We have a Pitney Bowes postage machine (DM525) that stamps postage on envelopes. The machine connects to PB (or the USPS - I don't know) and downloads postage rate updates (I believe) and allows us to purchase postage. It's been a workhorse for us for 10+ years and is still going strong. In years past PB has tried to get us to buy a new machine, claiming the dreaded "end of support." We go years and years without needing support, if ever.

I'm in a back-and-forth with a PB sales rep now trying to get to the truth of if we really have to replace the machine, as he claims a deadline of Jan. 1 for being able to purchase postage and get required updates. I'm skeptical, as I've seen the false claim "you must replace the machine/software agreement before this date!" from salespeople in the past.

Anyone know if you can get updates and postage pretty much indefinitely on a postage machine, or have any other specific help other than to press the salesperson for an explicit statement of fact?

The one in our office is only about 3 years old, but we haven't received any 'end of life' messages yet.
We have been offered upgrades, but haven't taken them up on it yet.

Ours is a DM200L

I ditched ours years ago. I figured up how much ink costs, the meter rental, the costs of the tape used in the machine etc and figured out it was a loosing proposition since our outgoing mailings had dropped off considerably.
We got a digital scale and use regular stamps.

A customer of mine was recently "upgraded" to a new PB meter. This was because PB is dropping support for dial-up postage purchases in favor of over-the-Internet updates. You might think this means that people can set up mailings from their network-connected desktops, but PB remains firmly mired in the twentieth century. They are very unhappy with PB, and considering going to stamps.com instead, can't say I blame them.

there are several online services like stamps.com that allow you to print your own postage with no need for a dedicated machine.

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Originally posted by zoom6zoom:
there are several online services like stamps.com that allow you to print your own postage with no need for a dedicated machine.

We have large enough numbers of envelopes that people having to wet and stick, or peel and stick postage would be a problem. The nice thing about our machine is that it processes a stack of envelopes - weigh, seal, and print postage right on the envelope - very quickly.

I think we're going to need a similarly capable machine going forward if we're forced to buy/lease a new one, which may remove the advantage of the online, print your own stamps, services...?

quote:

We have large enough numbers of envelopes that people having to wet and stick, or peel and stick postage would be a problem. The nice thing about our machine is that it processes a stack of envelopes - weigh, seal, and print postage right on the envelope - very quickly.

Just curious. What is the nature of your business, if you do not mind sharing.

after a detailed cost benefit study I got rid of the postage machine many years ago. You can weigh and stamp a ton of mail for what the postage machine actually costs. Unless you are a junk mailer, moving to emailed billing and statements or even faxed could prove a smart descision and a real money saver.

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Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Just curious. What is the nature of your business, if you do not mind sharing.

B2B sales mostly, in the building industry. AR mailing's aren't bad as we are moving as many customers as possible to email statements instead of paper. Most of what we mail are checks to vendors, which at it's peak can be between 50 and 100 envelopes, on Thursdays.

Thanks for letting me know, I knew it had to be a volume mailing. Years ago I worked in the mailing and shipping room of a newspaper that printed and shipped the Christian Science Monitor for half of the United States. Zip code labels were affixed to every paper, sorted and then thrown in the proper mailbag to be sent by train that night. My job was to throw the bundles in the proper canvas bag which were two to a cart.

I now have a collar and tie job as they say, running my own small business.

Do you dial in for updates? If they're getting rid of their dial up modems you might be SOL.

I have a neopost machine that uses a dial up modem for updates. The machine thinks it's networked in and tries to auto update but can't connect.

I don't think there's much difference between neopost/hasler and pb especially on the lower end machines. My volume is probably similar to yours.