I just printed a wrapper ( for a very thin book-harlequin type)  and it says it weights 4 pounds ,& 3.2oz's and the postage will be $4.05.

Thats not right ,cause I just printed another wrapper for a reg. size book and it was only 2 dollars and something

has this happened to anyone else?

Lisa,

I've found that the weights in the PBS system aren't always right, so I use a postal scale and use that weight whenever I print wrappers.

On rare occasion, the weight for a book might be off. In the instructions provided in the Help Center doc "How to print the PBS wrapper" it says:

• Adjust the weight of the book in the spaces provided, if necessary. 
  • This will determine the postal class rate that prints out. It is especially important to be accurate here if you are using printed postage.  7 ounces and under will print as First Class; over 7 ounces will print as Media mail.
  • The weight you enter will be taken as the weight of the unwrapped book; the system will add a little for packaging materials.

If you've just printed a regular wrapper (e.g. not Printed Postage or PBS Delivery Confirmation), I believe you should be able to go back and reprint the wrapper, this time adjusting the weight. If you don't have a scale available for checking the book's actual weight, if you post the ISBN here we should be able to help track down a more accurate measurement online :)

Thanks !

You can't trus the weigh on PBS if you are going to use online postage or stamps. Today it told me an audiobook I was mailing was only 3oz when it was 9oz.

For me, it's a rare occasion when it's right. :-) I usually go to the post office.

I think for harlequins it can be a common slip of the fingers when entering. Scales often give weight in oz and the weight is right around 4 ounces for those, but when inputing into the system it needs to be converted to pounds. Someone can easil forget to convert and enter the 4.x as pounds thinking they are entering ounces.

I just recently had one that had the postage as 16 oz. It was actually 6 oz.

Thanks everyone ! glad to know its not just my account.

Thank God I have a digital postage scale at home, because the PBS postage is NEVER correct for me - I have to correct the weight on every single book I send out.  I've often wondered where in the world PBS gets the weight estimates.... Bizarro World?  LOLOL

Interesting.  I too have a scale and PBS estimates have always been correct.

I am the same as Hunter, I rarely find the weights off.

Are you guys that find them off often sending out weird books Most of what I send are common mass market, fiction hard cover or trade size. Are you guys sending out textbooks or coffee table books or older books that may have more manually entered data in the various databases? Most of the ones I've found wrong were clearly human error where the person inputing entered oz as pounds or were lazy and just entered something crazy in all the fields like 20inX20inX20in x 20lbs.

I find them off quite often. Especially when they are close to 7 oz, I find about half the ones that get printed Media Mail should have been First Class, and half the ones that get printed First Class should have been Media Mail.

I keep white stickers in my purse to paste on the label when it gets printed wrong, and then I just write the correct class on it when I mail.

I take mine to the PO and weigh them at the APC machine.

Hardcovers are also off quite often if they are close to 1 lb.  I always weigh them because often the book is really 15 oz, or 17 oz, and got printed with the incorrect postage amount.

If you mail mostly thin paperbacks, that are quite clearly under 7 oz, or paperbacks that are larger, and quite clearly over 7 oz  but under 16 oz.... you might not notice as much the small amounts of weight that the database is off by.

OK, I just had a PERFECT example happen to me.

A member just ordered a hardcover book from me.  I accepted the request and went to print the label.  The PBS automatic weight that showed up for the UNWRAPPED book was 2 lbs., 5 oz.  I weighed the book on my digital postage scale and the book, unwrapped and with the dustjacket, actually weighs 1 lb., 4 oz.!!!  The wrapped book weighs 1 lb. 7.4 oz.  That's how badly off the PBS weights are!  And that happens with every book request I get -- the weights are off by at least 0.5 lb. or more for every hardcover and off by several ounces for paperbacks - enough of a difference to skew the postage amounts upward in every case.

Here's a suggested explanation...

When I mail more than one book but only one has been ordered....as in a deal, or sending an additional book the requestor wanted...I will adjust the weight on the print-label page so that the whole package is covered by postage.  I wonder if the PBS memory bank remembers that higher weight the next time the book is weighed for postage?

Jackie

I have only run into weights being off in about 10% of the books I've mailed. That's why I too use a postage scale. I don;t want to spend money I don't have to spend.    Great point Jackie, I wonder if that's it???