rootboy 

Yes. Costs a little but provides me with a little peace-o-mind.

Edit: come to think of it though, I think the P.O. scans it as "delivered" as soon as they put the yellow card notice in my box. They only scan some of my packages as they come across the counter to me. Perhaps the insured ones. So, the layer of protection I imagine may not be there.

photogravity

@eastbay71 I disagree entirely. Don't make the USPS the whipping boy here. I believe the USPS moves more pieces of mail than FedEx and UPS combined and there are bound to be errors. I've had mail service for my entire life and have only ever had one piece of mail lost. Yes, you read that right ONE! The funny thing is that is was my water bill and only had to travel a few blocks from my home. Even then I'm not even sure it was the USPS that lost it.

I've had worse experiences with USPS and FedEx over the years and DHL was over the top horrible. Before they left the US market, if I wanted to purchase something online and the only option was to have DHL delivery I would go elsewhere to make the purchase. I'm pretty sure that if the competitors were to start regular 6 days a week mail service with the kind of volume the USPS encounters, we'd see plenty of problems with service and probably more than with the USPS.

wrk101

I had an item last year, post office clearly showed it delivered. Buyer was on vacation and by the time they returned ,.item was MIA. Buyer demanded a refund. It got really messy.

a77impala

I sent license plates to my out of state daughter, post office left a note at her house they tried to deliver them. She went to PO to get them, they couldn't find them.
I called the PO and the clerk said those plates are probably in"la la" land. I bought replacements and sent UPS, the next day the plates from USPS showed up in my mailbox!

Velognome 

Had a similar thing happen but the part was never recovered, the sender wrote his #1 's like #7 's. When I went to that address, it was more a crack house than a residence.

Parts never recovered

The Postal worker has delivered this route for years and you think they would have known I didn't live at that address.

Like I said, similar, but I didn't do anything with Ebay. The transaction was clean, the shipping got botched. Cool, enough, the seller issued a refund. I hope your seller re-sends the part.

rootboy 

I agree. As bloated and bureaucratic as the USPS is, it works remarkably well. Surprisingly well, I'd say. I can count on the fingers of one hand, fewer, in fact, how many parcels I've lost using the USPS in the last 30+ years. That's pretty danged good.

Velognome 

USPS, as good as they are still delivered it to the wrong address; can't get around that one.

noglider 

I sent my daughter a package with some sentimental childhood objects. She lives in Oakland. Several weeks later, the box comes back empty, marked as refused. My daughter said she never was offered to accept or refuse the package. I think someone is covering his tush because of the mistake he made. Since the sentimental value exceeds the monitor value, I didn't even open a case. I'm annoyed. I know these things happen, and I agree the USPS generally does an excellent job.

Rudi, I'm with you, and I think you're pursuing this the right way. I hope it turns out OK. I'm feeling optimistic for you.

FBinNY 

Though wrong address delivery isn't all that common, it does happen. Unfortunately the common carrier confirmation of delivery is generally accepted as proof of delivery by most courts, because it's the best evidence available. If courts can't rely on that, there's nothing left.

I understand ebay's position, though it's a shame they can't or won't assign a human to actually look at the nuances of the issue, especially since there's equally reliable evidence of receipt of the item back at the sender. I do know that ebay sometimes makes an accommodation refund in gray area cases where it's impossible to know for sure.

I ship thousands of small packets all over the world, and never bother with insurance, finding that it's more cost effective to allow a reserve for loss in transit. If stuff is lost or misdelivered I replace the item based on my customer's word, and "pay" for it out of my reserve. So far my loss expense averages less than 1/10th% of the value of my shipments.

lostarchitect 

+1, and USPS is actually a pretty sound business. The whole "unprofitable" USPS situation was politically created by those who want to kill it off. It was mandated that the USPS had to fund pensions 75 years in advance--more than any private business and any other government agency. They are paying pensions for people who are not employees yet. It's nuts. It adds up to billions of dollars a year in losses.

KonAaron Snake 

I'm sure a lot depends on where you live. Where I am now, we get absolutely incompetent service. The mail person regularly fakes delivery slips and scans tracking info with no attempt at delivery. They don't pick up mail from our box for some reason. The times I've had issues and made calls, I received disinterest and a total lack of anything resembling service.

photogravity

Yep, that's one of those things that nobody talks about. The whole situation makes me so mad I could spit nails. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the bailout mechanism for these big corporations that go bankrupt and we, as taxpayers, pay for that. Nobody thinks about that or even says anything about it, yet the USPS has to fund pensions 75 years out. It is fine for a multi-billion corporation to have an underfunded pension, yet the USPS is forced to overfund their pension system.

Full disclosure here: I an NOT a USPS employee, though I am a proud civil servant who works for a non-defense agency in the federal government.

lostarchitect 

Me neither, but my mother and aunt are, and my grandfather was, and the whole thing really pisses me off.

Crappy USPS employees who don't do their jobs piss me off, too!

photogravity

File a complaint online and ask for an email response on the matter. That will most definitely get their attention. When we were away on holiday for more than a month, we had mail delivered a few times. Fortunately, the person who feeds the cats was stopping every day, so the mail was brought in. I raised the roof about it because it wasn't the first time it's happened to us.

