The reasoning you provided ("...smaller than A4 to avoid...") is a little confusing though, since the page itself still measures in at exactly 8.5 by 11. The page's bottom left hand corner is just a little higher then the default 0,0 origin... and equally offset on the top left corner, so if it were a matter of trying to compensate for the printer's page information, then it's doing a poor job since the space it compensates for on the lower bit would end up as an overprint on the upper portion. (Am I making any sense? I need more sleep...)
Regardles, the work-around seems to be a good fix for the moment, and again I thank you. If you find out anything else, please lemme know.