I am a Canadian seller and my items are low priced. What is the best way to ship with tracking that does not cost very much?

[deanshotbonusbuys]

We are Canadian sellers who, upon shipping by Canada Post Letter-mail to the States, have come up on an issue of clients not receiving their goods.  It seems that US shipments are the only ones that get lost. Because our items are inexpensive we ship mostly by letter mail but this means we cannot trace the packages and if they say they didn't get it we have to give them a full refund including a shipping.refund. Out of the ten packages we have shipped to the States, only seven have arrived the other three we were forced to give refunds on. Has any one else had this problem and what if anything have you done to solve the problem?

[femmefan1946]

There is no method of tracking that is cheap. It is a labour-intensive and used for high value/high fraud items. So the shipper will cover all his costs.

So.

Look at this from another perspective.

Since most of your "lost" items (yes, the quotes were on purpose) are from US customers, is it worthwhile selling into the USA?

Have you considered self-insurance? This requires some number crunching, but if you are losing one item in twenty valued at $10, then you are taking in $200 and losing $10 (ignoring your postal and procurement costs as well as eBay &PP fees). Can you add 50 cents to your asking price, or your shipping cost to cover that lost item?

Have you looked at shipping with Light Packet USA instead of LetterPost? The only advantage is that you get an invoice number which you can give to the buyer. This may reassure him that the item is on its way (if he is honest but nervous) or convince him that the item is Delivery Confirmed (if he is a scammer). Most people are honest, and crooks are dumber than they think they are.

What are you trying to accomplish? If like most of us you want to make a little money* and keep a clean feedback page, you have to protect your assets. Not every sale is worth having.

Have you set up your Seller Preferences to Block bidders who do not have active PP accounts? Who do have UID Strikes? Who live in places you no longer want to ship to?

*(or preferably a LOT of money)

[femmefan1946]

Passing thought: often the bad buyers are spending very small amounts of money. If this is true of your buyers, perhaps dropping those cheap items would be a solution. Or if you are starting your auctions very low, move your minimum bid higher and get rid of the bottomfeeders.

[babadavoud]

you can ship your item with expedited parcel with tracking # and you can have a conformation when item deliverd

[klrlock]

Yeah, I agree with another of your responses. Drop the small stuff, or start higher. I have been at this for over 10 years, and in that time I have had a total of about 5 packages ever get lost. Your rate of loss is way too high for it to be actually lost.