So if you’re doing shipping within the US and using USPS, add tracking on anything above a $20 dollar bill at this point. I used to reserve tracking for purchases over $50/$75 but now I’m going to make it a policy to do tracking on anything over $20 USD.
Why?
Currently the USPS is a crap shoot with everything that’s going on. I just finished a conversation with the second person I’ve had to refund within the last 3 weeks. I’m not a large seller by any means. I generally sell cards during the Summer/Winter during off periods and am lucky if I sell more than 25 items per season. If I sell a card, generally I’ll put it in a sleeve, toploader, and a paper white envelope and it’ll arrive in a couple of days, maybe longer if it’s going West and have never had a problem since I started selling about 6/7 years ago.
I’ve shipped items globally with a Global Stamp and customers are receiving cards faster than those within the US. I’ve had 5 people complain about cards taking longer than 2 weeks to arrive - 2 of those ended in a refund and one I’m still in conversation with to see if they can wait another week. The first one was for a purchase of about $50 a few weeks ago. I didn’t add tracking because the buyer lived in a state right by me. The second one lives in New York - also a state right by me - but thankfully that one was only a $20 purchase.
I say this because this issue seems to be getting worse. I didn’t have this issue at the start of Covid back in April when I started listings again, so now I’m making it a general policy to put tracking on anything over $20.
10$ is my cut off to add tracking… once I break that number I add 2$ to the listed price at least to cover the extra shipping cost and specify that there will be tracking. A lot of people are willing to pay the extra dollar or 2 if they know they will get it… Unless they are trying to scam people for free cards.
I wish everyone would add tracking to their cards. As a buyer I’m more than happy to pay $3 extra if you kind of split it with me. I know tracking is usually $5-$5.50 unless you guys get better deals. Cards never go missing when they are tracked. The only times I run into issues is untracked cards. Especially during these past few months.
On another note maybe FedEx would be better I’m assuming issues are steming from USPS. On bigger orders I don’t even mind paying $5 extra for shipping etc. I’ve linked stories before but you guys can do a general Google search of USPS undelivered mail. There is stories of mail being left in fields, apartments, storage units you name it. All huge hoards of mail that the usps delivery drivers were too overwhelmed to deliver.
@jkanly Exactly even mark it up a few dollars if you have to. The only listings that get generally overlooked are ones charging $10 or more for shipping. Anything $5 or under is more then reasonable for a buyer to pay.
Do not find this to be true. Reducing your price by 2.5$ when the mail system is working in a functional manner adds up very fast. it doesn’t take many successful instances of saving this 2.50$ tracking to equal entire items. Losing out on a few of them is part of the cost of business, but if you are selling in volume I personally would not recommend going to tracking until something a bit higher. I personally used to do 40$
I can’t believe tracking over there is so cheap. I can’t get tracking for less than $13 through Canada Post, and it typically costs $15-17… I really don’t have a choice but to send untracked $20-30 items unless I’m willing to accept less than half the value of what I actually sold for.
Saving that few dollars adds up I guess? I know as a buyer one lost order and I put you on my Do Not Buy list. When orders go missing its USPS fault but the seller is also somewhat to blame for not valueing our orders enough to add tracking to insure it gets to us.
We can all understand the fluctuating prices lately. Your original order goes missing then your stuck paying more for a replacement while waiting on a refund.
It’s also partially the buyers fault for not adding tracking. Most listings make you add close to $10 for anything other then standard shipping. Pocketing the extra cost. (Exceptions to Canada I’m referring to US to US sales)
Also obviously it would be better to order multiple cards off the same seller but sometimes the seller doesn’t have other cards in the category your collecting. (For example the people who buy lots off people and list everything that doesn’t match. Like one base set listing, one fossil, one sun and moon, one sword and shield etc.)
Or they have a great price for one listing but have their other listings marked up above market price
Maybe I just have way too high of a risk tolerance, but I don’t purchase tracking for any order below $30 or $35. It feels bad when people claim ‘item not received’ for $25 items, but that happens less than 5% of the time and tracking costs roughly $2.50 extra. So it’s simply not worth purchasing tracking for $25 or $30 items, purely from the perspective of maximizing profits. For MTG cards, my threshold is even higher – I don’t purchase tracking unless the order is $50 or over typically (I have substantially lower INR rates for MTG). And I’ve shipped $200+ orders without tracking when I’m sending to someone I trust. The thousands of dollars I’ve saved on shipping has more than covered the single digit percentage of orders that I have to refund due to them ‘not arriving.’
I assumed this was a joke because, if not, he’s literally admitting to a federal crime. It’s not as though anything will come as a result, of course, but it’s also just an incredibly shitty and dishonest thing to do. I really hope he’s joking.
