This is a simple, easy to follow list of services provided by the USPS, with a warning of things to look for to avoid being ripped off by a Seller looking to avoid fees and make their profit by inflating those costs. And a warning or two for Sellers about fraudulent buyers.

Everything here is either found on the USPS website as of the May, 2009 updates/increases or comes from my own personal experience as a Seller and a Buyer. I'm not going to list every single service, but the ones that are most commonly used (and sometimes abused) by Sellers. The USPS website can be very difficult to navigate. You think certain information should be in a particular link but it takes you to text instead of a chart. It can be very frustrating.

First a definition: 'Business Days' means Monday through Friday ONLY. Never count Saturday or Sunday. Remember to subtract Federal Holidays as well. More on those later.

First Class Parcel is estimated to take 2 to 5 Business Days to reach the Buyer, but is limited to 13 ounces. It is faster than Parcel Post, costs less than Priority, and allows me to offer the lowest possible shipping price with the shortest delivery time for a small box or light envelope.

Parcel Post is estimated at 7 to 10 Business Days.  However, actual delivery could take up to 14 Business Days. Take into consideration the distance a package must travel. I am on the East Coast, so things going to the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones may well take the full 14 Business days.

Priority (Variable Weight) is estimated at 2 to 3 Business Days but actual delivery time could be up to five days. Again, take into consideration the distance. Priority is NOT a guaranteed service.

Flat Rate Priority is a terrific option for small items that weigh a lot. Glass beads, for example. And a huge cost saver for making many purchases of tiny items from one Seller, such as bead kits, crystals and findings, small jewelry pieces, etc. You can stuff up to four pounds into a single flat rate envelope. Of course, there's no way four pounds will FIT; but that's what the USPS allows.  There are also Flat Rate Priority BOXES that can take up to SEVENTY POUNDS! Great for larger heavy items that would actually cost MUCH more to send through Parcel Post. This is also the most underused service the USPS has. More on why below in the ripoffs section. But be careful! There are three sizes for flat rate boxes, so you have to be careful WHICH box you use. The first is a "small" size that is the same cost as a flat rate envelope. Second is the "medium" box, or shirt box, which ships for $10.35 (+Delivery Confirmation or other services). Finally is the "large" box, which is a cube shape. This ships for $13.95. Accidentally using the large size instead of the shirt box is an EXPENSIVE lesson!

The USPS provides Priority Tyvek envelopes, document envelopes, cd boxes shirt boxes, shoe boxes, little cube boxes, bigger cube boxes, little rectangular boxes, bigger rectangular boxes...pretty much any size and shape needed for most shipments. They also provide flat rate envelopes and boxes. Most of these can be gotten at your local post office, and all of them are available through the USPS website. They are free either way. And can be used for International shipping. You don't have to have special Global/International packaging anymore.

Express USPS is estimated at 1 to 2 days, depending on distance and the time of day the item is taken to the post office. If you pay at 4pm and want Express, the packages likely isn't going to make it to the Post Office until the NEXT day. Express is delivered on both Saturday and Sunday, so the term Business days does not apply to this service. This is the ONLY service for which the USPS guarantees delivery dates and times.

Media Mail is a specialized service for books, sound recordings, recorded video tapes and discs, printed music and recorded computer-readable media such as cd's, dvd's and diskettes. This service estimates delivery at about 7 Business Days. Heavy books are very expensive to ship through any other service. Individual CD's,  DVD's and CD-ROM's, however, really don't weigh all that much and can usually go through 1st Class Parcel at a very reasonable cost.

BUYER BEWARE!!!  Some unscrupulous Sellers will charge you $15 Parcel Post to ship that Butterfly Island Play set and then ship via Media Mail. In doing this, they pocket HALF what they charged you for shipping. They also commit the FELONY of Interstate Mail Fraud. The email you receive from PayPal when a label is printed will tell you EXACTLY what service your package is being sent through. If you're not buying books, CD's, DVD's or printed music and they are shipping Media Mail, then you are being ripped off and the Seller is committing a crime! You can report that Seller to your local Post Office Manager (take pictures of your item in the box and the label--cut the label out to take with you as well) and they will tell you how to proceed.

