High lost rates for unit / townhouse addresses?

[cocazxlzxl]

Hi guys, I have some buyers claimed none received item after 2-3 weeks of shippment.  As the package sent as large letter, thus can not be tracked. And when I checked their addresses, most of the time is unit / townhouse address, for example 6/123 Bell St. 

Any suggestion to avoid this?

[i-once-was-bump]

The only way I can think of is to register mail all such addresses.

There really isn't a perfect security option for letterboxes in blocks of units because the post person has to be able to deliver the mail so the boxes are outside the secure part of the building.

[imastawka]

My daughter gets everyone's mail at some time or another.

She's in unit # 1 and the postie gets lazy I think

[clarry100]

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@cocazxlzxl wrote:

And when I checked their addresses, most of the time is unit / townhouse address, for example 6/123 Bell St. 

Any suggestion to avoid this?

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We were finding the same thing.

So what we do now is to edit the address a bit and its seems to have improved markedly.

To use your example I would change this one to... Note the extra spaces

U6 / 123 Bell St.

Just makes it that little bit more readable to the postie.

[yeoldecoinco]

By far the largest number of INR cases I get for untracked items are to units or townhouses, it is always a worry.

Writing Unit 6 / 123 Bell St, seems to help rather than just 6/123

Take photo of untracked item in packet, preferably by getting the PO to stamp it, then hand it back to you for a minute or two, whilst you whip out your mobile phone or camera and take a picture.

Whilst this will not necessarily help in an INR case, it is proof to the buyer that you posted it, which might help them suddenly find it..

[*tippy*toes*]

If I'm sending to a unit, whether it's a parcel or large letter I'll address it like this:

Joe Bloggs

Unit 6

123 Bell Street

Anytown State 9999

If I do write it as 6/123 I make the slash VERY long, so there is no mistaking it. Even more so if the address is something like 1/6 where the street might have a number 6 and a number 116.

Normally I'll do it as in the first example as there is no mistaking  that it's going to a unit at number 123.

[saarzi]

When i first started selling on Ebay, I had the same problem with units / apartments. MUCH higher "lost" rate than other addresses.  I know most of the capital ciites pretty well, and the lost rate gets even worse when its units in a lower socio-economic part of town. Not sure if its theft by neighbours, or the buyers trying to scam more often, or even lazier posties, or a combination of all lol

Two things I started to do basically stopped my parcels being lost altogether -

 1. I always send my letters as registered post to apartments, and the postie will usually leave a card and the letter will be waiting at the post office for them to sign for it. Much, much safer.  That stops neighbour theft / lazy postie syndrome.

2. I put a note in any listings that might appeal to certain areas or groups of society that the item is being sent registered post and they will have to sign for it as proof of delivery. That stops buyers who might be tempted to buy because they intend to claim item not received.

Those two things worked wonders.

Also, as the others said, make the address obvious... I usually put it on another line e.g -

Unit 13

345 Blahblah St

[goodthingsforsalerobert]

mail also gets stolen from boxes outside boundry fences

maybe need extra for signing

i sent a lot of large and small letter size items

i make decisions on extra for signing depending on where sending to

eg. inner city units ...sign for

way out country addresses

not easy thing to do but it is working for me