Tip On Shipping Items For Online Sales

I am sure many of you know this and perhaps do this already, but it's something new I just started doing because of the (recent) long shipping times with USPS.

I don't regularly sell on ebay but wanted to thin out my collection a bit. I sold about 30 lots between December 10th and 20th. I was careful to package and ship the same or the next day. I took some packages directly to the post office (inside box) and others to an outside collection box closer to my house. Three weeks later and some of these still haven't arrived. The worst part is that the tracking wasn't even showing an "item accepted" or "in possession of item" note, meaning they hadn't even been scanned in for over 2 weeks! Obviously, buyers were anxious and questioned why I hadn't shipped the items when I had.

So, I tried two different things. First, I tried the "request a pickup" option and the mail carrier came right to my door to pick up 4 items I had. She said she normally doesn't scan until the end of the day but scanned them right then after I explained what happened previously. Second, I went directly to the post office and asked the clerk to scan them immediately. He did. In both cases I was able to see a note saying that they had the item. More importantly, the buyer was able to see this.

The 4 that were picked up have already arrived, while a few mailed on the 10th are still languishing somewhere.

Either of these methods work for me although I am not sure what high volume sellers do. I just know it gave me more piece of mind knowing the items were officially in the system rather than stressing over their whereabouts.

Good luck shipping these days!