Posted by On January 8th I was excited to get my first Ebay sale of 2022. The last 3 months have been very slow for me on Ebay. Any hope I had of making a side income from reselling was crushed when shipping prices went up in early 2021. I lost interest in posting new items and removed about half of the items that weren’t getting views or being watched. I was down to about 30 items, when I finally got a sale. It was a small video game book that was easy to ship with First Class mail. Since the package only weighed 7 ounces, I decided to put it in my mailbox out by the street, instead of driving to the post office. I saw shortly after the delivery driver came by that the flag on the mailbox was down, so I assumed that the package was picked up successfully.
About ten days later the buyer contacted me for an update on the order. I logged into Ebay and the tracking report showed that the package was still waiting to arrive at the post office. I let the buyer know that I had sent the package and then opened a lost package investigation on the USPS website. The issue was sent to the destination post office, and they closed the issue because they had not seen the package. I decided to refund the customer and chalk it up as a loss. I didn’t actually see the delivery driver take the package, so the post office could say that it was stolen before the driver arrived. I thought about asking the delivery driver if they remember picking up a package, but it seems like there is a different delivery driver every week.
Next time, I will not be leaving mail for the delivery driver, unless I schedule the package pickup in advance. For any future Ebay orders, I will drive the 2 miles and drop the package off at the post office myself. But the mystery of what happened to the package remains. It has been 18 days since the package was lost. If the label came off the package, the buyers address was on the packing slip. But if the package was stolen or fell out of the truck before it got to the post office, I have little faith these days that anyone would take the time to return the package. About three percent of the total number of parcels that flow through the USPS system end up irreparably lost every year. With no refunds on First Class mail, be careful next time you use USPS.