So this is the first time I have ever had a buyer claim that they did not receive the card that I sent them. This was only a $15 card and it did not have any tracking on it. The buyer also has over 1000 feedback at 99%, so my question is do you always just instant refund on these situations? I’m never gonna fight for $15 over the chance for a negative feedback and knowing ebay will force the money out of me anyways. I guess this is more of a rant because the buyer bought the card in January and now in early march claims he never got it. I do doubt someone with that high of feedback would try and gouge me over a $15 dollar card unless they really didn’t get it, but makes you wonder if anyone ever utilizes their high feedback to get free cheap cards that are untracked because theres nothing I can do about it. I’m going to end up refunding the guy, just frustrating that he would wait 2 months out after shipping to report the issue which makes it seem shady. Let me know if you guys have delt with late reports like this.
To be honest this is what I do. I usually give the seller the benefit of the doubt and overseas shipping delays, I’ll only ask the seller after at least a month has passed. Again, I’m only taking about low value cards.
late reports definitely suck, but that’s part of the reason why I only ever ship with tracking (and why I rarely ship overseas, because tracking is expensive). I’ve done hundreds of sales on ebay and only 3 went missing, and those were the only 3 that I shipped without tracking (all were under $10 anyways).
I don’t think that this buyer is overly shady, but I personally would have messaged the seller about 3 weeks after the item shipped letting them know about the situation, and that I would be happy to wait another month or so.
(unrelated, but I’ve also shipped about a hundred items on reddit, many without tracking, and I’ve never encountered a problem there.)
Crap happens. Refund and move on. The buyer probably has multiple incoming orders and overlooked some items. That said, I would put him/her on a watchlist just in case they purchase something else and pull the same shenanigan. Or completely block them. Depends on the specifics of the sale.
When you ship without tracking, you should be ready to refund. Unfortunately, this does happen. Just refund and move on.
I was in this situation, as a buyer. I understand both sides. Every item I buy must be delivered to a warehouse in USA, and if the item has no tracking, I know it had arrived or not the moment it is delivered to my hands 2-3 months later (I’m from another country). When the item never shows up (again, 2-3 months later I can only know) I ask politely to the seller, that if he can still refund me, and that I understand if the seller says no. I want to say, it may look fishy but it’s not as weird as it may look, cos he may be in the same situation.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Yup gonna just refund and move on. It’s still worth to ship without tracking often. I’ve shipped out 50+ cards with no tracking and it saves me 2-3$ each time so even with the rare losses like this it’s still way worth it to send cheap cards without tracking.
Just to add, I’ve been buying wotc 1st ed holos for my binder sets. At some point I would have between 5 and 10 things in the mail. Also, I get them sent to a US address, where cards are consolidated for a little while and then I get them all sent to me. So it could often be 2-3 months from when I purchase a card til when it gets to me. It can be sometimes hard to keep track of everything. Often I get cards sent and don’t think about them until I’m ready to send them all to me. Maybe the buyer just didn’t keep up with everything they’ve purchased…
Absolutely. You don’t pay for full coverage insurance for a car worth a few thousand
I definitely seem to have orders without tracking go missing at least a few times a month out of hundreds of orders. Now at the same time I have no idea if the sellers really sent the cards. Plenty of times I was refunded after 2-3 weeks but I still hoped the cards would come to save me money. Sadly they never did though. And another note is for all I know the post office returned them to sender after not finding my address. I understand the mindset though because tracked packages does get expensive. Yes anyone would like to buy a ton off one seller but most of the time a seller has 1-2 cards for a great price and the rest marked over market value so your stuck buying off multiple people. And when it’s low end $10-$30 cards they never include tracking. But it’s just the way things work so it is what is is as a buyer or seller. What’s more frustrating is I often recieve cards that are unlimited instead of first edition. Or reverse Holo instead of holo. Or a few times complete wrong card which is worse because that tells me the seller never even checked the order properly and starts a slow refund process.
If it makes you feel better the few times I wrote my address on a parcel the buyer said they didn’t receive, never got returned to me
I am currently in the military and will get cards while I am gone for multiple weeks at a time, so some people do actually get to check what we got in with a delay sometimes. Luckily I have not had anything not delivered while I have been gone, but did get a fake pack that I ordered probably 2 weeks before I got home to open it. Managed to get refunded pretty quick, but was worried that I would be too late to do so. Sorry that happened to you though, it is a big scare for me when I am selling.
I’d prefer a buyer that gives the package 2 months to appear over one that gives it 2 weeks
@gami, From all of us on E4:
Your sellers should charge you for tracking considering so many of your orders don’t show up. You said a few a month don’t show up. I haven’t had one not show up in over 20 years.
It’s all off websites and if the sellers had abunch of cards I needed it would be easier but my orders always seem to be split up with multiple sellers. So far it’s been about 5 or 6 missing out of 300 plus I lost track. But the mistake blatant not checking to make sure it’s the correct card happens a lot more often. Mind you all the missing orders were 1 card at a time usually in the $5-$25 range. Whenever I order more than $50 from a seller tracking is included. But ya like I was saying before 99 percent of the time sellers have a few cards for great deals and abunch slightly over market. I buy mostly binder cards. If I bought mostly Psa graded cards all orders would be over $50. And I always get refunded so that’s not the issue it’s more the frustration. And most of the time these sellers have abunch of people working for them that probably barely know Pokemon in general. If they did than there wouldn’t be nearly as many mix ups on correct cards. At the same time I’m sure it’s also frustrating as a seller. So it is what it is
When an order is coming from overseas, I try to give the seller the maximum amount of delivery time, in case delivery was very slow.