Since last winter, I’ve been unable to use usps.com to create shipping labels. More precisely, after entering the shipping label info, I get an error message when I try to proceed to the billing info screen: “An unexpected error has occurred. Please try refreshing the page.”
None of the troubleshooting worked, even after talking to someone in the Click-N-Ship Program Office. It wasn’t tied to the particular browser, or the Internet cache, or the particular computer, or even the particular account on usps.com. I thought it was just a problem with Macs and usps.com. After all, I could pay for labels and print them when I logged in elsewhere from a Windows computer.
Today I asked a friend to check whether she could get to the billing screen from her Mac at work, while in my usps.com account. Success, but still no joy here, until I used my phone’s data connection instead of my Verizon FiOS connection.
So something is wrong with the router configuration or Verizon FiOS which is preventing usps.com from working. Is Verizon blocking yet another port? They already screwed up my outgoing email by blocking port 25. Or is it some sort of authentication problem? Is my IP address blocked by usps.com?
I’m not sure how to figure out more about the specific problem, but at least I have a workaround now, other than going back to Comcast.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Any port in a storm
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2 comments:
Have you found any resolution for this problem? I have the same issue. I can't get to the "Billing Info" page through my normal internet provider, but I can on other providers... Maybe it is a port blocking issue?
I notice that transactions like stamp purchases on store.usps.com work just fine. It's only shipping labels on cns.usps.com that have the issue.
In fact the problem with Verizon FiOS and the USPS web site has gotten worse. It used to be that they blocked the billing page, but now they also block the shipping label printing page as of a couple of weeks ago. Cell phone tethering is the only workaround I've found.
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