topic Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take? in Selling

Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

egyptian-shop — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 11:13:16 GMT

Hi,

I had an item I sent as a large letter returned today. I can't find a record of the buyer or the item sold and have searched my invoices back to April. Nothing in my sold items for the last 60 days.

Just wondering how long it usually takes the post office to return letters to sender, its a legitimate address not too far from where I live.

Thanks,

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

harley_babes_hoard — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 11:39:23 GMT

does the envelope not have a date stamp when you sent it.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

kopenhagen5 — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 11:54:54 GMT

Every seller should keep a sales record in a book. Especially as eBay details drop away after a period.

Very easy to have basic details in a ruled up record.

Not only to solve problems as this but also to help customers with past purchases or future marketing tools.

Occasionally items may be sent to the black stump n back, not found to be returned to seller after a few months, but rare.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

*tippy*toes* — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 11:58:49 GMT

I've only had 2 items not arrive and neither have been returned. I think they fell into the Aust Post black hole. I bought an item from England a couple of years ago and I sent the seller a message saying it hadn't arrived and asked if it may have turned up back there. He said it hadn't. I think it had been about 4 weeks since posting. I'd bought from him before with no problems, so I was confident it had been posted. 2 days later he sent me a message saying that it had just arrived back there. On further investigations, it had never left England for some reason.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

egyptian-shop — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 13:32:07 GMT

Unfortunately I couldnt read the date stamp on the envelope. I do print out every order and have been through every order since April but can't find a record of it. Checked Paypal payments since the beginning of September and nothing there either. Nothing listed in the White pages.

I did want to contact the buyer and send it on to them again...it's a wonder they haven't asked where it is!

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

digital*ghost — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 13:54:13 GMT

@egyptian-shop wrote:

I did want to contact the buyer and send it on to them again...it's a wonder they haven't asked where it is!

They could have, though. At this stage, if you're unable to find the transaction, you can't know for sure whether the buyer ever contacted you about INR and it was resolved, unless you haven't had any of those for a really long time, I guess.

I haven't had any packages returned to me after a really extended period of time, but one of my buyers did receive an order more than 3 months after I sent it, so I assumed it was lost or misplaced with AP and that someone eventually moved whatever cabinet it had fallen behind The buyer actually contacted me, though, to let me know it had been delivered and to offer to pay for it (I'd already sent a replacement way back when, and just told them to keep it).

AP will usually deliver packages if they've been discovered in their possession though, AFAIK, anyway, so either they had it for so long that by the time they attempted delivery the buyer had moved, or possibly someone has been in possession of it all this time and left it unopened until ultimately returning it.

Just out of curiosity, how are you searching for the transaction. The fastest method I've found is to search my emails for specific details - I have a folder in which I store all payment notifications (goes back to 2008 ), so I just go to that folder, type in the surname (or full name as it appears on the order details, or written address in this case, if it's a common surname - sometimes the street name if it's unusual) then check the results.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

joethenuts — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 15:17:48 GMT

as you say its not to far from where you live maybe pop up there when your close by and knock on the door and see what happens,

maybe previous tenants or they might know something.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

joethenuts — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 23:41:25 GMT

how long does it take we were expecting an express post letter that was sent last thursday got it this thursday ,

a whole 8 ks the sender is going to compain today , . i dont think aus post have a usually on anything.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

letscleanupmycupboards — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 01:16:48 GMT

At least letters usually don't have a bill attached.

I sent a parcel to a buyer and got it back 3 months later. Cost me the postage fees again (same as it had cost to send initially) to collect it.

Transaction was 6 months ago now and still no contact from the buyer. Items been resold so not much I can do.

Large letter they they may charge you to get it back. I imagine you can add that cost as well as postage again and charge the buyer.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

egyptian-shop — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 03:17:43 GMT

The letter I got back was delivered to me again by the postie. Didnt even have a return to sender stamp, just a small RTS written in ink.

I'll just keep it as is and hope the buyer contacts me.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

zeroninetyone091 — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 03:41:48 GMT

hi there,

I find that it takes approx 5 weeks to be returned to sender.

It does depend though how long the destination Post office keeps it.

This in turn can vary from 10 days to 30 days. Waiting for the receiver to contact them?

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

davewil1964 — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 12:48:59 GMT

@kopenhagen5 wrote:
Every seller should keep a sales record in a book. Especially as eBay details drop away after a period.
Very easy to have basic details in a ruled up record.
Not only to solve problems as this but also to help customers with past purchases or future marketing tools.

Occasionally items may be sent to the black stump n back, not found to be returned to seller after a few months, but rare.

A book? Seriously?

I keep mine in a spreadsheet.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

clarry100 — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 17:27:38 GMT

The overhead of manually keeping some form of book either on paper on in a spreadsheet would be enormous. At the end of each calendar month after all payments are cleared for the month I download a paid and posted report in CSV format and store that away on my local hard drive. This report contains all the sales record data you will ever need to search for a buyer. EBay don't allow you to see this info past 90 days so you need to keep it yourself. This also works for tax records

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

*tippy*toes* — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 01:00:02 GMT

Do you keep a backup on a different hard drive or on a cloud? I only ask because my husbands computer carped itself the other day and after trying pretty much everything, I had to do a factory reset. Thankfully all his recent holiday snaps were backed up on Dropbox, but if they weren't he would have lost the lot.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

clarry100 — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 07:12:14 GMT

I do both to cloud and we also have a network storage device configured as RAID.

Just means that it has two large drives in it configured to back each other up so if either one fails all the data is still on the other.

We see only one drive, the RAID box doaes all the work in the background.

You're unlikely to lose both drives at once. But if that did happen then cloud to the rescue I guess.

We don't store any data files on our laptops at all, its all on the RAID drive which is accessible by any device on our home network.

So pretty good backups I guess, just in case.

If a laptop fails then we would have to go thru all the setup stuff again but all our ebay photos and data such as this stuff is pretty safe.

We also store a whole bunch of kids movies on it too and can then stream those directly to our TV. Much simpler than DVDs.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

dazzledayz — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 06:01:15 GMT

Assuming the payment was via PayPal you can find the details you are after.

Go to the Paypal download centre and get a complete transaction history (download as CSV and open in excel or similar).

I don't know how far back their records go but it's longer than eBays.

You can then use the "Find" function to search the address column for the buyers street address.

Their eBay ID is also there in another column as is all other relevant data on one row concerning the sale.

I download this file every month and append it to an existing list in a permanent spreadsheet.

It gives me a complete list of sales going back to day 1.

Re: Letters returned to sender - how long does it usually take?

trrautoparts — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 06:33:42 GMT

@clarry100 wrote:
The overhead of manually keeping some form of book either on paper on in a spreadsheet would be enormous. At the end of each calendar month after all payments are cleared for the month I download a paid and posted report in CSV format and store that away on my local hard drive. This report contains all the sales record data you will ever need to search for a buyer. EBay don't allow you to see this info past 90 days so you need to keep it yourself. This also works for tax records

Could you tell me where you get this report from please? I have always kept my printed paper copy of each sale, but this would be a much easier way to do it all.

Thanks!