Highest Priced Item You Bought That Was Not Delivered?

As an avid online shopper, I sometimes wonder if anyone has paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for a stamp online but failed to receive for any reason. I have so far not encountered such a situation and I hope I never have to face that.

Nope, never.
I once had a rocket mail that took 8 months to arrive though. I totally forgot about it, and then one day it showed up. Very strange, but it as like $20 - $40...

Twice. The first time was a large album supply order that the postal service simply lost. The dealer replaced it, and ate the loss. I was having very unreliable mail delivery at the time. Several bills never showed up as well.

The second time was last summer. Went through a several month spell with a new mail carrier, and it was hit and miss whether we got mail or not. Important letters found daily in the middle of the street run over, etc. I had a couple stamps sent to me then, which luckily got returned to the sender, via a roundabout way, which had us both concerned. It all worked out - fortunately the stamps weren't in the middle of the street as some other stuff was.

No stamps but I bought $300 worth of stuff in the early days of ebay before paypal and never saw it. The person cancel his ebay account before I could complain to ebay. I also sold a phone to a Russian once that never arrived. (never again Russia).

I was told by a dealer in the states that sometimes it is better to declare a nominal value for an item for registered mail lest it gets stolen.

txstamp
If you are having problems with mail deliveries talk to your postmaster and possibly get a PO Box.

Penny
Don't believe every thing a dealer tells you. If you/they lie about value, and it gets lost, they only have to pay for what was declared.

I'm too poor to buy stamps for hundreds or thousands of dollars, but I got ripped off by an Australian seller on ebay back in 2005. I had bought from him before, and everything had gone well, but then I won three of his auctions that were to be mailed together, a total of $67 including shipping. Since mail from abroad sometimes takes an unexplainably long time, I was patient, but after six weeks the package still hadn't arrived, so I tried (repeatedly) to contact the seller. By that time it became clear from recently posted feedback that although the seller had good and substantial feedback, he had decided not to send any purchases to recent buyers, and had pulled up stakes and left town. By that time I had missed the window for filing a complaint and getting a refund, so I had to eat the loss.



I hear you. I was bartering books with someone in Russia in the early 1990s, and the stuff I sent never got to its destination.

In US, sign up for free "Informed Delivery" (if available at your location). It is the perfect tool for identifying local delivery problems. It will absolutely put an end to any local mailman issues.
Don

I LOVE informed delivery.

I do not understand why you didn't call the telephone that was mailed? Someone would
of answered,even in Russia. These guys know how to do it:

When I suffered the large supply loss, that was addressed to my US Govt issue PO Box. The second issue I had was to my street address.

USPS Informed Delivery is amazing and I cannot believe its "Free". I was pondering the other day how much disk space all of the images must take... even if they are kept for just a few days. Anyway, had some lost stamps via ebay show in my "feed" as coming and was able to report them "not delivered" yesterday and now they are in my feed again today... so hoping for delivery.
Great for packages and anything with USPS tracking too.

I buy a lot of stuff from Germany, and I've lost count of the number of things that have gone missing. Largest single item lost was probably about $100, but over the last 3 years, I've lost at least 7-8 shipments with over $2,000 in items (almost all of them registered) to the New York ISC. That place is like the Hotel California. I've filed multiple inquiries and had at least two USPIS investigations, but never seen a single item recovered.

Wow. I had one item I won, a very nice all-over multicolored advertising cover which the seller said he couldn't find and refunded my purchase price. I won it for a very small bid of $20.00.

A few months later, the same seller account has the cover listed. When I contacted the seller, it was the son selling with the deceased father's account and he refused to honor the prior sale. Considering he wanted $200 for it, I shouldn't have been surprised.

Other than that, I've never had anything substantive not show up and if it didn't, I've always been refunded the purchase price without problem.

Here's a twist. I sold a group of stamps (over $2000) to a fellow collector in the US. At his request they were sent registered. The first thing we noticed was they were taking a little longer than normal time over 2 day Priority Mail and by following the tracking, a little different route from previous shipments as well .

My friend lived down a driveway 1/2 to 3/4 mile from the road. He and his neighbors had their mail delivered to a strip of mail boxes up on the main road. About a week into transit,after dark, he noticed an elderly neighbor coming down his driveway. First concern was that something may have been wrong with the couple.

What he learned, was that the man had found a package just sitting on top of the row of mailboxes and knowing the forecast was calling for rain that night, thought he should drive it down to him.

WTH ! Imagine all of the scenarios that could have transpired with this ! The one that actually did being the only good one.

I was grateful when the collector called and told me the package had arrived. We were both furious about how this was handled and both filed complaints with the Post Office.

Their response, "all's well that ends well"

With these signed for mails, I usually sign when I receive it, so it would be unthinkable if the postman would just leave the parcels lying around.