USPS.com Click-N-Ship Bites The Dust

I have relied (and that might the operative word) on the postal service's click-n-ship service for shipping packages for ScopeRoller for some years now.  It isn't just that it is cheaper than UPS or FedEx; it was (until last night), considerably easier.  There was a single fixed price, depending on whether the flat rate box was going to the U.S., Canada, Europe, or Down Under.

Last night, I tried to use it to ship an order to France.  I told it to bill my PayPal account; it was declined.  What?  There's plenty of money there.  So then I tried a credit card.  Declined.  Then I switched to several different browsers, including Internet Explorer 8.  No different.

Then I searched a bit -- and found that lots of USPS customers are riproaring upset about this.  Apparently, to counteract various phishing schemes, USPS became a lot more demanding about matching up billing addresses to PayPal and credit card information -- but I checked.  I don't see any differences that could explain this.  I spent an hour on hold for USPS technical support, and never managed to talk to a person.  This is apparently a new problem that USPS has created, so I am not surprised that any given time there are problems thousands of upset customers online.

I could just go down to the post office and mail this -- I think -- but click-n-ship produces the needed customs documents, as well as being almost $8 cheaper than doing it at a retail location.  And they really need to get this fixed!

Arrggh.