Held at Post Office shipping notification

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
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Topic summary

A mealworm farm owner ships live insects via USPS Priority with “Hold for Pickup” stickers. The main issue: when packages arrive and are marked as “Available for Pickup” or “Held at Post Office, at Customer Request,” neither Shopify nor Shippo (their shipping label generator) recognizes these statuses to trigger customer notifications.

Current problem:

  • Customers don’t receive alerts when packages are ready for pickup
  • Directing customers to check USPS directly creates unwanted friction

Seeking solutions for:

  • Alternative shipping software that recognizes these USPS statuses and sends automated email notifications
  • Whether these statuses are accessible via USPS API for external software integration
  • Potential workarounds within Shopify itself

The discussion remains open with no responses yet. The business owner is willing to switch from Shippo if a better solution exists.

Summarized with AI on November 2. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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I run a small business mealworm farm, I ship live insects via USPS Priority. I put a Hold for Pickup sticker on the package, most PO’s honor that and hold it. I have a question I want to tackle to make my customer’s experience better:

  1. Most of the time, the package is marked as either “Available for Pickup” or “Held at Post Office, at Customer Request”. I use Shopify for my website, and Shippo as my shipping label generator, and neither of these platforms uses/accepts those two statuses to send a notification to the customer.

This results in the customer not knowing their package is available to pickup. I have tried directing customers to use the USPS website, but people want less friction. Ideally I can figure out a way to trigger an email notification using those two statuses.

Is there any shipping software that uses those statuses and would send email notifications? I’m willing to move away from Shippo for this.

Is it possible for these statuses to be used by external software? I wonder if that status is available via the usps api, or if it’s not possible at all?

Or is there a way to handle this within Shopify?

Thank you for any info, I’m stuck at the moment, trying to find a solution.