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When you buy something online, it’s hard to predict how much you’ll pay for shipping. It could be a good deal … or it could be a multiple of the item itself. What merchants charge is often uncorrelated to the actual cost of shipping.

Recently, I ordered from Skratch Labs and was given four options:

The first was pretty reasonable. The others were bonkers. I took the ground shipping. When the item arrived, I measured (8x8x5 inches) and weighed (37oz) the box.

I checked the actual cost of shipping such a package from Colorado to NYC, comparing Skratch’s rates to both the rates I pay with Shippo and to retail rates on UPS.com and USPS.com:

While all rates are cheaper than full retail, they are not representative of what UPS charges volume shippers.

The USPS rate represents a 10% savings, but the UPS rates are, on average, 240% of what I would pay. I can’t imagine any customer agreeing to pay these rates.

Perhaps:

• their Shopify integration is calculating the wrong rates, or,
• they to renegotiate your rates their your UPS rep (who is ripping you off), or,
• they marking up shipping rates as a profit source (not a rgeat plan)

Skratch did not respond to my email feedback.

Cross-posted from HP support forum.

HP’s LaserJet Pro P1102w printer drivers (download) fail to install on macOS 12.0.1 or later. Attempting to install them displays the error:

This update requires macOS 12.0 or earlier.

Timeline

• macOS 12.0.1 was released on October 25, 2021.
• HP’s drivers (5.1) were were released on October 27, 2021.
• Previous thread (“Hp printer driver for Macos Monterey 12.0.1 not available“) October 11, 2021. Support agent @Kumar0307 failed to escalate this to engineering and falsely suggested the driver would work with 12.0.1; it does not.
• macOS 12.1 was released on December 13, 2021.
• As of December 29, 2021, HP has not released a fix.

The problem is due to the Distribution script in the installer. It looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<installer-gui-script minSpecVersion="1">
<options hostArchitectures="x86_64"/>
<title>SU_TITLE</title>
<script/>
<installation-check script="InstallationCheck()"/>
<license file="License.rtf"/>
<choices-outline>
<line choice="manual"/>
</choices-outline>
<choice id="manual" title="SU_TITLE">
<pkg-ref id="HewlettPackardPrinterDrivers" auth="Root" packageIdentifier="com.apple.pkg.HewlettPackardPrinterDrivers">#HewlettPackardPrinterDrivers.pkg</pkg-ref>
</choice>
<script>
function InstallationCheck(prefix) {
if (system.compareVersions(system.version.ProductVersion, '12.0') &gt; 0) {
my.result.message = system.localizedStringWithFormat('ERROR_25CBFE41C7', '12.0');
my.result.type = 'Fatal';
return false;
}
return true;
}
</script>
<pkg-ref id="HewlettPackardPrinterDrivers" installKBytes="933742" version="10.6.0.1.1.1602826228"/>
</installer-gui-script>

The script is checking for 12.0 instead of 13.0.

The workaround is described in a macrumors thread: run these commands in Terminal:

curl -o ~/Downloads/hpdrivers.dmg&nbsp;<a href="https://updates.cdn-apple.com/2020/macos/001-41745-20201210-DBC9B46B-88B2-4032-87D9-449AF1D20804/HewlettPackardPrinterDrivers.dmg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://updates.cdn-apple.com/2020/macos/001-41745-20201210-DBC9B46B-88B2-4032-87D9-449AF1D20804/Hew...</a>
hdiutil attach ~/Downloads/hpdrivers.dmg
pkgutil --expand /Volumes/HP_PrinterSupportManual/HewlettPackardPrinterDrivers.pkg ~/Downloads/hp-expand
hdiutil eject /Volumes/HP_PrinterSupportManual
sed -i '' 's/12.0/13.0/' ~/Downloads/hp-expand/Distribution
pkgutil --flatten ~/Downloads/hp-expand ~/Downloads/HP_Drivers_12.pkg
rm -R ~/Downloads/hp-expand

Then open the newly-created HP_Drivers_12.pkg and install it.