I received an odd question from potential ebay bidder

[quote name='Gara']DC will pretty much win any dispute in the sellers favor. Shipped a month late, shipped you a damaged item, or the wrong item all together and the seller will still win the dispute with a DC in my experience.[/QUOTE]

You obviously haven't been following magiic's thread ;). The problem he had is that the buyer didn't claim the item didn't get there (which is all DC shows you) but that it was DAMAGED. In that case, DC means squat.
 
I've been fucked out of control. DC & Insurance. APPARENTLY THAT ISNT fuckING GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM. I've been fighting with paypal since end of november early december till now. It's still going. fucking ridiculous.
 
I always use to put U.S. only on my auctions and they would almost always be bid on and won by Canadians, which was always a pain in the ass as I'd be selling heavy, high dollar items, such as a large comic book collection, and not only did they want me to mail it for the $6 U.S. Media Mail quote when the rate to Canada was actually around $15, they wanted me to lie and put the value on the customs form as $10, even though the lot sold for $250.00. I'm glad you can black non-U.S. bidders in the Ebay settings now...it saves a lot of headaches.
 
With the customs forms it seems that every post office is different around here. Some make you put the form on everything, some do it only over 1 pound and some get upset when you have a customs form on something under one pound.

I also just recently sold some gameboy players to Canada using Global Priority mail which is suppose to have tracking. The buyer claimed he never recieved them and the tracking number did not show anything either. I think the problem with tracking happens because some post offices scan the deliver confimmation number for tracking and some scan the customs form for tracking. So you never know which one each post office is going to use as it makes its way from the U.S. to Canada

Personally that was my last straw and I now only sell to the U.S. when using Ebay and Paypal
 
I only sell to the states if I can avoid selling to Canada simply because it costs half as much or sometimes even less to mail things to the states.
 
[quote name='magiic']Has anyone actually used a DC number to win a dispute? I'm pretty sure paypal just automatically sides with the buyer.[/QUOTE]

Two or three times now.
 
Yeah i can understand why Americans don't ship to Canadians, but i ask that you don't flip out if a Canadian asks politely if you will ship to them, and they have 100% feedback, and they assure you they wont ask you to lie on the customs form. I've never done that before, and have had many great transactions with my American neighbors, just remember:

NEVER EVER fuckING SHIP TO CANADA VIA UPS. EVER
 
[quote name='io']Uh, that's not true - I have to fill out customs forms for anything outside of the U.S., including APO and AFO addresses. I almost never mail anything over 1 lb. There are different forms though - the little green ones and the larger white ones (which are used for parcel post or heavier things). Unless my PO is just being unnecessary about it ;).[/quote]

Possibly. I just shipped a NDS game to Canada, lady told me no form was needed for
 
I once sold a factory sealed, OOP anime DVD + artbox to a Canadian. He even asked and paid for EMS service. He got his stuff in like 2 days with tracking.

If your item is light and small, you can probably make an exception for this person but only if he pays for global priority mail service. Global Priority Service has some kind of barcodes on the package that the post office would scan too, at least up to the international exchange. Once it crosses the border, you may not get any tracking (except for EMS) though.
 
Yeah, I was just about to mention Global Priority Mail but eau beat me to it. The USPS offers some great flat rate Global Priority envelopes (about $5 to ship in the small one and $7-9 for the large one, which is great for strategy guides)

There's a trackable barcode on the envelope that will tell you when it leaves the US. I have no idea if that is sufficient for Paypal, but I tend to use these for pricier items, just in case.
 
Well, I spoke too soon, apparently. I now have a Canadian buyer telling me they didn't get something I sent on March 2nd via airmail letter post (hmmm... 3 weeks to the day - kind of suspicious there). Nothing more now than "it hasn't arrived". We'll see where this goes. If it's anything like my Spanish issue, they'll file with PayPal and get all their money back with ease. Although I have heard in the past that customs forms numbers are usable in tracking packages to Canada, but not to anywhere else. So I'll have to look into that. For now I provided the buyer with that number and suggested they contact on their end to see if it is held up in customs. This was a $35 game item (less than 1lb). I completely forget what I put for the value on the customs form ;).

