Price a certified letter
quote_certified_letterUse this when the person asks what it costs to send a letter by certified mail, or is weighing sending it themselves against having it sent. Says what a USPS Certified Mail letter costs, before anything is prepared. Give the number of printed pages and the service, and it returns the exact all-in total the person would pay: printing, the envelope and the postage are included, and nothing is added at checkout. A one-page letter is $12.97 with USPS tracking, $15.97 with the Electronic Return Receipt, which is the default, $24.21 with the Evidence Pack, or $50.10 as a Deadline Notice. A person's first letter is $9.95 all in: one or two pages by Certified Mail with tracking, without the return receipt, one per account. There is no account to create, no subscription and no minimum. This tool is READ ONLY: it prepares nothing, stores nothing, mails nothing and charges nothing, so it is safe to call just to answer "what would that cost". Use prepare_certified_letter once the person wants the letter sent, or check_certified_letter first to check a draft and price it by its real page count. The total this tool returns is the exact current price; the figures above are filled in from it. U.S. destinations.
Tool call template
This tool declares no required parameters. Add optional parameters from the input schema as needed.
{
"id": 1,
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "tools/call",
"params": {
"arguments": {},
"name": "quote_certified_letter"
}
}Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| service | No | CERTIFIED is Certified Mail with USPS tracking. CERTIFIED_ERR adds the Electronic Return Receipt (the record of who signed, kept when USPS reports it back). CERTIFIED_EVIDENCE is CERTIFIED_ERR plus the Evidence Pack: a Certificate of Mailing and 7 years of retention. CERTIFIED_DEADLINE is CERTIFIED_EVIDENCE plus a same-day First-Class copy and an unclaimed-letter warning. Defaults to CERTIFIED_ERR, the same default prepare_certified_letter uses. | |
| page_count | No | Number of printed pages in the letter, 1 to 10, the most the printer accepts in one letter. Defaults to 1. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| total | Yes | The same total, formatted for a person, with a dollar sign and cents. | |
| mailed | Yes | Always false: this tool never mails. | |
| charged | Yes | Always false: this tool never charges. | |
| service | Yes | ||
| currency | Yes | ||
| promotion | No | Present when the first-letter promotion could lower this total for a person’s first letter. It is applied by the same rule on the review page and in authorize_certified_letter once the payer is known; total_cents is the standard price and is what to quote until then. | |
| page_count | Yes | ||
| total_cents | Yes | The whole price in cents. Nothing else is added at checkout. | |
| price_source | No | ||
| evidence_pack | No | ||
| minimum_order | No | ||
| account_required | No | ||
| service_fee_cents | No | The rest of the total: the Piloxa service fee, including the card cost. | |
| transaction_state | No | Always QUOTED: a price only, nothing exists yet. | |
| subscription_required | No | ||
| postage_and_print_cents | No | The part that goes to printing and USPS. | |
| includes_printing_envelope_and_postage | No |