Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

On a $15 thin paper item to US from Canada in cardboard flat envelope 6 x 8 ...would you frequent sellers use tracking and mail item as a small packet or just take your chances and use regular mail stamps with no tracking.  I have already collected $15 for postage so regular stamps would be frowned upon by buyer.   What would you do?

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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

marnotom!
Community Member
What sort of shipping method is stated in the listing? That’s what the buyer will be expecting.
Message 2 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

I'm not 100% sure what you are asking but you can use stamps to purchase tracking for packages, you'll just need to know how much it costs and you should fill out the customs form online in advance of going to the post office.

 

ALL of the packages I send regular, tracked, expedited, expresspost have ONLY stamps on the package to pay for the shipping, I do not use labels of any kind.

 

 

Message 3 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

Question when selling a $15.00 item to US is it worth it on an 8 x 6 envelope to pay the extra for tracking?

Does Canada Post have tracking on an envelope that size? 

Do you bother with tracking when only a $15 item?

Thanks all ...for your help as not familiar with mailing envelopes to US ....and have more paper items to sell that will go in flat envelopes that size.

Ricarmic curious why stamps only?

 

Message 4 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

I wouldn't normally use tracking on a $15 item but  the time to decide how you will be sending an item is when you set up the listing so that the buyer knows what to expect. Your listing says that you are using expedited shipping with a delivery time of 2-5 business days so that is definitely not lettermail. Unless the buyer is fairly close to you and usps is very quick,  Xpresspost is the only service that 'might' meet that timeline and that would be crazy expensive.   

You didn't say what the package will weigh but I would probably use tracked packet so at least the buyer would see that the item was on its way and where it was.  You mentioned small packet but that doesn't really have tracking although it may show a scan or two on eBay IF USPS does decide to scan it.   

You might want to contact the buyer and ask if a longer delivery would be ok, explaining that you made a mistake when you put in the service.  You could even offer a partial refund.  To be honest I'm not sure exactly what I would to but I do know that it isn't a good idea to promise something that you can't deliver such as a super quick delivery time. 

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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

@namron8mont Does Canada Post have tracking on an envelope that size?

The package is less important than the service.

Using an envelope doesn't mean you can't purchase a Package service, most of which are tracked or at least Delivery Confirmed.

 

Stamps are receipts for a postal service not yet completed.

That's why you can buy mint, never used postage stamps here at substantial discounts from post office prices. MAILED WITH STAMPS 1.jpegYou can overlap stamps, allowing only the denomination to show to save space, but some postal clerks don't like that. Ask if you can before you do it.

And put the total postage on the envelope to save her having to count them up.

 

Message 6 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

Hi @namron8mont  

 

I use only stamps because I sell to stamp collectors who expect stamps on the envelope. I use a combination of old stamps I get under face and some new stuff which the collectors appreciate.

 

Yes wee envelopes can be tracked, the problem I have is the darned pouch is so large I have to use a larger envelope for it to fit on! 

 

Generally unless my spider senses are tingling, I don't track anything under $100, but I sell lots of stuff so on average I come out ok (actual loss rate is less than 1/2 of 1% a year).

Message 7 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

So appreciative of answers ....postage and mailing sure is a learning curve.

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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

marnotom!
Community Member

Now that I've got a better sense of the bigger picture, the solution to all this seems pretty straightforward, though painful to the pocketbook.

 

If this were my sale and I learned what I did about shipping on this discussion board, I'd suck it up and send the item by Xpresspost, considering the extra money the price of an education.

 

Also, I don't know how accurately your feedback from sellers record reflects the amount of buying you've done on eBay (I see only four feedback comments), but I think if it's possible and practical, you should get more buying under your belt to help get you more familiar with how the process works.  Read those listings carefully.

 

By the way, I see on one of your listings made on the US site that you've stated the shipping method as "eBay International Standard Delivery" to Canada.  That's a service available to US sellers shipping outside of the US and I don't believe it's available to Canadian sellers.

 

https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/shipping/ebay-international-standard.html

Message 9 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

If you are listing on dotCA (here) you will be presented with Canadian shipping services.

On the whole Canada Post is cheapest and most reliable.

Canada Post ships everywhere in the world*.

 

If you ship on dotCOM (the parent site), you will be presented with American shipping services, but you won't be able to use them.

