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From:	Diana's Books Nook - (Power Seller) (vegsource dealer program)
Subject:	This will be of interest to those who mail media and use paypal .....
Date:	August 22, 2012 at 8:10 pm PST

As you know I have bought and sold on here for years and never thought
about what paypal does with a dispute on media mail. I notice most
sellers will leave it up to the buyer whether they want to purchase
insurance or not and use the disclaimer... I am not responsible for the
package once it it mailed. Even if you have an agreement with the
buyer, if you can not prove that the package arrived at the seller's
address, you will lose a paypal dispute with the buyer. It is not
enough to have delivery confirmation, you must have proof that it was
received by the buyer. I have never had a package lost until recently.
I was looking at the tracking of a package and noticed that it was sent
to " dead mail". I immediately emailed usps with an inquiry and my
local postmaster got in touch with me by email. I explained that the
package seemed to have been damaged and asked her what to do. She sent
the recovery center all the pertinent information on the package - the
exact contents, my information and the buyers information. I thought
since they had at least used the confirmation number when sending the
package to the dead mail, that hopefully they would continue to use the
number when they located the items and remailed the package. Obviously
they did not. When I didn't hear anymore about the package for about a
month, I contacted usps again I was put in touch with a person with the
usps customer and industry contact for my state district. The person
told me that they believed the package made it to the destination post
office but since the mail recovery center doesn't communicate with any
of the post offices, no one could confirm it.
They obviously were not tracking it any longer with the delivery
confirmation bar code. The buyer filed a complaint on the package (
they did not pay for insurance and did not let me know if they contacted
usps at all about the package from their end). I went ahead and
escalated the dispute to a claim so this could be resolved. I sent
paypal the agreement with the buyer, our emails, etc. They decided in
the buyer's favor based on I didn't have proof of receipt of the books.
Any personal agreement is not considered. Now, I would like to be
clear. Since I have never had a lost package, it never occurred to me
how Paypal would look at a claim. If the buyer had given me a chance, I
would have offered to pay for the books or at least have halved the loss
but they didn't offer any solution. My feeling is that if they can feel
okay about it, so can I. I have been extremely blessed with buying and
selling. I have mailed hundreds of packages over the last 10 years with
no loss until now. I am going to start offering paypal.... but if the
buyer wants to use paypal, they will have to pay to insure the package.
Then I will have some measure of protection too. Just thought it might
be helpful to some sellers who do the right thing and offer paypal...
not personal paypal but actually pay for the service so they will know
what to expect. Delivery confirmation is only good if you can prove the
buyer received the books, not that you mailed them. Good luck trading.
Diana

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