paypal: Am I way off base??

99goals

99goals

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Hi ,

this goes out to all the sellers on eBay. I just had a dispute on Ebay in which i sold a 30 dollar card to a guy who filed a dispute that the item was never received. i then get on a phone with a guy from paypal who told me that bec i did not send the item with a tracking number i am SOL.

So i proceed to tell the customer service rep that most of the cards i sell are in the 5 to 8 dollar range. Secure shipping with express post is $12 for large sizes and $8 for smaller sizes. Thus no one would ever in their right mind buy from me if the secure shipping costs are more than what the card is worth.

He then told me that I am a minority in this area and that most people use secure shipping methods on eBay AND he stated if people don;t pay for secure shipping then they don't understand the point of using eBay.

i am so frustrated with all of this.. Does anyone share the same pain?
 
That's why when you sell, no matter what the card cost or worth or its BV, add the delivery confirmation charge to protect your own behind. If they prefer not to pay that, you let them know they need to pay for insurance or you are not responsible for lost or damaged mail due to postal handling. I usually put that in my description on eBay. "Insurance is optional, but not responsible for lost or damaged mail due to postal handling" and mail their package from the counter to get a receipt.
 
Yep, thats what I do and I even provide a customs receipt. However Paypal does not accept a customs receipt as proof of delivery.. oh well.. I may have to get customers to physically email me that they accept the burden of regular mail and maybe that will protect me. Do you think that would work?
 
autobilia said:
That's why when you sell, no matter what the card cost or worth or its BV, add the delivery confirmation charge to protect your own behind. If they prefer not to pay that, you let them know they need to pay for insurance or you are not responsible for lost or damaged mail due to postal handling. I usually put that in my description on eBay. "Insurance is optional, but not responsible for lost or damaged mail due to postal handling" and mail their package from the counter to get a receipt.
Click to expand...

The only issue with that is the Canada Post does not provide a reasonably priced form of 'delivery confirmation'. The cheapest is a flat rate XPressPost envelope or Registered Mail, both of which run in the $15 range.

So, while Paypal is likely right in that the 'majority of sellers ship with delivery confirmation' that is only because the majority of their sellers are in the US, and have access to USPS delivery confirmation for a few cents. Any cross border transactions are cost prohibitive to get a delivery confirmation for. I think if they revised their statistics to look at a 'majority of Canadian sellers' there numbers would be very different.

But - Paypal doesn't really make these rules a secret. They are laid out quite clearly. Its up to every seller to set their threshold for the price of cards they are willing to ship without confirmation.
 
I do agree with you that we are ultimately responsible but its hard to find people who want the odds and ends to make up their sets. Hence why I joined Hobby Insider. I am surprised that it took me this long to find out about it. I am likely only going to be posting high end items on ebay and then put my odds and ends on this site.

Well this all could go up in smoke with the new proposed parcel rules coming out of Canada post. It seems like they are making it harder and harder for guys like who do this for fun and serve the hobby community.

Thanks for your thoughts tho, this is exactly the sort of stuff i wanted to hear.
 
Well this all could go up in smoke with the new proposed parcel rules coming out of Canada post. It seems like they are making it harder and harder for guys like who do this for fun and serve the hobby community.

What new parcel laws from Canada Post
 
Putting a notice in your listing about not being responsible for lost and uninsured mail makes no difference to PayPal. You have a confirmation or you have no case.
 
hmmm well i guess that i will have to do the thing i did not want to do then. I am going to start charging for secured mail regardless. Oh well...
 
I tried charging enough to cover for express post and most of my cards sold for about %50 of what the going ebay rate was.

It is a lose-lose situation.
 
As mentioned, you need to decide the dollar amount threshhold at which you are willing to gamble without delivery confirmation. If you are going to ask even people buying ten cent cards to pay $15 for tracking, you'll never sell any via ebay.

Most people draw the line at $30 or $40: anything over those amounts that is being paid via PayPal require delivery confirmation at a cost of $xx.xx and anything under those amounts costs $x.xx and they're willing to risk the chance that the card may not arrive and they leave themselves susceptible to a chargeback.
 
Well i am just getting to the point where I may not sell on eBay anymore. It's killed the fun of collecting and I find it so hard to build up a solid customer base after the last 4 years of trying. I love the hobby too much to quit it altogether.
 
Selling and shipping without tracking is hit or miss. PP sides with the buyer even though they make their money from the seller (stupid YES). Situations like these have made me sell more items on trade sites and I have stopped selling small dollar items on ebay. I usually charge enough shipping to cover expresspost shipping which I make sure to mention in the shipping info. Its way too risky now to ship without it, it has to be hurting ebay sales.
 
ah a fellow newfoundlander. I was born in Carbonear. Anyways, i am going to sell more off this site than ebay for now. Ebay has pissed me off way too much these days. They also charge a lot nowadays too.

I have a silver donruss preferred dan cleary rookie card if you are interested.

By the way, there is a ryan clowe priority signings on ebay from this years expo. Its in CDN funds too.. take a sneak peek at it.
 
I always send out an invoice that includes the cost of insured shipping. I have had 2 Item not received disputes filed against me and have not lost on either one of them. When I respond to the dispute I always state that Insured shipping was offered but the buyer chose to use regular mail. Both times the buyer ended the dispute. May be just good luck on my part.
 

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