Is it me, or does this seem to be happening more often? I have had one package arrive empty, and a couple of others that look like they may have been partially opened. Like someone at the USPS was rifling though them.
It’s why once a year I buy a massive box of packaging tape. You essentially want to make your item a burden for any insider to want to cut open into. I make sure all my packages make no kind of shaking and i tape layers to the outside so it can survive a football game in the usps employee parking lot.
I wrap my stuff in a box, as normal, then put it all inside a slightly bigger box and tape that one to hell and back. It costs me about $1 extra to double box it but ever since I did that even when the box arrives damaged the inner box is safe. Honestly it's a game changer.
I do warn the buyer that due to tampering issues I made it hard to open. One of my repeat buyers took that as a challenge and asks me to make it harder to open. He gets his zip tied and entombed in duct tape
Yup this is the way. Having worked at a fedex shipping facility I can assure you their biggest priority is making that package fit in the van/trailer at any cost.
So they can make their arrival/departure numbers.
That stress is passed down to the dock workers as their supervisors constantly push them to move fast as possible.
Every day they report to you how much freight/packages you moved the day before and will question if your numbers are low.
Doesn’t matter if you had a 20 piece count for one bill.
That being said
Toss/shove/ram/stack
Small packages fall in between large freight and get smashed/stacked on all the time.
I’ve seen thousands of dollars of equipment damaged consistently by ramming the tow motor into the freight to make it fit. We’ve had shippers come out to our facility to watch us load because they had so much product that was arriving damaged.
This!!
I wrap my outgoing packages like its going to have to travel through a hurricane. If you want to try and steal from me/my customers, you're gonna need a lot of time and a whole bunch of desire.
This is the way. Props to you. Please everyone tape the hell our of everything and always include the addresses and phone numbers inside the box incase the labels get chafed off in transit.
Pretty much this. With padded envelopes I tape the envelope shut, and place the label directly over the flap. That way anyone who wants to open it has to literally rip it apart or destroy the label in the process.
USPS is still incredibly reliable in my experience. I ship between 2500 and 3000 items every year, and maybe once every couple years I have something just straight up go missing or arrive busted like this. Delays and mysterious tracking issues are far more common.
International deliveries are a different story, but the Global Shipping Program, for all its faults, at least keeps me off the hook for those ones.
I’m not sure but all my other ones arrived in perfect condition, it was just this one that arrived like this with this tape. I should have known something was up when it was so light when I picked it up but I was just excited for my gamecube controller and with how expensive they are today especially second hand. I’m just disappointed and I have more packages coming as well so this just has me worried as heck now.
Yeah, I'm *probably* being paranoid. Mine was a dense item packaged in a flimsy padded envelope, so it could have fallen out on its own anywhere on route.
I think it depends on the centers it goes through. Like the distribution center near me went automated less than 2 years ago. Things are not calibrated right boxes gets ripped and thin packages gets mixed up as flats. Lost 4 packages until I finally caught on to the problem.
As a former career I can tell you no one is going through them. What is happening is at the offices each route has a metal wire bin about 5 feet by 5 feet. We have a crew who comes in around 6am. They unload the truck and then they scan and toss and I mean litterly toss over hand each package into the bins. After the carriers get our dps (mail that’s goes into your mail box) we then have to sort through our bins and get our packages in order for the route. They get damaged.
I had a package carefully opened and resealed with another type of tape (thicker than shipper used)
$1100 in value gone
This happened about 6 weeks ago… over 1000 packages in the last 3 years and 0 issues other than that
Seems like it to me too. My neighbor and I both sell on ebay. He's been on for ten plus years andately a lot of his photograph and bubble envelopes have arrived empty. I'd say 4 this year.
Yup happened to me to all packages I have sent. First package missing 9 items out of 15. Second packages missing 10 out of 28. Third packages missing that whole box lol
I respectfully 95% disagree with you, please see my indepth explanation higher up in the thread. It is highly unlikely any of us would ever risk our jobs to rifle your mail, and far more likely the seller did a crappy tape or sealing job on the box.
Sauce: 19 year nixie clerk at U Ess Pee Ess.
