Paypal Madness Has To Stop

Well it was worth a try. The older U.S. form below, but still basically the same.

Not finished yet Will :)
I'll check my branch this arvo, for other forms.

Best possible solution for 30c?

I just posted two items at my local post office. The person behind the counter agreed to photocopy the two covers after they she had cancelled them. She photocopied them with the customs dec forms side by side.

Cost me 30c!

I can't think of a better solution. I will now email scans of the photocopy to the buyers.

JimJam, everyone is forgetting one thing: the item was sent to China. I really hate to say this, but most of those types of problems are with shipments to China (Peoples Republic). All over ebay you will see sellers who do not ship to China, and a few other countries. And the ebay rules allow you to do that. Of my close to 600 transactions, I have had only two problems, both to China. Fortunately I was able to resolved them in my favour through ebay.

The solution is to ban all bidders from China (or other areas you have problems with), or state that all sales to THOSE countries MUST be by registered mail. I do that.

BeeSee, you're right. However, I made this point in a message to Paypal but they've ignored it. As I said above, there is not the least indication that they've read anything I've written.

By the way, in my case, of the three items which have gone missing, only one was to China. The other two were sent to Wales and the US.

Interestingly, in this particular case, the buyer's ebay page says he's located in Singapore but the postal address he gave me was in Shanghai, China.

I will always wonder what's going on there.

Well Jim, one thing is you ship to the Paypal account address that is verified, NOT what the seller asks.

I hate to bring up another thing then Jim, what if the buyer really did NOT receive the item?

Well, the address I mailed the item to is the one that comes up in the ebay sytem. But on his own page it says Location: Singapore.

When he sends me ebay messages this is appended to them:

Member since 09-Jun-03 in Singapore
Location: singapore, Singapore

So either he's moved to Shanghai from Singapore or he has some kind of scam going on.

'what if the buyer really did NOT receive the item?'

I never said that he had not received it. (At least, I don't think I did.)

I thought I'd made my position clear, which is it was most likely lost in the mail. Millions of items are lost in the mail all over the world every year. I think it would be very easy in a country which does not use Roman script like China for an item to be delivered to the wrong address. As the BBC report from the UK showed, some people do not try to deliver the item to the right address, while some even open the letters up themselves - no doubt helping themselves to the contents, in any.

My problem is with Paypal's assumption that if an item does not reach its intended recipient it means that the seller never posted it. The reality - with 14.4 million items lost in the mails a year in the UK alone - is that it was lost in the mail.

Paypal holds the seller responsible because it cannot hold anyone else responsible, even though in 99% of cases the seller has done nothing wrong.

The question of buyers lying about not having received an item has to be taken seriously, however. This is because the Ebay/Paypal system is actually so biased against sellers that it actually encourages buyer criminality.

For example: (1) An ebay seller is not allowed to post negative feedback about a buyer. A seller has only two options: leave positive feedback or 'leave feedback later.' In other words, it's positive feedback or nothing. Thus sellers who have encountered a problem buyer are not able to warn other sellers about the dangers of dealing with that person.

(2) A buyer knows that s/he cannot be asked to prove that s/he has not received an item (since proof is not possible). Therefore what could be easier than to pretend not to have received the item and get a 'refund'? You get your item and your money back - what could be sweeter?

and (3) Even in cases when a buyer starts a case because s/he has not received an item and the item arrives after the case has been started, the buyer is looking at the likelihood of getting a 'refund' and keeping the stamp. They can get a 'refund' simply by doing nothing! I think this would be a form of temptation that few people would be able to resist.

In short, the Ebay/Paypal systems offers buyers powerful incentives to lie about not having received an item - and the victim is the seller, who is powerless to influence Paypal decisions.

Jimjam I am not trying to take sides, but the problem is that the way the world's postal systems work is that the shipper has full control over acknowledge of receipt, the buyer has none, unless the seller paid for such.

'the shipper has full control over acknowledge of receipt'

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. How can the shipper force the recipient to acknowledge receipt of an item?

i can not believe this thread has gone on for FIVE pages..i have sold to people in China and Malaysia..i offered to ship registered mail if they picked up the tab and one fellow requested that I do use registered..even though I did have concerns on some of my shipments to the orient..surely one of them could have said they did not receive their item..but they were all honorable ! Lets try an d keep the gripes on the forum to a minimum if we can...most of us are happy campers !!

I don't think a 'head in the sand' approach works, philb.

I wish someone had told me a lot of hard facts about selling stamps on ebay before I started doing it.


All forums contains threads that are not of interest to all users. No one is forcing anyone to read it, while some helpful ideas have come out of it for those who are affected by the problems I've been talking about.

In any case, you're in the US where you have 'confirmation of Mailing' that only costs $1! It's easy to dismiss the concerns of those less fortunate than yourself.

Well this is an issue I have been trying to get my head around for some months now.
Thanks for all the posts they have helped me a great deal!

Looks like working with a customs form, as our very helpful local PO suggested some days ago. Taking a photocopy of the postage article after the PO has processed it, with the PO worker's signature on the photocopy. Sounds like a very good record of postage of the said article to me.

Time will tell! Happy stamping KGV