Sellers from some of the countries,including Latvia,in spite of eBay prohibition do prefere cash in a letter payments.
All is fine,as most of the sellers are honest themselves,when cash arrives successfully,item gets sent and all works...
So it was in Latvia till summer 2006 when,in the beginning little-by-little increased the loss of the arriving mail, then
in november-december 2006 it reached the critical percentage, not only the cash but as well the letters containing checks and money-orders gone to nowhere in dramatic huge total. Some of the letters went through and went through in a damaged way,even registered letters. Raughly opened with the razor letters were either packed into the cello with the cancel of a kind "received in Riga in damaged condition" etc etc. or even without cello, someone just pushed the glue into razor-hole so it is not visible at first glance.

How this all started and where from the problem grew.
As far as in summer 2006, Latvia Post has moved the mail sortage base from Riga City centre near Central Railriad Terminal to a distant place close to Riga Airport Area. Certainly most of the employed stuff there did not wish to pass there along, so Latvia Post picked the new people, which slowly started their dirty deeds.

Many collectors, faced to the problem of postal mail loss (As I been correctly told: letter cannot get lost, it can only be stolen, otherwise it reachies the recepient earlier or later) wrote the letters to the HQ of the Latvia Post but received only the formal reply that all is fine and mail was lost abroad, not in Latvia. Yes this cauld happen too but when Latvia Post was very good in service from
about 1994 to mid-2006 I would trust but not now.

This way I do not advice to send cash in the letters, and not invain eBay issued the prohibition to advertise cash as the payment method, too much gone in mail-transfers. This fact erases the conflicts between buyers and sellers and crashes the authority of the country itself. In this case money-transfers are much more safer, as that payment to bank IBAN-account (EU mostly),or postal money-transfers (many countries, see my ME-page for details), or send personal check (if it gets lost,it canno be abused and the issuing expences are very minor)...

This aspect can be very actual not only for Latvia, but as well for many other countries of world.
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