How many days?

[iamalwaysright]

How many days of tracking inactivity do you wait for until you personally deem a domestic package as lost?

[packratville]

Yours looks similar to mine... my buyer gave me a negative yesterday because it hadn't arrived (I shipped the next day), but thankfully eBay removed it. I don't know what's going on because yesterday there weren't that many "In Transit to Next Facility...." messages showing. It showed the Memphis distribution information, but I think that date was yesterday or the day before. Very strange.

[mantle1951]

I would tell him to open an INR don't send a replacement you could lose both items and your mula.

[johnrj1226]

Doesn't make a bit of difference what eBay selling community thinks what  its - it  is what the carrier that the seller selected does and more importantly the buyer does.  The  seller  is in the hot seat and  how  they handle  the issue make all the  difference - hint:  start  by by showing  some empathy (a key skill of "a for sure" good sales person) for the buyer who  has  fully paid for the item &  it ain't  been delivered by the original eBay estimated deliver time.

[valkseller]

My post office supervisor gave me an explanation of how the tracking system works. 

Those scans that show "In Transit to the next facility, arriving late", are automated messages.  No one scanned a package that generated that.  Notice they all show 12:00 AM; they are automated after 24 hours of actual inactivity.  So, in reality those tracking entries mean nothing.  I think it's a ploy USPS started within the last 10 years to make consumers think their package is moving.  If a package is "in transit" it must be in a truck and in a large bin.  No one climbed around inside a truck to scan all the packages at 12:00 AM every day.

The second part of the explanation given by my USPS supervisor is that most intermediate scans at distribution and sort facilities are not actual scans of a package.  They are scans of the bar code on a master-bin or sub-master-bin that your package was loaded in when it was accepted or at the first distribution center.  An actual scan of the package may not take place again until the bin that it is supposed to be in gets unloaded at its destination facility.

Several things can go wrong. 

At this time of year, sub-master bins are sitting in a queue waiting to be unloaded or processed to another bin. Or, by error, a package may not have actually got in the bin that it was supposed to be in.  This has happened to some of mine.   I had one that got 5 days of 'in transit arriving late' after the tracking showed it had arrived at the final destination sort facility.  Suddenly it showed up at a sort facility on the opposite side of the country.  The explanation I got was that the package never got to the destination sort facility.  The bin it was supposed to be in got there, but my package went in the wrong bin.  Sort and distribution facilities are automated, scanners and conveyor systems, probably overloaded at this time of year and packages get pushed off into the wrong bin.

I've been selling on eBay for over 20 years and never had a lost package.  Worst case was a month late, but that was in the midst of Covid. 

[valkseller]

A little off topic, but there is a complete disconnect between USPS and eBay when it comes to expected delivery dates.

Ebay, in some form has partnered with USPS and other carriers.  You can buy and print your shipping labels through the ebay platform and even get a discount from ebay.  Ebay generates the expected delivery date based on what is passed to them by USPS when the label is printed.  In a dispute for a late delivery, ebay holds the seller responsible as if the expected delivery date is a guarantee.

Here's the disconnect.  USPS First Class, Ground, Ground Advantage, Priority gives you an expected delivery window, but USPS explicitly tells you there is NO GUARANTEE.  You don't get your money back even if the package is completely lost unless it was insured.  Even if it arrives a month late you don't get a refund.  Secondly, 100% of my USPS shipments since Thanksgiving by Priority mail have been significantly late when the maximum expected time is 2, 3, or 4 days.  If it was measured, USPS on time delivery performance in December has been 0%.   We go through this every year.  All USPS has to do is add up to 5 days to the expected delivery windows starting at Thanksgiving and revert back after Christmas.  USPS has published the last day to ship by Priority is December 19th.  Notice they don't tell you about the NO GUARANTEE.  I asked my postal worker if a particular package would arrive in the 3 days quoted when I printed the label.  He laughed at me.

Maybe some of you remember, a few years ago, USPS Ground delivery performance was so bad that ebay stopped making that available as a shipping option.