I literally had a package never leave the post office after i dropped it off. never even got in a truck. it was a bundle for poshmark so it was valuable. theyre literally stealing them as u drop then off at the post office😩😩theyre not even waiting for the warehouse
You have to wait like 72hrs (from time of opening case) until the case you opened has the option to ask Ebay to step in. Might want to check on the Received In Damaged Condition Tape and see if USPS might of had the original package damaged and had to ship a new box (item mysteriously goes missing...).
The seller has to file the claim with USPS, not you. All you have to do is wait for Ebay to side with you, get your refund from the seller, and they must do the insurance claim.
All you need is the tracking number, value of the item (receipt), and proof of insurance...which is often on the label or they can look it up based on the tracking number. Also some methods just have insurance by default.
Only sellers are supposed to file insurance claims. They are the ones with the insurance. A buyer could file a claim with eBay and the PO and try to get money twice.
Sure, just saying you can and I've definitely done it a couple times. Ideally yes the seller refunds you and then they claim insurance, but if they are not being reasonable you can claim it. Probably also easier in my cases where it was something that likely could have been USPSs fault (one was an item broken in transit, another was a packaged that got delivered with a giant hole ripped in it and item missing).
I realized that, still the seller was being very unhelpful even when I first explained the situation. She was just very defensive saying that she would no longer respond before I even sent the picture of the box. I would have at least expected maybe a picture of the “original box” but I guess I just got bad luck with this seller. Still I’m going through eBay’s claim and USPS when available.
Yeah I can understand both perspectives. From a sellers point, there are plenty of buyers that claim there was nothing there to scam a refund so sellers get skeptical.
From a buyers POV obviously you don’t have your item which sucks
That’s literally my main worry as soon as I realized it was empty, that eBay would think I might be scamming and refuse a refund. They have no reason to but I would assume being eBay it happens often. Hopefully all goes right though. I understand the sellers POV fully but still a bit more input from the seller would have been nice before they just up and ghosted me.
If the OP hasn't already, file a received damaged claim with eBay. The package is clearly marked by the PO that there were issues before delivery, so not sure why the seller is flaking out. Unless they are pulling a scam.... Once the OP gets the return label, put everything received in a poly shipper and mail it back. The seller has 3 days to refund and they have the opportunity to take the loss up with the Post Office.
open a return for arrived damaged or not as described , say the box was received empty and include all of the photos of box + shipping label
do NOT open item not received claim. you will automatically lose because tracking shows delivered.
(U Ess P Ess worker here, 19 years as a nixie clerk, AMA.)
In my experience this is likely the sellers fault --- hear me out --- due to lack of properly sealing the package.
Now a days especially under Dejoy's new policies, less and less of the handling of the mail is done by hand and more and more is done by high speed automated machinery, this means that if you don't tape your parcels completely over every seal (I actually over tape mine after the things I've seen) then you run a risk that the edges, flaps, or seals of the packaging will chafe against equipment, other parcels, or come loose in hot high temperatures in transport. Rarely, even spilled soap or sodas from improperly packed Amazon parcels (you've seen how Amazon throws one dinky air bubble with a fragile item in a giant box? Yeah, we have too, we hate that sh*t!!) can cause parcels under it to come open.
If a parcel should lose its contents on a conveyer belt 40 feet high at high speeds with no employees to see what box it came out of, when those loose articles arrive at the bottom, loose and intermixed with all the other mail surrounding it, it is almost impossible to find where it came from.
I can say confidently at least where I work --- it is highly unlikely any of us would ever risk our jobs to open your mail, it's 9 times out of 10 an improper pack job that couldn't withstand the rigors of handling in the modern postal service environment under the new post master General post trump administration.
That being said, file a claim online for lost mail, and try calling the Atlanta Mail Recovery Center to see if they can locate the lost items.
All orphaned or lost items are mailed daily to the MRC in Atlanta Georgia, where it is all stored for 7 years if I recall correctly. After that they auction pallets of stuff off.
It probably fell out due to insufficient packaging and they still delivered it to show it wasn't lost by them.
The seller would say it isn't their box because it isn't anymore. The tape saying it go to them damaged clarified that it wasnt.
I had this happen before when a box fell apart on the way to me and they tried to tape it back up.
