I have had a postage meter for several years. It has always been with the same vendor.

A postage meter performs a fairly simple function. Fill it with postage; it sits until you put something on the scale. Then, it prints postage. Every few months, you connect to update and refill the postage.

Things change. Pitney Bowes is upgrading everyone to a new type of meter. They do not make it easy. First, you must create an account on their website. Then, for annoyance, they email a link to activate your account.

It is important to annoy people.

The link went to a page saying that the site was undergoing maintenance. Evidently, this was too complicated for their techs. After wasting considerable time with clueless overseas support, I had their website send me a new link.

And, if that had been the only problem, I might still be a Pitney Bowes customer.

The touch screen on the meter is very bad; it took a good 10 minutes to get the email and password into the meter. I am sure they saved a few nickels on the cost of that cheap screen. I can offer suggestions as to where they could put those nickels.

For years, meters have been refilled over the wire. The new meter does not handle the pennies that came out of the old meter. Oops.

Like I said, meters sit on shelves and wait to print postage. Evidently, that is boring. The new meter wants to surf the web while it waits. This is obviously not a part of metering mail.

The shelf lacks an internet connection. Bored postage meters get huffy, so the new one refuses to print postage with which it was filled at startup. And it took support just a few hours to identify this problem, in their unconvincing simulation of English.

Need another challenge? Call their sales line. Try to get past the snippy gal that answers. Or, wait for a callback from any department at all.

The replacement meter from the new company costs less per month, and neither they nor the mafia demand insurance for an extra $108 a year. The ink cartridges are said to last longer.

I do not know what Pitney Bowes is thinking — but if they wait for useful support or callbacks, they will have plenty of time to think about it!

— Andrews is a DeLand-area attorney and a longtime government critic. For purposes of the column, he finds it convenient that there is so much government to criticize.