Well, yes, most of us sent items in bubble mailers via International Letter-post for a long while, until they started really cracking down on mailing 'goods' as letters at the beginning of the year, as is the point of this post.
What I'm saying is that it's more risky to use a bubble mailer these days because to a customs official, a bubble mailer stands out as something that probably contains something other than a letter. Bubble envelopes were designed to cushion items while in transit, something that regular letters don't need; if I had to hazard a guess I would say that 90+% of actual letters are just shipped in paper envelopes (or stiffened photo mailers).
Sure you can cover the eBay logo on a bubble envelope, but that's not going to stop it from standing out from the rest of the letters. As a Canada Post clerk I've seen every manner of item returned with that "must be sent as small packet" label - poly bubble mailers, Kraft bubble mailers, non-bubble poly mailers, even regular white envelopes (although they were rather thick as the sender had wrapped cardboard around the card). The only conclusion I can draw is that the more your item looks like just a regular old letter, the more likely it is to sail on through and get delivered just fine. But even then that doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule.
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