Non-Machinable Letter Fee
If anyone is noticing that Etsy has suddenly started adding a non-machinable letter fee to your postage settings that haven't changed...you're not alone. This is apparently something new that Etsy is rolling out...except that they're doing it incorrectly. It hasn't hit all shops yet (one of mine has this problem, the other one doesn't).
The problem is the "width" measurement. Anything larger than 4.25 will incorrectly trigger the non-machinable letter fee. Specifically, they're misunderstanding this measurement in the USPS guidelines for non-machinable surcharge:
"It is more than 4-1/4 inches high or more than 6 inches long and is less than 0.009 inch thick." They stopped at 4.25 inches without applying the "less than .009 inch thick" measurement.
These are the USPS guidelines for non-machinable:
https://pe.usps.com/text/qsg300/q201.htm
If your letter qualifies as non-machinable according to those guidelines, just put 4.25 inches for the width. It won't mess anything up in regard to USPS...because they don't use those measurements other than to assess how much postage is required based on the size. Whether you have 7x5 or 6x4...the postage is the same either way, so it doesn't matter.