Most of my items are also small and shipped via CP with no tracking available deltone because no one would pay for the true cost of delivery that way...it would be impossible to sell a $10 DVD with a $10 shipping charge! Just won't happen.
So whenever I receive one of those e-mails, I too wonder "Why are they asking for tracking info on an item that is still well within the expected delivery window?" Although I try to be trusting and helpful, and realize that most buyers consider this an innocent question, I would never admit to any buyer that their shipment cannnot be traced. So to head off the possibility that they might simply be testing the waters to determine whether or not their item is trackable (and if not, a candidate for chargeback under a false claim not received), I have an all-purpose response that seems to do the trick.
1. I inform them that the our post office will only deal with the sender in their native country. Therefore, tracking info would do them no good at all because CP won't even talk to them, just refer them back to the sender. A waste of their time and the cost of a long distance call to boot.
2. Then I also remind them that CP will not even initiate a trace while the item is still within the quoted delivery window (usually 10 to 14 days, and up to 30 for some international destinations). If the buyer's query about tracing is innocent and legit, they will typically receive their item before the trace process would ever kick in. The problem evaporates when they open their mail a few days later.
Since nearly 80% of my buyers are outside Canada, predominantly in the US (where these questions invariably come from--in my experience, rarely within Canada, and never overseas), in one fell swoop, my little white lie leaves the buyer no choice except to deal with any possibly lost, damaged, or misdelivered items directly through me. And yeah, even if I'm stretching the truth there, typically, they do not know that...the important thing is that they believe the item is traceable. The good buyers will be comforted and remain patient, and the bad ones will think twice before pulling anything sleazy.
Of course, that's not 100% fool-proof, but as a general deterrent, even if causes only a handful of potential rip-off artists to think twice, then it's worth it. Only in a couple of rare cases where an item truly had gone astray did anyone ever press me further about tracking...and interestingly, they were never the ones asking those questions about trackability early on in the transaction, so I was inclined to believe them.
