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Standard shipping envelope issues

Hello everyone,

 

I sell a lot of trading cards on this platform. Many buyers request the standard shipping envelope through USPS to ship trading cards under $20 and under 3 Ounces in weight. In the past 6 weeks or so I have had multiple items marked as out for delivery, however buyers are reaching out saying that they didn't receive the item. Multiple missing mail and search requests for each item that was inquired about was sent to the USPS, which returned zero response. I mean how can ebay keep providing this service if the USPS is not doing final "delivered" scans? Once the buyer reaches out, I have no options but to refund them, espeically after not hearing back from the postal service. I was wondering if anyone else who uses this shipping option has been having these same issues?

 

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Standard shipping envelope issues

You can file insurance claims on those "lost" packages. Go here.

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Standard shipping envelope issues

First of all, it's not meant to replace a real tracking number.  All it's doing is providing access to the USPS informed visibility system which has been around for ever and is usually only offered to high volume mailings of regular first class envelopes.  There's services, such as lettertrack, that will charge you for the same access.  eBay's just providing it to you at cost.

 

Second.  It's not going to give you a full tracking and delivery history and it never will so you shouldn't expect it to.  That said, however, if things go fairly smoothly then eBay will give you credit for fast shipping which means an improvement in your metrics.  And, in most circumstances, you do have some insurance options for things that go missing.  It's  a huge improvement for sellers with "low value" cards who used to stick a forever stamp on an envelope and call it a day.

 

Personally, I think a lot of complaints about it are from sellers who decide to give it a try and then start watching every ES number without fully understanding how they work.  So once they see a dead number they start panicking.  That's what I did at first... things wouldn't get scanned so I assumed the worse.   But I've used it over 400 times since Thanksgiving and I've only ever heard from one buyer.  If you have buyers reaching out filing claims then, ultimately, you have to decide if your losses are such that you want to go back to charging for an actual tracking number.

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