Conversely, if you pay for Parcel Post and your item is shipped via 1st Class, you have received a service upgrade, from 7-10 day delivery to 2-5 days.

Add-On Services

Delivery Confirmation is the most common add-on service used by Ebay Sellers. Contrary to popular belief, it is NOT a tracking number. It will NOT tell you exactly where your package is at any given time. It will only update when your postal carrier gets back to his home station to upload his little hand held scanner. This means that you will often know long before the Seller that your package arrived that day. It has been our experience that packages WITHOUT the DC number are the ones that get lost. We began using it as a standard service years ago.

Not every Seller uses DC as a standard service. If the listing doesn't say, and their store policy page (if they have one) doesn't say, then use the Ask Seller a Question link and ask if it's included in the price or if they have to purchase it separately. It is 75 cents well spent!

If your Seller prints their own postage, either through PayPal or another service, you should get an email the minute the label is printed. It includes a link to 'track' your package that you can click whenever you want. But as I've already stated, it likely won't update until you receive the package. DO NOT delete that email! Keep it in your Inbox, or create a special folder for such emails, until your package arrives. This will help you keep track of what has and has not arrived. Many times a Buyer could have saved themselves a little embarrassment and me the wasted time if they had kept that email.

Signature Service is almost never used. PayPal requires it on purchases over a certain dollar amount. Something like $200.

Insurance is also rarely used. In my seven and a half years of selling, I have never had a Buyer who needed to file a claim. That doesn't mean it's a useless service. Accidents DO happen. I have personally found that, for my small and light objects, the Delivery Confirmation is the most important add-on to use. If you can produce that number, they don't lose or damage your package. What an amazing coincidence!

HOLIDAYS

As we get closer to Christmas and Valentine's Day, or your mother's birthday, the choice of Priority becomes prudent. USPS Express is very expensive; but if it's three days before the big event, it may be your only choice other than Fed Ex or UPS Overnight.

The United States of America enjoys many national and federal holidays. November alone has two of them and is a crucial shipping month.  There are four Federal Holidays in the two month period from November 1st to January 2nd. Nothing in the Postal system moves on Federal Holidays and all shipments are delayed at least one day. Add this to the crush of boxes and envelopes for the gift-giving seasons and delays are all to commonplace.

A package is taken to the Post Office on November 4th, 2006. The 11th was Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving Day was another holiday. Counting days, Monday through Friday only and skipping over the two holidays the 14th Business Day was actually the 28th of November. Sure, it's 28 days in total, but only 14 for shipping purposes. Sellers cannot file a complaint with the Post Office until the 14th business day, no matter how much we wish we could do so earlier. The Post Office simply isn't going to consider it until the regulated number of days have passed.

Weather Delays

Consider the time of year. Southern Gulf and Eastern Coastal states may be having a very active hurricane season, like a couple years back when three separate storms tracked over Florida within three months, one after the other. It took the postal system three months to fully recover from that. I had many delayed packages during that time, some of which took three or four weeks to arrive. Fortunately, my Buyers were all very patient and understood it was completely out of my control. None of their neighbors were getting any mail either, so they were all in the same situation.

I must add that every one of those packages DID make it to their destinations, and were undamaged. We may grouse about our USPS, but it really is one of the best and most efficient in the world. Thank you Ben Franklin!

This year, it's the MidWestern states with a phenomenal, and very early, tornado season. Bad weather at the regional centers can delay mail three states away. Please keep this in mind.

Your Address

Okay, this is going to sound a bit anal, but I have to mention it.  However you have typed your name and address in your Ebay and PayPal accounts shipping address sections is how it will appear on the address label Sellers print. We don't manually enter them. So if you use all lower case letters, that is what is on your package.  If you misspell your name, put your city twice, put your apartment number twice, that is what will be on your package. Nor do they let us add information easily. If you want info added to your shipping address, then PUT IT IN your shipping address.

PayPal's postage system has a safety catch that prevents Sellers from printing a label if the ZIP Code and address don't match the USPS official street register.  If the city you typed isn't correct or isn't abbreviated properly, or if you put a comma after your city, we can't print.  If we cannot figure out the problem, we have to go to the post office and stand in line.