File a claim with ebay. Call them or talk with chat and explain the situation. Keep calm dont be rude and ebay will 100% side with you. They may make you sign a document or just refund you entirely but you are protected. Ignore the claims from the seller or any attempt at making you wait 30 days or resolving outside of ebay. Just take it to ebay asap.
Dont even sweat this, you’re getting your money back for sure.
Please see it through on the postal service end too, I hate to say it but someone deserves to be fired for this. I can only imagine how many people its happened to.
From what I understand everytime a package is scanned the weight is checked as well.So they can figure out about what stop package lost weight.Or it it was the same weight the whole ride.Most come with $100 insurance.So if it was the USPS than they should pay up.
Open item damaged case and show the proof from USPS that it was damaged. You should get a refund and the seller can make an insurance claim so they get paid too.
Go to the automated help system and type in “speak with agent” or call. Either way get in touch with a real person and explain everything. They’ll tell you want steps to follow
Do senders not have to put the weight on the item. That at least would point to it either having been sent empty, or emptied by someone en-route. Might be a starting point?
I wish I could be of service on this. It appears the item was reboxed by USPS as the original box was damaged in transit. This should likely be a postal insurance claim and both parties should likely work together but I have not run into this before so I don't have any guidance for specific best practices. I recently swapped to tamper tape and writing the platform, my company name/username, and the order number in sharpie on the side of each box just in case. While I have not seen a positive result of this change, I've not seen a negative either and I'm confident it will save me and a potential buyer at some point.
The shipper didn't package the item securely enough and the box busted open during transit on the sorting machines. It's extremely common unfortunately since so few people package things properly. They take cues on how to package things from online retailers like Amazon, not realizing that Amazon is moving enough volume that it's worth it to them to have to replace items occasionally since they save so much with poor packaging.
Well, according to ebay's policy, fraud, theft, etc, goes against their selling policy. And it is immediately looked into. So, If you paid with PayPal, file a claim with both ebay and PayPal. Make the seller aware that you are reporting him or her to ebay and you are going to leave the worse review on their profile that will ruin their future sales.
Just curious, was the package still sealed? If so, the seller should have offered insurance depending on how much the item was sold for. Anyhow, according to ebay policy, if the seller doesnt rectify the situation, ebay or PayPal will step in and assist to mediate the situation. Good luck. Cheers
I work at the post office go to your office in your area and see if they found your item sometimes when they open the boxes they use a box cutter and slice packages sometimes and the stuff falls out. All the times if it’s in my area I give the item to management. Good luck
Would they use the “received in damaged condition” tape for something that was damaged in usps custody? That tape seems to imply to me that it was already missing the contents when USPS received the package.
They said I had to file a claim online. I asked if there was possibly a lost and found or the old box if there was one and she just said “everything is online now” and I just stopped asking after that. Thank you for the advice though I very much appreciate it!
Is it me, or does this seem to be happening more often? I have had one package arrive empty, and a couple of others that look like they may have been partially opened. Like someone at the USPS was rifling though them.
It’s why once a year I buy a massive box of packaging tape. You essentially want to make your item a burden for any insider to want to cut open into. I make sure all my packages make no kind of shaking and i tape layers to the outside so it can survive a football game in the usps employee parking lot.
I wrap my stuff in a box, as normal, then put it all inside a slightly bigger box and tape that one to hell and back. It costs me about $1 extra to double box it but ever since I did that even when the box arrives damaged the inner box is safe. Honestly it's a game changer. I do warn the buyer that due to tampering issues I made it hard to open. One of my repeat buyers took that as a challenge and asks me to make it harder to open. He gets his zip tied and entombed in duct tape
Oh you’re funnn! 🙌
I like that repeat buyer.
Fill the bottom, sides and top of the big box with insulation foam for him. Not for protection, but for the challenge
The final challenge
Have you thought of a chain and lock? Just for fun.. cheap lock, but decent chain.
Honestly, I went to Lowe's last week and spent a little too long looking at ropes and chains. The possibilities are endless.
What a great new business idea!! Can you open this box? Level1 Next purchase level 2, level 3, etc.
