Can I sell items without a tracking number on ebay?

[brunolauri]

Hey there! I was wondering if I can sell & ship items without giving ebay a tracking number? I was just wondering since I was thinking of starting selling items on ebay.

[richard1rst]

Can you - Yes.

SHOULD YOU - ABSOLUTELY NOT !

Why do you want to skip the tracking number?

Without a tracking number your buyers can claim they never received the item and you are on the hook for a refund.

Rethink your position.

[brunolauri]

In Finland it costs 40€ to ship items to America and other countries outside Finland. That's why. Any solutions?

Thanks for your time!

[luxe_auto_parts · Accepted solution]

Agreed with the previous commenter. You CAN sell your stuff, but SHOULD you? I can say for sure eBay is not the right place for selling a small amount/batch of a product. The PayPal fees are quite high and will "eat" a big piece of your profit.

It's OK to sell w/o tracking number a small items, such as batteries, post cards, CD's and etc. You can use a Letter to send them to buyers and it will be much more cheaper than use the regular postal services with a tracking number.

You won't be protected if you will sell your items and won't provide a tracking numbers. Buyers may start opening the "didn't receive an item" cases and you will probably be charged with the full amount: the item and the shipping price. It's hard to become a TOP Rated Seller if you don't provide a tracking numbers. Every each one of delivered items will affect on your Seller statistics and will either increase or decrease it.

Anyway, I wish you good luck in your business. Think wisely, and once you decided to become a seller just start selling and be successful.

[brunolauri]

Okay! Thanks for your guys amazing help! I will begin my small business by just shipping items without tracking and once I may become more poular, I will start using tracking numbers.

Hoping to see a bright future in my business.

Once again, thanks a lot for your help guys!

Regrads,

Bruno

[arun7500]

A couple years back, while on Holiday we used TNT to ship parcels back to Thailand. Much cheaper than the Fin Post, more than half. In your case though, tracking is a necessity, you will avoid unnecessary INR's coming your way, but even with tracking it doesn't protect you against a SNAD especially if you're shipping expensive or heavy items. If you are new to this game you should definitely do some research. Just google ' ebay scams ' and sort through the millions of hits you're going to get. Ebay makes it very easy for scammers to succeed here and many times just using ebay's own rules, which you will soon find out are not in your favor.

[aproudparent2010]

You can but then you have no proof of delivery and buyers can open INR cases and get all their money back.


Can you? YES
Should you? NO

[aproudparent2010]

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@brunolauri wrote:

Okay! Thanks for your guys amazing help! I will begin my small business by just shipping items without tracking and once I may become more poular, I will start using tracking numbers.

Hoping to see a bright future in my business.

Once again, thanks a lot for your help guys!

Regrads,

Bruno

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Let us know how that goes when buyers start opening cases aaginst you and you get yourself kicked off eBay forever.

[lloydsteventaylor]

ebay best practice is to ship everything with tracking. but ebay uses a one size fits all to everything it does. many sellers of small or very low priced items ship in an envelope with no tracking and run very successful businesses here. what are you going to sell? what is the selling price? if your selling price is very low you may want to consider having 2 ebay selling accounts, one with tracking for more expensive items and one with no tracking for those low priced items.  

[muttlymob]

Let us know how that goes when buyers start opening cases aaginst you and you get yourself kicked off eBay forever.

This one size fits all paranoia doesn't work well as a business strategy.

Some categories are a danger without tracking, others are not.

I have sold thousands of postcards, photos, other small paper items without tracking for years.  Can count the Item Not Received claims on one hand.  With at least one finger left over.

It is up to every seller to evaluate the TRUE risk in his category and price range.  Not to jump on the bandwagon that anything mailed without tracking will result in automatic INR claim.

[arun7500]

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@muttlymob wrote:

Let us know how that goes when buyers start opening cases aaginst you and you get yourself kicked off eBay forever.

This one size fits all paranoia doesn't work well as a business strategy.

Some categories are a danger without tracking, others are not.

I have sold thousands of postcards, photos, other small paper items without tracking for years.  Can count the Item Not Received claims on one hand.  With at least one finger left over.

It is up to every seller to evaluate the TRUE risk in his category and price range.  Not to jump on the bandwagon that anything mailed without tracking will result in automatic INR claim.

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' True Risk ? ' OP started out mentioning shipping from Finland for his stuff is 40 euro (USD 47.65).

[green-night]

' True Risk ? ' OP started out mentioning shipping from Finland for his stuff is 40 euro (USD 47.65).

Maybe the OP meant that it would cost 40 euro with tracking.   If they could send whatever they are selling letter mail w/o tracking it wouldn't cost nearly that much. 

[brunolauri]

Exactly, shipping with tracking is about 40€. So yeah. Welcome to Finland.

[brunolauri]

Could you please read all my replies before commenting? That would be awesome!

[aproudparent2010]

I did read all replies but hey I'm sure people  who read these boards like knowing if they buy from you that you won't use tracking.

This is a posting ID ...my selling ID has over 25,000 positive feedbacks