You have to scroll down the list to Shipping from an International Location, and enter Flat Rates for shipping there.

Bookmark this:

https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpotools/apps/far/business/findARate?execution=e1s1

 

Also, you have probably been shunted to the Simplified Sell Your Item form.

It's terrible.

Look in the top right of that form for a link that says something like "Customize" or "Change to Business Form".

That will take you to the much better Business/Advancd SYI, which has more options and is clearer about what each option offers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Don't ship internationally until you have 10DSRs , know what DSRs are, and understand why they are unimportant.

Message 10 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

You shouldn't use a service inferior to one the buyer was charged for. 

 

Selling untracked is usually more profitable, you just have to be up front about what kind of shipping is included in the listing. The reason it is more profitable, is that within Canada you can ship for between 2-6 dollars instead of an average of 15. If you want your items to sell, you have to provide the most value. A big part of that is charging something in the range of market value. So if an item is worth $40, you can't charge $40 + $15 shipping because a $40 item typically won't sell for $55. You can either charge $35+$5 shipping if you ship with lettermail, or you can charge $25+$15 shipping if you ship regular parcel. 

 

To keep it simple and with round numbers we'll just ignore eBay fees and say with the first example you are making an additional $10 of profit every time you successfully complete an untracked order without an item not received claim. So every four items you sell, you make enough additional profit to cover the cost of 1 lost item. If you sell 50 items a month all at that price point, you'd have to be losing more than 10 items to INR claims for tracked shipping to start ot make sense. (My math might be atrocious here, but hopefully you get the point). So for most sellers, lowering your input costs and opening yourself up to INR claims is more profitable than raising your input costs as insurance against INR claims. 

 

Now my examples were using Canadian shipping, as far as US shipping goes, I had a lot of issues with Canada Post to the point that I stopped using them entirely for US orders. Maybe things have changed, but Small Packet USA (which is the cheapest untracked service) was taking 45-50 days in some cases. It got to the point where shipping to the USA made no sense with the losses via INR claims, and the additional time and effort wasted on listing items that I wouldn't realize a profit from, and providing customer service to people waiting on their items. That might have changed now, but I would just be cautious about Small Packet USA with Canada Post. 

 

An important thing with both Canada and USA shipping is to go into your shipping settings, and change your service to one of the generic 'Economy' services. This will give the buyer a more realistic idea of when to expect their item. It will also make it that they cannot open an item not received claim until around 30 days after they purchase the item. Given that untracked services (in a worst case scenario) can take 20-30 days, and that the buyer sees this possibility when checking out, I think this is fair. 

 

Through reading comments other people make here, a lot of INR cases get opened not because the buyer is scamming the seller, but because the seller didn't properly set their listings with economy shipping. They make the logical (but wrong) assumption that if they are shipping via lettermail, they should select lettermail as the shipping method in the listing. This leads the buyer to wrongly thinking the item was lost when it doesn't arrive within the 15 or so days eBay gives for lettermail. So an honest buyer opens up a case, which all could have been avoided with a more realistic shipping window (economy shipping). 

Message 11 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

byto253
Community Member

I think your small packet experience may be related to the shipping and processing locations here in Canada.  I have sent a good number of untracked small packet and they have been delivered very nicely, and quicker than tracked parcel service going across Canada.  My US items get routed through Montreal and get moved on to NY for processing very quickly - I can see that from the tracked ones I send.

 

Just pointing out that folks will have to see what the situation is in their neck of the woods, as it can depend 🙂

 

Message 12 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

I do not agree with this at all. I will be charging what I paid for to have the item sent for me. I'm so tired of these people who think you owe them a dollar refund for postage overages. A lot goes into shipping, the cost of the time it takes you to get to the post office, the packing or handling time, the cost of the supply you use to mail it, and lastly the cost you incurred when purchasing the item. I'm in Canada, and nothing from the US comes to me for under 20 dollars. So you can be guaranteed that I will make my money back when selling it back to the US!

Message 13 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

You have responded to a thread from 2021 to which your comment has little relevancy anymore...sometimes it is just best to bypass these old threads and leave them in the past rather than trying to reignite interest in a thread that has been succeeded by newer, more recent threads of same, similar topic.

Message 14 of 16
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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

@ kh-phdan 

ZOMBIE THREAD FROM 2021!

 

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Regular stamps or tracking on envelope to US

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