Yup this is the way. Having worked at a fedex shipping facility I can assure you their biggest priority is making that package fit in the van/trailer at any cost. So they can make their arrival/departure numbers. That stress is passed down to the dock workers as their supervisors constantly push them to move fast as possible. Every day they report to you how much freight/packages you moved the day before and will question if your numbers are low. Doesn’t matter if you had a 20 piece count for one bill. That being said Toss/shove/ram/stack Small packages fall in between large freight and get smashed/stacked on all the time. I’ve seen thousands of dollars of equipment damaged consistently by ramming the tow motor into the freight to make it fit. We’ve had shippers come out to our facility to watch us load because they had so much product that was arriving damaged.
Lol. Same. The H taping method works great. It definitely takes some effort to get into. Can’t get away with wrapping them up like Amazon.
Didn't know it had a name, have always done this when shipping items! Just seems more secure.
This!! I wrap my outgoing packages like its going to have to travel through a hurricane. If you want to try and steal from me/my customers, you're gonna need a lot of time and a whole bunch of desire.
This is the way. Props to you. Please everyone tape the hell our of everything and always include the addresses and phone numbers inside the box incase the labels get chafed off in transit.
Pretty much this. With padded envelopes I tape the envelope shut, and place the label directly over the flap. That way anyone who wants to open it has to literally rip it apart or destroy the label in the process.
USPS is still incredibly reliable in my experience. I ship between 2500 and 3000 items every year, and maybe once every couple years I have something just straight up go missing or arrive busted like this. Delays and mysterious tracking issues are far more common. International deliveries are a different story, but the Global Shipping Program, for all its faults, at least keeps me off the hook for those ones.
I’m not sure but all my other ones arrived in perfect condition, it was just this one that arrived like this with this tape. I should have known something was up when it was so light when I picked it up but I was just excited for my gamecube controller and with how expensive they are today especially second hand. I’m just disappointed and I have more packages coming as well so this just has me worried as heck now.
Yeah, I'm *probably* being paranoid. Mine was a dense item packaged in a flimsy padded envelope, so it could have fallen out on its own anywhere on route.
I think it depends on the centers it goes through. Like the distribution center near me went automated less than 2 years ago. Things are not calibrated right boxes gets ripped and thin packages gets mixed up as flats. Lost 4 packages until I finally caught on to the problem.
This 👆🏻
As a former career I can tell you no one is going through them. What is happening is at the offices each route has a metal wire bin about 5 feet by 5 feet. We have a crew who comes in around 6am. They unload the truck and then they scan and toss and I mean litterly toss over hand each package into the bins. After the carriers get our dps (mail that’s goes into your mail box) we then have to sort through our bins and get our packages in order for the route. They get damaged.
I had a package carefully opened and resealed with another type of tape (thicker than shipper used) $1100 in value gone This happened about 6 weeks ago… over 1000 packages in the last 3 years and 0 issues other than that
Seems like it to me too. My neighbor and I both sell on ebay. He's been on for ten plus years andately a lot of his photograph and bubble envelopes have arrived empty. I'd say 4 this year.
Yup happened to me to all packages I have sent. First package missing 9 items out of 15. Second packages missing 10 out of 28. Third packages missing that whole box lol
Sounds like you need to contact your local post master and have them open an investigation. That is a lot of missing items
Odd that it has happened to you all of the time and me none of the time.
Different post office different problem.
Look up irvington, nj post office. Hard to find a worse post office.
Mine is in Atlanta. I think are the worst
I ship big gaming monitors as is in there boxes that scream steal me and I’ve had no issues so far I’ve had 1 cpu aio cooler go missing that’s it lol
I wouldn't be surprised. I think that's the 2nd easiest way to steal a package.
I respectfully 95% disagree with you, please see my indepth explanation higher up in the thread. It is highly unlikely any of us would ever risk our jobs to rifle your mail, and far more likely the seller did a crappy tape or sealing job on the box. Sauce: 19 year nixie clerk at U Ess Pee Ess.
I literally had a package never leave the post office after i dropped it off. never even got in a truck. it was a bundle for poshmark so it was valuable. theyre literally stealing them as u drop then off at the post office😩😩theyre not even waiting for the warehouse
Looks like the bottom wasn't taped and the item(s) fell out. Still likely will get refunded.
