Last week, I got a message from a Paypal buyer asking, “Where is my package?” I then noticed the order date was back in late November. Yes, this bastard waited 5 months and ~25 days to send this message. He said he couldn’t track his package using the tracking number on file. I went to check for myself, and sure enough, he was right. I then looked at other packages I shipped out that day. Sure enough, NONE SHOWED ONLINE TRACKING.
That’s when I found this must read article, which essentially says USPS online tracking only goes back 4 months. And even Ebay’s sold history only goes back 4 months.
I then reached out to USPS in hopes they can find the tracking number in their archives or so. After 5 days, they came back and said SORRY, we can’t find that tracking number. So now I’m basically screwed out of $240 because I can no longer prove I even shipped the package. The kick in the nuts thing is that this buyer used a dropshipper and has 400+ feedback, so he must have known the scam.
Lessons Learned
If you’re a casual Ebay seller, you may want to manually go in and screenshot your high value sales and their delivered statuses.
You may want to use signature tracking on items over $100 or $200 (your own threshold) regardless. That $240 lost would have covered over 100 signature packages (remember, you’re only doing this on high dollar items.)
You may also want to consider using a 3rd party service that will hold longer history.
I would recommend option 1 or 2 (depending on your volume.)
Does using sig confirmation mean that USPS holds on to tracking info longer than 4 months?
I BELIEVE so.
You think they would put a time limit on the I didn’t get my package excuse at least. No one waits more than a few weeks to raise a stink.
Wonder if PO would have longer access to history…
Workaround for this scam might be to sign up for email delivery alerts for the tracking number.
No I went to the PO, tweeted them and even filed a “where is my pkg’ form and all 3 had no history of it. I’ve never signed up for outgoing delivery alerts but if that’s possible, that should work.
Wow. This is insane. Thank you for the heads up.
On a more positive note, still ordering sacks of crawfish from the source you recommended way back. It’s amazing. I’ve been doing the “Jumbo U/12 count/lb” size the past 2-years and haven’t looked back.
Dang now you have my mouth watering. Season’s coming to an end soon. I had some ~2 weeks ago; really big ones too.
Do you know how long UPS and Fedex retain tracking info?
Thanks for the FYI Ken
Thanks for the reminder. I just saved a PDF with delivery confirmation for my last few months of sales.
Sounds like a massive PITA for people that do volume shipping.
I can not believe this! Wait until the word gets out to the larger audience that they can scam free items. PayPal is the worst!
For sure, you don’t even need to do a chargeback. Just complain on every 5-6 month Ebay purchases on Paypal. I’m sure 90% of ppl don’t save delivery notices. FREE FOR ALL!!!
So basically this means any dishonest person out there can freely steal their money back on everything they’ve bought on ebay longer than 5 months ago? No bueno. There must be some way of dealing with this or PayPal/Ebay is really going to take a hit I would think. No way they should just be allowed to just shrug their shoulders on this one with just a “sorry, not our problem.”
Issue – Paypal lets you chargeback for 6 months. That won’t change since I think the card companies let you charge back that far. Another issue – USPS isn’t going to add additional retention. The easy fix is for Ebay to just show 6 months worth of history because they update their status’s to ‘delivered.’ I’m hoping once Ebay kicks out Paypal and takes payments directly, this issue will be mitigated since they’ll know themselves.