FAQs
Find answers to frequently asked questions Lob's offerings and services
Billing & Payment
How do I add/edit payment for my Lob subscription?
To add or edit a payment method to your account, you can log in to your Lob Dashboard and go to the Billing tab (left navigation) enter or add your payment information:
Click on “Payments”
Verify your email address (if you haven’t done so already)
Select which payment method you would like to add or edit (ACH or credit card)
Finish following the indicated steps for your payment of choice
*In the future, if you need to change your ACH account, contact support@lob.com
How do I request a refund or credit?
Lob does not refund for production or service related issues. However, we do support issuing credits that are redeemable in the following billing cycle.
To receive a credit, you must submit a claim by opening a support ticket with Lob through support@lob.com or using our messaging widget in the bottom right corner of your Lob Dashboard. To be eligible, the credit request must be received by Lob Support by the end of the next calendar month after which the incident occurred and must include:
The words "SLA Credit Request" in the subject line;
The dates and times of the incident occurred and the mailpiece IDs that were impacted and how
The affected Lob APIs
Your account’s logs that document the errors and corroborate your claimed outage or production issue (any confidential or sensitive information in these logs should be removed or replaced with asterisks).
Your failure to provide the request logs and other information as required above will disqualify you from receiving a Service or Production Credit. Our customers must understand and agree that Service Credits are its sole and exclusive remedy for any breach of SLA by Lob.
Credits and refunds are exclusively up to Lob’s discretion to accept or deny the processing of a refund or credit depending on the circumstances. If you would like to know if your production or service issue qualifies for a credit, contact support@lob.com.
How long do micro deposits take to show in my account?
To use checks, setting up and verifying a bank account for check origination is a required step. Typically, micro-deposits take between 2 and 3 business days to hit your bank account. If you still have not received the micro-deposits after this timeframe, we recommend removing the bank account and then re-adding it. This will trigger a new set of micro-deposits which you can use to verify the account. As we do not control or hold these micro-deposits, if it takes longer for the micro-deposits to show up, it is fully up to your bank's discretion. As a security measure, we are not able to reissue micro-deposits for accounts once they are originally issued.
Account Settings
What happens if I reach a feature limit or usage limit in my subscription?
If you reach a feature limit (such as user seats, address book entries, webhooks, HTML templates, etc.) within your subscription and are looking to access it, we encourage you to upgrade to a higher edition subscription. You can do this from the Billing > Editions tab in the Lob dashboard. If you need help on which subscription may work best for you, please reach out to support@lob.com so we can help recommend one that suits your needs.
If you reach a mailpiece usage limit in a given month, Lob will not prevent the mailpieces from being mailed out as we do not intend to disrupt your mailing operations. Lob will, however, reach out to get you onto the subscription best suited for your mailing needs. Lob also reserves the right to apply the corresponding subscription pricing that corresponds to your usage in the month you exceeded your mailing limit.
How long does Lob keep API logs for my account?
We retain API logs for 30 days (from the time of creation) as they are intended for simple, real-time debugging. After 30 days, you (or Lob) will not be able to access the mailpiece events or any related logs.
Print & Mail
Does the mailpiece price include postage and shipping costs?
It does! All mailpieces sent through Lob will be charged at market-leading prices. These prices include the cost of printing and the postage needed for your mailpiece to reach its destination successfully. You can find an overview of pricing on our website, and a detailed pricing page here. Keep in mind, that letters over 6 pages single-sided and 12 pages double-sided will incur an extra postage flat fee in addition to the add-on fee for each additional page.
How does Lob mailpiece tracking work?
Lob tracks your mailpieces throughout as it travels to their destination. There are a couple of things to keep in mind:
Lob tracks the mailed event and scan events. Both of these, while similar, are different. It’s important to know the difference between them both (for more, see below)
All events are subject to USPS accurately scanning the mailpiece as it travels to its destination. Lob does not have any control over the accuracy of scans, nor can Lob go back and reconcile scan events as it is purely a USPS-owned process
Metered mail can be a cause of not receiving any mailed events or tracking events, so it’s important to know what metered mail is and how it can impact your mailpiece as it travels to its destination
Note that any mailpieces sent in the Test Environment will not receive mailed, scan events, or tracking numbers
How can I get notified of mailed and scan events?