The USPS is not perfect but I'm doubtful a private company would do any better. Once you have shareholders involved, the likelihood of profit (read: greed) changes the paradigm significantly, if not entirely.

photogravity

Anyone who doesn't do their job pisses me off. The fact of the matter is that the USPS is squeezing their employees so much these days that they are bound to make mistakes. I think the vast majority of USPS employees are very conscientious, hardworking folks, but are unable to do anything about the workload with which they are saddled because of this stupid political game that is being played at their expense.

YouthxCrew

I've never had problems till we moved to our current house, things have gone downhill. No matter how many notices I leave, they tend to leave packages right on the front doorstep without ringing the bell, I had a wheelset stolen off the porch 2 months ago because of it. Another time, they marked a package as having no answer at the door (everyone was home) and didn't leave a slip. I couldn't schedule a redelivery and the package disappeared.

Bikedued

I just had a little mixup with the USPS, involving a member here. Addressed correctly and almost delivered, but for some reason the priority mail and other "special" packages seem to be delivered after hours. I've noticed this at both my home with some packages delivered after dark, and now at work which was clearly a business address on the package. Delivery attempt was made 20 minutes after the business was locked up and everyone had already left(including me) This "late delivery" thing seems to be the norm here in Houston at least. I get to go to the main area post office and see if they can find it tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed.,,,,BD

KonAaron Snake 

Respectfully Dallas - a lot of them are paid far more than their skill level justifies compared to most labor, so I expect a higher degree of care and effort. I understand that some of the changes are due to cut backs and the replacement of union folks with part timers, but some of it is also just poorly managed, awful employees. At least in my area. You know me well enough to know that I've vigorously pursued complaints on several occasions, and they make comcast look customer focused.

Management cultures are top down. I spoke directly with our regional post-admiral (or whatever his title was) and the guy was an arrogant, quasi-literate buffoon. I understood what was happening after meeting him. They replicate themselves and their attitudes. My wife couldn't even rely on getting mail at her PO Box...they consistently sorted things incorrectly or returned properly addressed checks and invoices. We switched and pay more at the fed ex store now - but it gets here.

You can blame stress, or part timers, but the bottom line is that the service I've gotten has been inept, plagued with fraud and management has been kafkaesque (to borrow from earlier in the thread). I'm sure it's not like that elsewhere, but it is throughout Philadelphia and it's very aggravating.

lostarchitect 

I agree about the majority, but I have filed complaints multiple times about the one I have an issue with. The supervisor called me back once, but the issues have not changed. There is no good way to route out the problem people, unfortunately. We have some good stories in my family about that, I can assure you. It reflects badly on the majority, which is unfair.

-holiday76

this one is pretty clear to me. USPS screwed up, so they should be held responsible. Because they won't/refuse to/whatever, i don't see why eBay should be held responsible for USPS mistakes. Yes, I work for eBay so if you want to say I'm biased have at it, but that's my unbiased opinion, and you know I'd freely admit (and try to help) if I believe eBay were in the wrong. By the way, these same types of things happen with Amazon with the same results. In other words, if the facilitator isn't the originator of the shipped package there really isn't a lot that can be done on their end. And if Amazon, eBay, whomever made amends on behalf of USPS/Fedex/UPS mistakes every time that wouldn't be very smart business practices. Companies like Target or Walmart or whomever are in a different/better position to do that because they can easily replace/write off the missing product, which they might have even produced.

So maybe next time buy your vintage bike parts from them

edit:

btw, what I could see happening in this case would be having the seller get ahold of eBay, explaining the situation, and I'd be willing they'd probably credit the seller back some fees to help offset the cost of re-shipping. You might mention that to the seller. it's worth a try, and perhaps he could pass on or share the savings to whomever ends up footing the bill to fix the USPS mistake.

FBinNY 

I think the issue here is that the item was returned to the seller (by the same standard of proof ebay or anyone uses). So, not counting th cost of shipping, there's a place for ebay to ensure that the buyer gets a refund at the seller's expense. This would put everybody back even except for the postage lost.

If the item had simply been mis-delivered to points unknown, then it would be a different story, but that's not the case here.

-holiday76

no, the case here is that USPS screwed up, so why should the seller be forced to eat it? I agree that most sellers probably would to keep the buyers happy, but be forced to? Not sure about that. In the end the USPS should be held responsible.

Uncle Randy

It is crazy and people can thank George W. Bush for that.

rhm

I don't follow. Where, in this thread, did anyone suggest eBay be held responsible? To even suggest such a thing shows a complete failure to understand the issue at hand.

FBinNY 

Nobody is asking that the seller or ebay eat anything. (see below, from the OP)

By any logic this should be treated as if the buyer received the wrong item, and returned it for replacement or refund. The ONLY issue is who should eat the postage wasted because of USPS error, but in this case the OP is willing to, so there's no issue there either.

I expect that the seller will reship if the postage is paid, but ebay is in the wrong for failing to look at the totality of the situation. And your post reinforces the notion that ebay staffers are fixed in their thinking and unable to deal intelligently with nuanced issues. (possibly/hopefully you didn't read the original post)

BTW- delivered to the wrong address is not that rare a situation, and a business like ebay should be ready to deal with it on e way or another.