Of course in my auctions I have the standard disclaimer that if you don't pay for insurance I'm not responsible. But that didn't mean a damn thing in my last dispute - PayPal didn't even consider that. They go by the tracking number or bust - no thought or examination of the claim beyond that.

I don't know if the barcodes on global priority mail mean a damn thing though (mine was sent airmail letter post). I have sent via global priority in the past. You certainly can't enter those as tracking numbers in the USPS online tracking (or at least I didn't think so but cranguy seems to have seen otherwise - I know it didn't work when I tried it the first time), so I'm not sure how useful they are if a package gets lost (or the buyer claims it never got there), at least with respect to PayPal.
 
[quote name='io']I don't know if the barcodes on global priority mail mean a damn thing though (mine was sent airmail letter post). I have sent via global priority in the past. You certainly can't enter those as tracking numbers in the USPS online tracking (or at least I didn't think so but cranguy seems to have seen otherwise - I know it didn't work when I tried it the first time), so I'm not sure how useful they are if a package gets lost (or the buyer claims it never got there), at least with respect to PayPal.[/quote] Actually, you can enter the barcode on a Global Priority Mail package at the USPS Track & Confirm page. It'll show status within the U.S., up until the package leaves the country. If it's EMS, the foreign country will scan the same barcode at their end, since EMS requires tracking all the way.
 
[quote name='eau']Actually, you can enter the barcode on a Global Priority Mail package at the USPS Track & Confirm page. It'll show status within the U.S., up until the package leaves the country. If it's EMS, the foreign country will scan the same barcode at their end, since EMS requires tracking all the way.[/QUOTE]

Hell, has I known that I would have insisted on global priority for anything over $30 to Canada. I swear I tried it once and it didn't work. Oh well... As for the EMS, if you mean via the USPS, I've found that to be pretty spotty with tracking. I've sent 3 things that way and only 1 showed tracking out of the U.S. The other two (1 to Australia and 1 to England I think) showed nothing. One to France did... On the Australia one I should be getting the $20 shipping fee back as it was delivered a week late - and according to the USPS investigation never delivered at all. The buyer told me they got it, but if I wanted to be sneaky I could claim the insurance as well. I'm not going to - just the $20 for shipping as it was guaranteed. However, today I got in the mail the forms for claiming for the loss, which I never asked for :rofl:.
 
I manage a small eBay business and I sell a lot of stuff to Canada. I don't mind shipping there. I've had nothing but good deals with them, except for one time when a package I sent was really lost, and I had to refund the money - only to have the package delivered back to me a day later.

I do have an issue with non-Canadians that want Surface Mail shipping, or who think my rates are too high. Other than that, things are pretty cool with me. I rarely have to ship stuff via Parcel Post (which forces you to use that bleedin' annoying white form that I have to write in FOUR TIMES because the paper sucks!) and the shipping cost to Canada is almost the same as shipping Priority within the US of A. And I go to the post office three times a week after I go look for merchandise to sell, so I really don't mind going there. :)

I do agree that their taxes are freakin' nuts, though. I -always- declare a low value on the customs form because of it. A friend got charged $20 on a $30 package which contained a few shirts. They're just as bad as Mexico...

Anyway, Canucks are cool in my book. :)

Edit:
By the way, Global Priority Mail only works for packages up to four pounds, and you can't track it once it leaves the country. It's useless for Paypal disputes, I'm sad to say.
 
Well, in any case, the Canadian buyer I had who said their game hadn't arrived after 3 weeks just left me feedback, so I assume they got it. I gave them the customs form number which I've heard can be used to track things down. They didn't say anything specific (just left + feedback), so I don't know if it happened to get delivered then or they called about it and freed it up from Customs. In any case, 3+ weeks is pretty crappy for airmail letter post :lol:. Now I got another buyer asking me what's up (but it has only been 1 week on that one). On the flip side, I've had packages get delivered to Canadian addresses in as little as 3-4 days. So who knows what's going on up there ;).
 
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