So please...Check your address! Sometimes it will stop a label from printing if you use St. Elsewhere instead of St Elsewhere. What's the difference, you ask? The period in the abbreviation for Saint. More than once I've had the software tell me the address doesn't exist and it's only because of that period. Or they want St spelled out. Sounds kinda silly, but we must pat the software on the head and tell it what a good little program it is. It's only doing what it was told.  It's only as smart as the idjit who wrote the program.

If you commonly have Sellers tell you there's a problem printing the postal label, it's NOT the Sellers. They aren't insane, I promise you. lol

Now and then I get a customer who wants me to ship to an address OTHER than the one in the PayPal payment. Guess what? It is a violation of eBay policy to ask a Seller to ship to an address other than the one associated with the PayPal payment. It is actually a selection for reasons a Seller is filing an Item Dispute.  No Seller is obligated to send a package to ANY other address. To do so voids the Seller's right to protection.

It is the Buyer's responsibility to change their mailing address if they move.

International Services

This is where shipping can get really ugly for the small, home-based Seller like myself. I WANT to be able to sell to everyone in the world. Really I do. But different countries have all sorts of different rules regarding what can and cannot be sent to them. The USPS website has a list of countries with specific service limitations and embargoes if you want to take a look at it. An example is Australia. It is forbidden to ship any plants or seeds to Australia. Customs will seize that package and you will NOT get your money back. I doubt the Seller will care much. They've already gotten their money out of you. It's up to the International Buyer to know what can and cannot be brought into their country.

Formerly, there were some eight International services provided by the USPS. With the price hikes of May, 2007, these services were streamlined down to four. Global Express Guaranteed, Express International, Priority Mail International and First Class International.

We won't be discussing the first two, as the charges are ridiculously outrageous and I would never offer them for my small items.

First Class International...Well, lessee...There is one set of prices for Canada, which is in Zone 1. Another for Mexico, which is Zone 2. Other countries around the world have other prices based on where they are. There are SIX zones. That means SIX different sets of prices. For items weighing over a few ounces, the difference from Zone 1 to Zone 4 is enough that one blanket price no longer suffices. Setting it high isn't fair to the Zone 1 Buyer and setting it too low for Zone 4 will lead to the Seller getting screwed by undercharging.  AND...Ebay won't let us duplicate a service. So we can't say 1st Class to Canada for $4 and 1st Class to World Wide for $7.50. And we only get to choose three services, so sometimes we must make the most prudent choice. When we send an invoice is when we can add the appropriate 1st Class price. So even if your Seller only has Priority listed, drop an email and ask if they will also include a 1st Class price.

Priority Mail International. Okay, we started with one basic price for MOST countries. That used to be six bucks for a small envelope and nine for a large. Now, it's one price to Canada and Mexico and another to the rest of the world. Canada/Mexico start at $10.95 That is nearly a 100% increase over the former small envelope option--which one piece of lingerie or a handful of my jewelry pieces used to fit into perfectly. So here we are, forced to charge you $12 (cost of label and a token amount for handling) regardless of what is going into the envelope.

Flat Rate Box Priority International. This is an OUCH! There are two sizes, as above. Medium and Large. Medium is $26 and the large is $33 to Canada.  For the rest of the world, it's $42 for the medium and $54 dollars for the large. The expensive lesson from domestic priority becomes a very PAINFUL mistake here.  What else can I say? Pack it full!!! I may be something of a miracle worker; but I can get only so much into one of those flat rate envelopes.

Canadian First Class International. Here we have a paradox. Even if you include your phone number and your address is perfect, I still can't print your label! PayPal's postage system does not offer First Class International service. Priority and Flat Rate Priority are the only choices they give me. I would rather stand in line (well, have the husband stand in line) and charge you 1/3 the price. This is one of the trade-offs we have chosen for the sake of happier customers rather than our own convenience. Trust me...He'd really rather not be standing in line.

What was that about a phone number???