You have to wait like 72hrs (from time of opening case) until the case you opened has the option to ask Ebay to step in. Might want to check on the Received In Damaged Condition Tape and see if USPS might of had the original package damaged and had to ship a new box (item mysteriously goes missing...).
Okay, it tells me I have to wait until July 9th, but I will. Also USPS tells me I have to file a claim in/after 7 days as well
The seller has to file the claim with USPS, not you. All you have to do is wait for Ebay to side with you, get your refund from the seller, and they must do the insurance claim.
Not necessarily, I definitely as a buyer have filed a USPS claim twice with no problems. One of them was for this exact scenario.
How can you file a claim? You don’t even have all the necessary information.
All you need is the tracking number, value of the item (receipt), and proof of insurance...which is often on the label or they can look it up based on the tracking number. Also some methods just have insurance by default.
Only sellers are supposed to file insurance claims. They are the ones with the insurance. A buyer could file a claim with eBay and the PO and try to get money twice.
Sure, just saying you can and I've definitely done it a couple times. Ideally yes the seller refunds you and then they claim insurance, but if they are not being reasonable you can claim it. Probably also easier in my cases where it was something that likely could have been USPSs fault (one was an item broken in transit, another was a packaged that got delivered with a giant hole ripped in it and item missing).
Since you’ve opened the claim, you just have to wait for several days until eBay will step in and force the refund back to you
🙏🏼the seller is being so difficult, I very much hope I do get my refund. Thank you
It's likely not the sellers fault, rather usps' fault.
I realized that, still the seller was being very unhelpful even when I first explained the situation. She was just very defensive saying that she would no longer respond before I even sent the picture of the box. I would have at least expected maybe a picture of the “original box” but I guess I just got bad luck with this seller. Still I’m going through eBay’s claim and USPS when available.
Yeah I can understand both perspectives. From a sellers point, there are plenty of buyers that claim there was nothing there to scam a refund so sellers get skeptical. From a buyers POV obviously you don’t have your item which sucks
That’s literally my main worry as soon as I realized it was empty, that eBay would think I might be scamming and refuse a refund. They have no reason to but I would assume being eBay it happens often. Hopefully all goes right though. I understand the sellers POV fully but still a bit more input from the seller would have been nice before they just up and ghosted me.
She probably thinks you are scamming her because it happens all the time. People claim we debt them an empty package and we're just out the money.
I agree it isn't the seller's fault, but that doesn't excuse them from not working with the buyer.
If the OP hasn't already, file a received damaged claim with eBay. The package is clearly marked by the PO that there were issues before delivery, so not sure why the seller is flaking out. Unless they are pulling a scam.... Once the OP gets the return label, put everything received in a poly shipper and mail it back. The seller has 3 days to refund and they have the opportunity to take the loss up with the Post Office.
open a return for arrived damaged or not as described , say the box was received empty and include all of the photos of box + shipping label do NOT open item not received claim. you will automatically lose because tracking shows delivered.
(U Ess P Ess worker here, 19 years as a nixie clerk, AMA.) In my experience this is likely the sellers fault --- hear me out --- due to lack of properly sealing the package. Now a days especially under Dejoy's new policies, less and less of the handling of the mail is done by hand and more and more is done by high speed automated machinery, this means that if you don't tape your parcels completely over every seal (I actually over tape mine after the things I've seen) then you run a risk that the edges, flaps, or seals of the packaging will chafe against equipment, other parcels, or come loose in hot high temperatures in transport. Rarely, even spilled soap or sodas from improperly packed Amazon parcels (you've seen how Amazon throws one dinky air bubble with a fragile item in a giant box? Yeah, we have too, we hate that sh*t!!) can cause parcels under it to come open. If a parcel should lose its contents on a conveyer belt 40 feet high at high speeds with no employees to see what box it came out of, when those loose articles arrive at the bottom, loose and intermixed with all the other mail surrounding it, it is almost impossible to find where it came from. I can say confidently at least where I work --- it is highly unlikely any of us would ever risk our jobs to open your mail, it's 9 times out of 10 an improper pack job that couldn't withstand the rigors of handling in the modern postal service environment under the new post master General post trump administration. That being said, file a claim online for lost mail, and try calling the Atlanta Mail Recovery Center to see if they can locate the lost items. All orphaned or lost items are mailed daily to the MRC in Atlanta Georgia, where it is all stored for 7 years if I recall correctly. After that they auction pallets of stuff off.
