Smart-Stamp Version 3

[Paul Bulpit]

Smarts-Stamp Version 2 is not without its faults & peculiarities, but yesterday a message flashed up telling us to download Version 3 before 15th August, obvious due to Pricing In Proportion coming in on 21st.

We did this but had nothing but trouble with it. Has anybody else had a look yet?

[TraceyHand]

downloaded it today and it's run fine so far
what problems have you had?
Could just be with things we don't use!
Does that makes sense (been on the wine alteady!)

[Paul Bulpit]

Hi Tracey, seen you about a bit on this forum! You bin on the wine I hit the scotch.... have learnt a lot in this last eighteen months of running a 24/7 website - it's 24/7 work!

Several problems, but mainly it crashed/froze/locked after every stamp printed.

I had so much trouble (first young staff member opening the program at 8.30 read the message so took it upon herself to download the program without consultation with me) that I ended up uninstalling v3 & re-installing v2 in order to keep production running - another morning wasted.

V3 has nice features (history, edit sender address & position) but the peculiaralities* haven't been fixed:

Typing in the name address & postcode doesn't fit into the field provided.
This means that to delete it ready for the next one you can only highlight from the top down, not from the bottom up. V3 lets you go full-screen but the size of the program doesn't change accordingly, so no further forward!

It remembers your initial settings (size of label & which printer to use) all day while it's open, but it doesn't remember on start-up so you have to reset it every day. Neither does it remember your chosen font size & style - difficult when you employ today's calibre of staff (short memories) - so every day we produce stamps in small print until I do one myself & change the settings.

The scroll menu to select the weight defaults to the last one you used. (So it can remember some things, but) whereas as every packet is different it ought to start from scratch & the drop-down list should be longer/deeper, with more choices at the click of the mouse.....

*Maybe we ought to get together & bombard Royal Mail with complaint emails to get this sorted?

I have other issues with it but won't drone on. Frankly (excuse pun!) with PIP & other carriers doing a 'Fit in this bag' rate I might not keep using it - the other smart-stamp thread on here mentions that Delivery/Sort Office are helpful/polite & don't like the Counters. I concur with that totally, & the truck driver tells me that basically RM are fully geared to letters, automated, & couldn't care less about packets/parcels. I think the parcel carriers such as DHL etc. are going to pick up a load of business at the end of the month.

As usual they are all behind & in the dark - the Actinic COMMUNITY should form a collective/co-operative to procure better rates from carriers. Answers on a postcard......

Sorry my mind is racing here, we are a large group. How many, members of FSB? Buying collectives such as Greendale? TIGER? Could be time to start a new thread.......

I can't handle this but to get it going email P F B 5 (AT) G M X -DOT- N E T

[Paul Bulpit]

Sorted some of it.

It would appear that Version 2 had some sort of bug, in that if you picked One per Page Label the address printed in the top HALF. We have been using this for nine months, with two per page labels. Never used 'templates' because didn't know what it meant - it produced what we needed.

So (I think) v3 has fixed the bug & put the address field for (one per page) in the centre of an A4 page - where it should be but no good to us.

So we switched to Two per Page - this meant when you produced the second stamp the first moved to the bottom & on printing, two were thrown out - the first of which had already been done, the time before.

After a bit of DYOR have sorted this by "Customising A Template" and 'hey presto' - seems to be sorted. But they could have made this clearer from the start - more to say but won't - it wasn't in v2 & wasn't advertised.

I still think that the concept is brilliant but that aspects of SmartStamp are ill-thought-out, unfriendly & poorly presented/communicated - as one small user what voice do I have?

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