Real-time progress of mail pieces can be accessed through our webhooks feature, an easy way to get notifications on events happening asynchronously on Lob's side. Once webhooks are successfully set up on the dashboard, Lob will "push" you notifications when mail pieces are created, when they receive USPS scans such as "In Local Area" or "Processed for Delivery", or any other event you subscribe to.
Enterprise edition customers can also access return envelope tracking for USPS Courtesy Reply Mail (for letters only). Once the returned mailpiece enters the mailstream, the customer can start receiving notifications to tracking events via our webhooks. Click here to learn more.
See our webhooks integration guide for more details on how to integrate. The full list of event types available for subscription can be found here.
I’ve hit my maximum number of mailpieces. What now?
If you exceed your monthly mailings limit in a month, Lob will not prevent the mailpieces from being mailed out as we do not intend to disrupt your mailing operations. Lob will, however, reach out to get you onto the edition best suited for your mailing needs.
Lob also reserves the right to apply the corresponding edition pricing that corresponds to your usage in the month you exceeded your mailing limit or may suspend your Lob account if you repeatedly exceed your maximum monthly mailings.
What are these smudges on my postcards and/or self-mailers?
This is an industry-wide issue that has been extensively researched by our Production team. We've found that the USPS's high speed sorting machines are what typically cause these scuff marks. If postcards or self-mailers get exposed to the belts for a millisecond longer than they're supposed to, they're at the risk of getting abrasions.
This is not an isolated incident for our printer or for our mailers. Below links are a few articles that further explain the issue with examples of how these would look like.
We are unfortunately unable to provide a refund or credits for these smudge marks.
Address Verification
What are some address verification use cases?
Some customers love to use our address verification API to ensure addresses are accurate, deliverable and USPS standardized. Others love to use it for front-end autocompletion and to practice good data hygiene to prevent downstream bottlenecks. The possibilities are endless!
How often does Lob update their Address Verification API?
It depends! For US verifications, our API updates on the 15th of every month, in accordance with USPS’s update schedule. For international verifications, our API updates in accordance with that specific country’s update schedule. For the update schedule by country, check out our Global Address Coverage page.
Why are my verified addresses returning in capital letters?
By default Lob returns addresses in uppercase, to adhere with USPS' preference. If you prefer proper case you can configure this by changing the [case] to "proper." Changing the case is only available to users sending in API requests programmatically. For more information, check our docs.
How do I keep track of the amount of verifications I’ve done?
If you want to check how many verifications you completed in a given timeframe, there are two ways to get this done:
First Method (General Overview)
Look at the Overview tab once you sign in to your Lob Dashboard and hover over the chart below the “API REQUESTS (BY CREATION DATE)” section. If you want to customize the time frame, then select a Start and End date, and hover over the chart for date or month-specific verification information.
Second Method (Includes current month per-piece pricing)
Log in to your Lob Dashboard and click on Billing in the left navigation menu.
Click on “Editions”
Select the product you’d like to review usage for
You should be able to see your usage settings under the “Current Month Usage”
Why is my address undeliverable?
There are various reasons an address can be deemed undeliverable, roughly grouped into four buckets below.
ZIP Code Types -
components[zip_code_type]Record Types -
components[record_type]Carrier Route Types -
components[carrier_route_type]DPV Footnotes -
deliverability_analysis[dpv_footnotes]
The full list of detailed definitions for various fields in the US Verification object can be found in our API docs.
Why did my address verification fail when Google Maps was able to successfully find it?
Our API focuses on whether or not addresses are valid delivery points for receiving mail. Google Maps focuses on locality and walking/driving directions, and therefore should not be relied on for verifying the validity of a mailing address. An address that can be located on a map is not necessarily an officially recognized address by the USPS.
Troubleshooting
Why is the content of my mail missing?
If you are receiving a blank PDF when trying to render content, but the content of the link is not blank, it may be that the link was not performant. In order to avoid such issues, we recommend using a performant service, such as Amazon S3, to host the content. In order for this content to be visible, ensure that the link is set to public viewing, and not private, as this is one of the common reasons why content may appear as missing or blank in your creative.
Why does my design render differently with Lob than it does with my design tool?