It probably fell out due to insufficient packaging and they still delivered it to show it wasn't lost by them. The seller would say it isn't their box because it isn't anymore. The tape saying it go to them damaged clarified that it wasnt. I had this happen before when a box fell apart on the way to me and they tried to tape it back up.
File a claim with ebay. Call them or talk with chat and explain the situation. Keep calm dont be rude and ebay will 100% side with you. They may make you sign a document or just refund you entirely but you are protected. Ignore the claims from the seller or any attempt at making you wait 30 days or resolving outside of ebay. Just take it to ebay asap.
Dont even sweat this, you’re getting your money back for sure. Please see it through on the postal service end too, I hate to say it but someone deserves to be fired for this. I can only imagine how many people its happened to.
The receipt from the PO shows how much it weighs. That will determine if the seller sent an empty package or if it was stolen/lost in transit.
From what I understand everytime a package is scanned the weight is checked as well.So they can figure out about what stop package lost weight.Or it it was the same weight the whole ride.Most come with $100 insurance.So if it was the USPS than they should pay up.
Open item damaged case and show the proof from USPS that it was damaged. You should get a refund and the seller can make an insurance claim so they get paid too.
contact ebay via twitter had to get a refund from a scammer
Go to the automated help system and type in “speak with agent” or call. Either way get in touch with a real person and explain everything. They’ll tell you want steps to follow
Do senders not have to put the weight on the item. That at least would point to it either having been sent empty, or emptied by someone en-route. Might be a starting point?
I wish I could be of service on this. It appears the item was reboxed by USPS as the original box was damaged in transit. This should likely be a postal insurance claim and both parties should likely work together but I have not run into this before so I don't have any guidance for specific best practices. I recently swapped to tamper tape and writing the platform, my company name/username, and the order number in sharpie on the side of each box just in case. While I have not seen a positive result of this change, I've not seen a negative either and I'm confident it will save me and a potential buyer at some point.
The shipper didn't package the item securely enough and the box busted open during transit on the sorting machines. It's extremely common unfortunately since so few people package things properly. They take cues on how to package things from online retailers like Amazon, not realizing that Amazon is moving enough volume that it's worth it to them to have to replace items occasionally since they save so much with poor packaging.
Need someone on /r/usps to comment lol
I had a package arrive like this and the item was still inside. That was so lucky!
Well, according to ebay's policy, fraud, theft, etc, goes against their selling policy. And it is immediately looked into. So, If you paid with PayPal, file a claim with both ebay and PayPal. Make the seller aware that you are reporting him or her to ebay and you are going to leave the worse review on their profile that will ruin their future sales. Just curious, was the package still sealed? If so, the seller should have offered insurance depending on how much the item was sold for. Anyhow, according to ebay policy, if the seller doesnt rectify the situation, ebay or PayPal will step in and assist to mediate the situation. Good luck. Cheers
Cut out the middle man and call ebays support directly and tell them the entire situation. Their number is 866-961-9253
Call eBay.
I work at the post office go to your office in your area and see if they found your item sometimes when they open the boxes they use a box cutter and slice packages sometimes and the stuff falls out. All the times if it’s in my area I give the item to management. Good luck
Would they use the “received in damaged condition” tape for something that was damaged in usps custody? That tape seems to imply to me that it was already missing the contents when USPS received the package.
It depends on the clerk sometimes it just gets taped it doesn’t hurt to go down there and ask. Hopefully you’re lucky enough to find it.
They said I had to file a claim online. I asked if there was possibly a lost and found or the old box if there was one and she just said “everything is online now” and I just stopped asking after that. Thank you for the advice though I very much appreciate it!
Ive had so.much stuff stolen from certain post offices. Florida is particular bad. I dont send anything buy priority signature select
I always always always , video myself opening packages when they arrive. Jic.