Etsy told sellers they could buy First Class Letter postage for 53 cents even as the rate for a postage stamp will increase from 55 cents to 58 cents on August 29th. But the real news is that it comes with tracking when purchased on Etsy.
“Tracking for First-Class Letters is only available on Etsy and not offered through the post office,” Etsy mentioned in its announcement on Monday. Its sellers use First-Class Letters to ship stickers and other small flat, pliable items, the company noted.
It’s not clear when Etsy made tracking for First Class Letters available. Rival marketplace eBay made a big deal of the news when it began offering tracking for its sellers, called Standard Envelope, though it came with many restrictions as we noted at the time in our December 2020 coverage. It has also garnered mixed reviews from sellers using the service.
More information for Etsy sellers is available in the company’s Seller Handbook.
And more information about the August 29th postage rate increase is available in last month’s Newsflash.
Does anyone see this as an option yet? I meet the requirements for a lot of my stuff. I would be shipping it as a “Flats” which Etsy says has to be under 13oz, 15″ x 11″, not rigid (machineable). I ship in 12″ x 9″ flat mailers well under 13oz each but when I do what Etsy says (Select FLATS when purchasing the label) it says there are no services available for the selected shipping method.
UPDATE: I had my dimensions entered wrong. As soon as I corrected that, the option did show. I used this on some of my orders going out this morning and will monitor them before jumping in.
If it’s the same thing they rolled out for flats last year, I tried it. It saved a lot of money on shipping but the buyers hated it because they could not track it at usps, only on Etsy. Also the letter carrier failed to perform a delivery scan on 80% of them.
I was disappointed because it was a great concept but if the buyers aren’t happy it’s not worth using.