Maybe one International Buyer I've ever had has ever put their phone number in their accounts. Of course we understand the desire for privacy. However, in all my years as Seller, perhaps three Buyers have ever called me, and I have never called a single Buyer. With the new USPS rules, we must have a phone number if we are shipping to an international P.O. Box. If it is a regular street address, we do not need the phone number. We still have to stand in line, however. The USPS wants to visually see an International  package before it goes into the bin.

Common Shipping Rip-Offs

Aside from the Media Mail/Parcel Post scam explained above, there are many other things Sellers (and Buyers) try to pull to steal as much of your money as possible and get out of paying Ebay their fees (or for their item). This is only a partial list, of course. Criminals and scam artists think of new ways to thieve every single day. Keep your eyes open and keep in mind that if it seems a little fishy to you, it probably IS fraudulent in one way or another.

You buy a Cell phone case (or other very small and light item) and the Seller charges you $6 or more to ship 1st Class or Parcel Post. Puh-leeze! Priority starts at $4.95! With retail Delivery Confirmation (paid at the window), that's $5.65.  I would call $6 (remember the packaging) reasonable for Priority for just about any small item.  First Class for a cell phone face plate, case, battery or charger, or other very light item like a Gameboy Game (with or without box!) should be in the $3 to $3.50 range. At $6 for 1st Class, and $8 to $9 for Priority, they are taking several DOLLARS profit from the shipping charges they get out of you and not paying any fees to Ebay for it.  That IS a violation of eBay policy. they call it Circumvention of Fees.  Look at the feedback page. How many transactions have they had for the month? Multiply it by how much you were overcharged. Could be hundreds of dollars a week, a thousand dollars a month in overcharges.

You buy 1000 shipping labels for ten bucks and the Seller soaks you $19 for Priority. Well, since the labels will probably fit into a Flat Rate Priority Box, it's costing them closer to $11 to ship, including the cost of their label. They are charging you nearly DOUBLE and taking all their profit and paying their listing fees from shipping charges. Not to mention getting around paying Ebay for that extra ten bucks.

Oh yeah...forgot to mention. Some Sellers don't even TAKE the packages to the post office. Just call the 1-800 number and the Post Office comes to pick them up! So is that Seller charging you for gas to go to the post office? Do they whine about the cost of gas when they aren't using any?

You buy a small postal scale for fifteen bucks and they charge you $25 for shipping. Well, I gotta tell ya! I bought a small digital postal scale from Staples some time back. Exactly the same as many of the listings I'd been seeing in Ebay. It cost me around $30, but shipping was free because I had other purchases to add up to their $50 total to qualify for free shipping. Buying through a stranger in Ebay, sure you're getting the scale for fifteen bucks. But digital scales are very light nowadays. Mine weighs less than a pound. Priority shipping in that flat rate box (to accommodate the box the scale comes in from the manufacturer) would actually cost about $10.75 (if  seller prints their own postage labels).  So why are they soaking you for another fifteen bucks?

Fee Evasion Once Again!--Because that's where they make up the difference between a low selling price and the cost when they bought it to sell. If they bought it. Ebay's final valuation fee is based on the ITEM selling price, NOT the price with shipping. So they are circumventing Ebay listing fees by doing this. They pay fees on the $10 for the scale, not the $25 you pay them for shipping. Add that up over 50 sales a week and that comes to a hefty savings in fees and a tremendous profit ratio. And one great big RIP OFF for you the Buyer!

Some lingerie sellers do the same thing. Sell the exact same item I have for two or three dollars less and then charge two or three dollars more for the shipping. They're not saving YOU anything. They're only saving themselves by circumventing fees. You can see for yourself what fees are by doing a search in the Help section.

Very low starting or BIN prices and high shipping can also mean the merchandise may be hot.  Ebay is the perfect venue for fencing stolen merchandise. If they got it for nothing, they can start an auction for 99cents (which costs them less than half a buck) and then charge you an arm and a leg for the shipping to pay for the listing fees, PayPal fees, shipping AND get their profit.

