eBay ESUS tracking lost in the vapor again and again and again...ugh
mcolney1
Posts: 981 ✭✭✭
Six cards over the past three months shown delivered on eBay, but they never got to my mailbox. So frustrating because I don't believe there's a recourse - tracking said it was delivered to me, but it wasn't. All cheap cards, but I really wanted them for my collection. Where do they all go? Is there a pile of PWEs full of cards in the corner of the PO?
Another card was actually was returned to seller for postage, seller refunds me without explanation, then relists the card! I contacted him and issues was resolve, but all he had to do was contact me explain and resend the card.
Going forward, on a card I really want I'm going to insist on padded envelope delivery and pay the extra shipping.
Collecting Topps, Philadelphia and Kellogg's from 1964-1989
0
Comments
You've had bad luck to have that high number of missing eBay standard envelopes... Either your PO is jacking them or they keep going to the wrong house.
As for the one that got returned to the seller for postage, that's because the seller probably made the envelope too thick to where it became a package charge of $4+, and it got rejected. Seller was a tool for not just sending it back out to you, good way to get a negative feedback from someone.
I've never not gotten a ebay PWE, so don't know what happens when you tell ebay you never got it, but eBay knows that when it says delivered that it is not a real indication of delivery... It is just some calculated designation based on when it was scanned by the destination PO sorting machine which is the last scan. They might give a courtesy refund up to a certain number of times..
The simple answer - Yes, there is a pile of eBay Standard Envelopes staged and waiting for sorting.
The more complex answer is that the eBay Standard Envelope was always meant to be processed and sorted with the automated mail processing equipment. This fact is baked into the price of the postage. Unfortunately, the USPS and eBay have done a very poor job of educating the public on how this mail would be sorted, tracked, and delivered. So you have people mailing in square envelopes, in envelopes that are too thick, or have uneven thickness, or are too rigid, or perhaps poly-bags instead of paper, PWEs that are encased in layers of scotch tape, etc. All of this causes issues with the automated sorting machines and make the mail non-machinable. This mail then gets sent to the manual sorting operation.
Unfortunately, the USPS absolutely hates utilizing the amount of manual labor required to sort such a large volume of non-machinable mail that is being sent with the lesser postage charged for machinable mail. So it accumulates, and if it is not manually sorted in a timely fashion, it is eventually returned to the automated mail stream for another attempt at being ran on the automated sorting equipment. Of course, the same issues that plagued it before are still present, so this mail again jams the machines or causes other issues, eventually being removed from the automated mail stream and sent to the manual sorting operation once again.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
.
Thanks all. Very logical because three of the cards were 2003 Topps All American which are thick cards and likely butchered in the sorting machines. Likely shredded, but still appears to eBay as delivered to me. Bummer, not much money, but an odd set I'm trying to complete.
I lost a very much needed autograph for my Topps autographed Cardinals collection. I'm sure that is exactly what happened. That was about a year ago and I still haven't found another to replace it. Crazy thing is that I only paid $5 for it but I would pay $50 to get it!
Shane
I've been warning people for years about the eBay Standard Envelope, but always receive a lot of pushback when I try to educate the public.
It really is a shame that, low value or not, great cards get ruined because of the people that go out of their way to "overprotect" the cards. If people would only take the time to watch one of the many YouTube videos on the USPS automated letter sorting machines, you'd see those cards have to bend, bend, bend to get through the machines, usually being fed into these machines at least 4-5 times from the originating to destinating locations before finally being delivered. You want those envelopes as thin and pliable as possible, so that they run through the automated equipment smoothly and efficiently, with as few of passes through that equipment as necessary. Every jam, every mis-sort, every trip between automation and manual sorting and back to automation again increases the chances exponentially for the cards to get lost or damaged.
And I hate the OVER TAPE jobs too!
Card saver with no tape or top loader with penny sleeve and one single piece of blue painters tape is sufficient.
Shane