No Tracking Numbers for inexpensive goods

[daddykool-123]

Apologies in advance if covered already, but I have many inexpensive goods that I pack into Padded envelopes and post.

As I print off my own labels, it's a minimum of $7.15 to send in a bag with tracking.

However, selling small inexpensive items, I will generally put them in a padded envelope with a couple of stamps at $1.40 .

Cheaper for my customers, $6 cheaper to send it.

Most of my customers are honest, but I was ordered to refund a full amount because the Customer "never received it".

So, the tiny bit of profit I was going to make is gone, so are the goods, so are my postage costs.  Now the item was only sold for $12.50, So not only am I down these costs, the customer got a freebie.

Instead of emailing me first, the Customer opened a dispute with eBay.

There will always be unscrupulous buyers, this is the 2nd refund in hundreds of posted items, which brings me back to the point:

Does anyone know how to supply tracking for inexpensive items? I don't think it's possible.

Thanks in advance,

D.K.

[joethenuts]

try adding a signature might be cheaper   

as long as its tracking or signature  ebay is fine with that,  but if you only loose a couple of things a year , why bother for the extra costs

the old saying if you can afford to loose thats fine if you cant then go to tracking or signature

[chameleon54 · Accepted solution]

I send around 70% of my items untracked. I simply add 50 cents to $1.00 depending on the value of the item to the postage cost as self insurance. This works out much cheaper than tracking costs for my buyers.

. When something goes wrong I just refund, no questions asked, no stress. I dont have too many problems as most of my buyers are pretty honest mature aged men. If they say something hasnt arrived I expect that 90% of the time it didnt arrive. ( Who knows, maybe I put the wrong address on the package ) If you sell computer games to kids or mobile phones it might need a different strategy.

[lyndal1838]

Just a question......how can you be so sure that your customer is lying?  If there was not tracking then you can't know for sure.

In case you did not realise it, buyers read here as well as sellers and many buyers resent being labelled liars unless the seller has absolute proof that the buyer got the item and is saying otherwise.

[daddykool-123]

I don't remember calling my customer a liar....

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

Just a question......how can you be so sure that your customer is lying?  If there was not tracking then you can't know for sure.

In case you did not realise it, buyers read here as well as sellers and many buyers resent being labelled liars unless the seller has absolute proof that the buyer got the item and is saying otherwise.

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[daddykool-123]

Sending an item requiring a signature costs around $2.75 I think, but I think that we need to accept this as a fact of eBay "sellership".  As previously mentioned, (sorry, don't have the name in front of me), we can't prove that customers are right or wrong, and yes, some buyers do tell verbal inexactitudes to get something for nothing. But I have accepted that nothing can be done about this issue except to refund and put that person on your blocked bidders list so you'll never have to deal with them again.

My 100% rating is important to me than a few lousy dollars and I'd rather take the loss and let Karma deal with the offender. By

the way, I always put my return address on the envelope and I still haven't received the item back, so someone got a freebie.

To the buyers who read Seller posts, please understand that this is a periodic problem to most Sellers and we Sellers genuinely believe that 99% of you are honest folk and incapable of subterfuge.

[imastawka]

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@daddykool-123 wrote:

I don't remember calling my customer a liar....

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 Most of my customers are honest, but I was ordered to refund a full amount because the Customer "never received it".

 I think it's implied by the quotation marks

[daddykool-123]

The quotation marks indicate a direct quote from eBay, not me.

Apologies if that confused you. I have NO desire to confuse.

My main question remains partly unanswered.

[imastawka]

No.   No cheap way to send large envelopes with tracking that I know of.

If you don't lose that many, then self insurance is your only option.

Re-send or refund

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

"the customer got a freebie " means?