Watch out for listings that ONLY ship via Priority for heavy or bulky items that won't fit in a flat rate box. The difference between Priority variable weight and Parcel Post may be as much as five or ten dollars. And they don't have to pay for a box with Priority so long as it fits the pre-printed ones from the post office. If they ship Parcel Post, they have to come up with a box, either by purchasing one or by recycling one that brought product to them. For a heavy item, you should have the choice of which price and speed of delivery unless Priority really is the better choice. I, personally, prefer to pay eight dollars less and take a few extra days to get that shipment of leather hides if I'm not in a hurry. And I'm almost never in a hurry to get them. $20 shipping will turn me off every time when I know what it REALLY costs to send something. You can check what the postage will actually be by going to the USPS website, putting in your ZIP and the Seller's ZIP and the estimated weight of the item (remember to add the weight of the box and any packaging). A whole chart of prices will be shown to you.  Be sure to add the cost of labels too.

Watch for listings with a 7 to 14 Day shipping time! If they won't put it into the mail for up to two weeks, it usually means the Seller doesn't actually HAVE the item on hand, and is going to order it after you commit to purchase. They may even have the item shipped to you directly from THEIR supplier. This is called Drop Shipping. They collect the money and the supplier does all the work. Read the feedback comments and see how many there are for slow shipping and/or item not in stock. Read listings carefully! I keep in-listing text to a minimum, with the full text of my policies on the Store Policy page within the listings. It's easy for unscrupulous sellers to hide things in a huge paragraph of text, counting on you to not read it carefully.

Alrighty, had a new one in January, 2008. I bought a tool for use with my leathers. Needed a little thing called a skiver to thin down ends of leather to fit the new decorations I am using. Found one at a decent price with an acceptable shipping cost. Bought and paid for it on a Saturday and the seller printed the label within a couple hours. I expected it would actually go to the post office on Monday. My local P.O. closes at 1pm on Saturday, so I have to expect similar times in other places. Not a problem. I paid Priority, so I expected to receive my tool Thursday at the latest. Saturday...still no tool. So I, being the diligent Buyer, emailed my seller. They wrote me back that they are going to call the package lost and send me another on Tuesday (Monday being a holiday). Okay, fine. I told them I'd return one of them if I got them both, being as honest a Buyer as I am a Seller. So three days later I get the tool. It's just what I needed (but in a zipper bag instead of factory packaging...I had expected factory packaging from such a large seller). On a lark, I checked the original shipping link PayPal had sent me when they printed the label.

GUESS WHAT!!!

They had used the SAME label. The SAME delivery confirmation number. It even had the same original DATE from that Saturday. No, they could not have printed another one. You can only print a duplicate label within 48 hours after the original printing. So this means they NEVER SENT IT in the first place. The USPS didn't lose anything, but they were taking the blame. The seller probably didn't have the product and had to  wait for their order to come in. Instead of TELLING ME this, they lied to me. Personally, I'd rather they'd TOLD ME they were out and waiting for their order to come in. I don't like being lied to, especially when it's so easy to catch them at it.

March, 2008 -- Spring is in the Air...and Fraud Abounds!
Just dealt with a new rip-off, but this one came from a customer. Sold some plain barbells for piercings. I've sold these to dozens of people. My price is $4.50 for a lot of 5 and my shipping is $2.50. So a customer writes me to say they got it and they had to pay $4.19 at the post office to get their package.

Yeah, right!
And I've got a bridge for sale...

My demand to see the front of my package with my shipping label and the lovely red stamp that says POSTAGE DUE was not answered. She offered only to show me the receipt. Given that this package wouldn't cost more than $3 to go to ANY COUNTRY around the world, it's kinda ridiculous that this person thought they'd get $4.19 back on their $7 payment. I flat out told her I didn't believe her, and why.

Guess What!!!

I haven't heard from this person since and she never left feedback.  So take a note here...If you're going to try to rip off the seller, at least make it plausible, k?

There will be others, of course. As I come across them, I'll add them to this Guide.

I hope you find this Guide useful...or at least amusing.  Feel free to print it out and keep it next to your computer for quick reference. Share it with your friends and family who buy through Ebay.

An Educated Consumer is the BEST Consumer!

Tyler.