I disagree, I ship ONLY with tracking for everything I've sold and while some buyers send whiny messages about the shipping, i do explain in each and every listing that I only ship to the confirmed ebay/paypal shipping addresses, that I use tracking to confirm it has been delivered, and also it gets there faster. Perhaps people listing items were they have dozens of quantities can afford to take the risk since they have more of them to sell and each one is probably profitable enough to pay for several (and I do have a few such items, and they're the only things I list without tracking). I must be doing something right because I hit powerseller level pretty dang quick. If you're selling one-of-a-kind items, they should be listed with tracking. In thousands of tracked transations online over the past twenty years (i've been selling online longer than ebay has existed and I had the very second ever bicycle shop with an online presence on the web, in the WORLD) and basically they basically don't go missing though the tracking systems can at times be slow to update where they are, especially if international customs are involved.
That being said, tracked packages do still get damaged in transit from time to time, all the barcodes on the labels really guarantee is that you won't get a postal employee helping themselves to your package as there's the coding to track where it was when it goes "missing", ie... it comes into a sorting center and then vanishes between two scanners on one conveyor belt... you still get the "oh i'm **bleep** at my supervisor today so I'm going to drop this pallet of boxes off the end of the forklift onto the concrete floor" though.
Or in the case of a buyer i'm dealing with this week, who's exhibiting signs of being a lives-in-mom's basement spends too much time playing fantasy games aspbergers perfectionist nutbar, has probably **bleep** off his postal delivery person and they're damaging packages they deliver to him, because he claims the box he got had a hole punctured thru it... and it didn't go out that way, and the damage to the pieces inside could only be achieved thru blunt force using a hammer or crowbar.
Firstly, congrats on your successes.
I can only talk from personal experience. Approx 1800 items shipped in 2013. Approx 1750 shipped with no tracking. 2 INR claims for a total of approx $40. I can't help but think you may be doing yourself a dis-service by insisting on the quite expensive small packet tracking on the many under $50 items you sell.
If your buyers are willing to pay the total, (item & shipping) why not use non tracking and put the difference in your selling price, having it end up in your pocket instead?
Unless I am totally missing something here........
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