@maranock wrote:There are many people who can't be home to sign for a parcel. Not only those who are diabled, but those who work hours that don't allow them to get a to a post office within working hours (and many POs are not open Saturdays). I work away from home and I have an arrangement with the PO that they sign for my parcels and leave them at my door, but that means having to trust your posty which some people don't want to do. I can't have parcels delivered at work out in the bush.
There is no way I can be home to meet couriers, or to travel an hour during work hours to their depot and back again. I hate it when sellers don't tell people that they will be using a courier or signed service.
There has to be some way for Ebay to work around the trust issue
It's not necessarily a trust issue, per se, at least not all the time.
When someone buys from me, I have no idea what their personal situation is, how likely it is that someone will be home to sign for a parcel, how inconvenient it might be if I add signature required and no one is home, or where a parcel could be safe dropped if no one is home and potentially leaving it exposed either to elements, passers-by etc
The most I can do is google an address and maybe see a picture of the property, which - aside from feeling a bit voyeuristic - won't tell me much besides whether or not the address looks like it isn't easily accessible to the random public (if the pic is even recent, some of them are several years old).
It isn't just fraud that I'm thinking about when I add SOD to a package, it's keeping the package as safe as possible until it's in the hands of someone at the address I sent it to, and safe from people who may help themselves to it if it's just sitting on the porch at an unattended property. I'm acutely aware SOD can be inconvenient for a buyer, but I'm also aware of the expectation the vast majority of them have of getting their item, or getting a refund. There's a thread here now where the parcel was tracked as delivered to the buyer but they're claiming non-receipt and demanding a refund. For me, however, the (potential) inconvenience of having to collect a parcel at the post office is nowhere near the inconvenience of having to deal with a situation where an expensive package was stolen after delivery and the buyer is looking at me for refund / replacement.
The trust issue is a serious one, though. Last year, there was an article that claimed "friendly fraud" had increased by 80% in the last couple of years. (Friendly fraud is the name being given to online fraud involving credit card chargebacks, especially the "unauthorised" ones that were definitely authorised at the time the purchase was made. How it got the name "friendly" I do not know).
But, if that's true, that means this type of fraud has nearly doubled in just a couple of years, with no new legislation even on the distant horizon to try and curb it, just a lot of sellers who are starting to have a gut full of getting that notification and grizzling over the blatant disregard the banks (or eBay) have for them (and yes, the article was Australian).
I always assume my buyers purchase with the best of intentions - I have to, given that the majority of packages I send are large letters, so I would be a wreck of a seller if I didn't 
But at the same time, I will only trust someone unreservedly if we have built a relationship over time, and even then, I'm still aware that it can all go to pieces in an instant (I have hand long-term buyers just suddenly decide it's time to try and scam me).
