resolved by the evening of Friday July 18th and again we sincerely apologize to our Click-N-Ship customers for this inconvenience. We also want to thank our customers for their patience during the timeframe needed to correct both issues, as it is our goal for your experience using Click-N-Ship or any USPS on-line tool to be easy, convenient and problem free.
As we had reported, some sellers faced the dilemma of choosing between eating the cost of higher postage purchased in-person at the post office, or not sending the packages until online postage became available through Click N Ship.
Another seller said he had to pay for higher Priority Mail rates during the period when Regional Rates were unavailable.