This difference is likely due to variations found in the rendering engine of your design tool vs. web-based browser, which seemingly results in slight deviations:
Design tools and web browsers are different mediums with different font-rendering engines. Put simply, design tools do not render based on CSS and HTML, as they are not web browsers. Different browsers (e.g., Safari vs. Chrome browsers) will show variations in rendering as well.
Points, for measuring typeface, is not a precise measurement. Point size (or ‘pt’) refers to the bounding box of the letter — not the letter itself. Differences in font files and rendering engines may also add to the rendering discrepancy.
The rendered image can also vary based on the DPI (Dots per Inch: a measure of the resolution of a printed document or digital scan) and zoom settings of your design tool vs. your web browser.
For example, if you create a PDF in Adobe InDesign, that tool’s rendering engine will define “11pt” font differently than what Lob’s web-based rendering engine defines “11pt” to be. Points, for measuring typeface, is not a precise measurement. In metal type, point size refers to the height of the metal body on which a typeface’s character is cast. In digital typefaces, the metal body is replaced by an invisible box known as the em square. Each character fits inside that em square or em box. The em size of a font is equal to its point size. The point size is also used to measure leading (line-height), line length and other elements, apart from font size.
Given the point size system is not based on a universal standard, any differences that exist are likely due to rendering engines. It is best practice to review requests in your Test Environment, prior to requesting them in the Live environment.
To ensure your mailpieces print as expected we also recommend reviewing our Creative Formatting guidelines here.
What should I do if my mail piece does not receive a tracking event?
If your mail piece doesn’t have a tracking event, first check to see how much time has elapsed between your mail piece Send Date and the current date. Typically, it’ll take 3 business days (for First Class Mail), or 4-5 business days (for Standard Class Mail) from the time of your Send Date for USPS tracking events to appear.
If more than 5 business days have elapsed since your Send Date and you don’t have any tracking events, send an email to support@lob.com. Our team will be able to confirm whether the mail piece has been mailed.
*Note: If it has been more than 30 days, Lob will not have access to the API logs which track mailpiece tracking events, but you should be able to see the date when the mail piece was scanned by clicking on 'View details' in your dashboard.
The data in my mail analytics dashboard doesn't seem right, what can I do?
Our Mail Analytics feature, accessed through the Lob Dashboard, allows you to analyze the status and deliverability of your mail on an aggregate basis. This feature gives you full visibility into where the mail you've sent, at any given time period, sits in the mail stream and allows you to narrow down the tracking data by certain filters to view a full deliverability report.
Tracking Events: If you notice that the tracking events on your mail analytics dashboard are missing or not up to date, it is because USPS didn't scan the mailpieces. However, note that if USPS doesn't scan the mailpiece in the first place, then there is no way for Lob, to recover the tracking events to display on the dashboard as we receive this tracking information from USPS.
No Mailed Event: It could be that these mail pieces were sent out as metered mail by USPS, which makes it unmeasurable in our system even though the mailpiece is en route to its destination.
Ingestion Issue: Delay in receiving Tracking events data from USPS cause the tracking events data to not be reflected on the mail analytics dashboard. In these cases, once we receive the data from USPS we will backfill these events.
Certified Letters: You are not able to see certified mailings because we don’t accommodate the tracking events for certified mail within our system so you are not able to see them in the analytics dashboard. In order to see the current status of the letter, you would have to click on the USPS Tracking Number that USPS provides. Only mails that are sent through First Class or Standard class mail will be displayed on the Dashboard.
Note: The Analytics tab is only accessible to those on the Enterprise plan. If you would like to gain access by upgrading to an Enterprise plan, contact support@lob.com to get connected to our Sales team.
What happens when I reach a feature limit for my Lob subscription?
For all features, excluding the monthly mailings limit, Lob will prevent you from completing any action that would cause you to exceed your subscription’s feature limit and will throw an error message, notifying you that you’ve hit a limit. If you wish to complete the action, you will need to upgrade to the subscription that includes the feature you desire.
If you exceed your monthly mailings limit, Lob will not prevent the mailpieces from being mailed out, as we do not intend to disrupt your business operations. Lob will, however, reach out to assist you with migrating to a subscription that best suits your mailing needs. Additionally, Lob reserves the right to apply the subscription pricing that corresponds with your usage for the month in which you exceeded your mailing limit.
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