No More Coin Shipments For Me

As an occasional seller, I agree with this statement, but can also understand the anger and frustration of the recipient in this case, especially if it's not the first time.

I have been very lucky. The only time something similar happened to me (the item was not through my mail slot or on my porch when I received the text from UPS) I walked around my neighborhood and found it on a neighbor's front steps. (It happened a couple of days ago to my wife. That was Amazon).

But there are some serious problems with thefts of things going through USPS here in Columbus, Ohio. The small business where I work had a check they had cut stolen around this time last year. The crooks then "wiped" it, created new checks, and wreaked havoc.

To answer one other question ... I do not deal with any large U.S. auction houses, only European. Some of them still ship items by registered mail (so it winds up in USPS), at least up to a certain value. Elsen ships registered up to $1000, and uses a courier (DHL I think) above that, charging $75 (ouch!). I think others have a lower threshold.

Evidently my recipient for the holiday exchange claims he never received my package. Problem is tracking showed it was delivered in recipients mailbox .

You have a porch pirate. They took one of your packages realized it's coins and now it's an easy target. They assume you get coins and they are easy sales. Get a ring camera.

A lot of it has to do with your environment. I get things coming from Amazon several times a week and never had a problem. Then again, we have a porch camera and neighbors who won't put up with this stuff. The last tme we had an issue was about 20 years ago when a specific FEDEX driver would routinely deliver our packages to another address several streets over. We got to be friends with those people and they'd bring everything back to us without complaint.

You need to make sure and pay for insurance, and signature confirmation too.

If it says the item was delivered, then the seller and delivery company's job was done and it's out of their hands.

Also, ebay almost always sides with the buyer, so that is odd.

You have to admit, a pattern like this makes you look bad, so that's the reality.

After the first time I would have made sure to take these precautions.

Doesn't help now, but you can sign up your PO Box to receive UPS and Fedex shipments there.

Once the PO Box is registered, you just give the street address of the post office and list the PO Box number as the "Unit"

John Smith
123 Main Street
Unit 98765
Anytown, NY 12345

I don't get this. Why is your street address still visible to a seller? Is there some requirement that it has to be a street address, with the seller or ebay?

Not that a PO Box is an absolute solution either - I've had mail for another box appear in mine, so my mail could also have gone into the wrong box. This in not an error USPS should make, ever, but they do. The woman at the counter sighed when I brought it to her attention, giving me the impression it wasn't the first time, and probably was aware of a careless employee. Similarly, once a month or two we were getting mail for someone else in our regular mailbox - same number, different street a few blocks over, or same street but wrong number. My wife's 401k statement was delivered to someone else first (I could tell from what was written on the envelope), and that set me off. Who wants some stranger knowing how much money you have? Instead of doing the right thing, they could just open it and you'd never know. I put a terse note in the mailbox for the carrier and it hasn't happened since then, but still.

To answer a question above, coins from Heritage and GC have all come USPS.