How Printing Shipping Labels Online Can Help You Stay Safe During Quarantine
The coronavirus pandemic has paralyzed many businesses, but postal and courier services continue to operate normally and deliver letters and packages. They do what they can to ensure the safety of their customers and employees, but people are still recommended to minimize trips to the post office in order to keep themselves and people around them safe.
For example, if you need to ship a parcel and it can’t wait until the end of the quarantine (because you grandmother does need those masks and sanitizer), you can purchase a shipping label online, print it and order a package pickup instead of visiting the post office.
Common precautions taken by postal and courier services to prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection include advising their employees and customers to stay at home if they’re feeling unwell, disinfecting all surfaces in their offices, providing their employees with masks, gloves and sanitizer, and encouraging customers to keep safe distance from staff and one another. However, the best way to keep yourself and people around you safe is to not go to the post office at all.
Printing shipping labels at home will save you a trip to the post office, helping you maintain self-isolation and social distancing. A shipping label is a sticker or a piece of paper that contains the information required to deliver a package to its destination, as well as serves as proof of postage.
When you ship a package from the post office, the label is filled out and printed by the postage office employee. Most postal and courier services also offer online tools that allow you to create shipping labels online. In addition, there are third-party services, such as PostageMaker, which allow to choose from multiple carriers and provide shipping discounts.
To create a shipping label online, you need to sign up for the service (for example, USPS Click-N-Ship, UPS Internet Shipping, FedEx Ship Manager, or any third-party service of your choice). Then sign in to your profile, fill in a form to specify the information about the package, pay for postage (most services accept cards, PayPal and other payment methods) and print the label. You won’t need self-adhesive paper or a special printer; regular paper and printer will do just fine. Use tape to attach the label to the package, and you’re almost done.
We say “almost” because you still need to have your package picked up by the carrier. Luckily, you can do it without visiting the post office. Most carriers, including the United States Postal Service (USPS), UPS and FedEx, provide a free service called package pickup. To schedule a pickup, you should fill out and submit an online form on the carrier’s website, in order to provide the pickup address, date and time, your phone number, and other relevant information.
The greatest thing about package pickup is that you don’t even have to meet the courier in person — social distancing, yay! You’ll have an option to leave the package at a specified location (for example, in your mailbox, on the porch, or with the concierge of your apartment building). So you won’t have to make contact with anyone at all (except for the concierge, maybe).
Times are hard right now, and you may feel like your whole life has turned upside down, but what we humans are really good at is surviving. Stay safe, stay at home: print shipping labels online and schedule a package pickup instead of walking or driving to the post office, where there are all those people.
With PostageMaker, you can print shipping labels cheaper, since we offer our customers shipping discounts up to 35% off the official USPS, UPS and FedEx rate. And saving money is really important right now, since the pandemic has already affected the world economy, and you may want to cut your expenses as much as possible.
