The U.S. post office is seeing this more often these days and eBayers need to be aware of this growing problem ... When sellers create mailing labels through Paypal, they need to be familiar with what mailing options are available. Delivery confirmation is not available with all services! Most of the time, the envelope goes through, but the post office grabs these just often enough to aggravate the heck out of us!

The problem I encountered TWICE in the past month involved delivery confirmation. This option CANNOT be used when using 1st class mail unless the envelope or package is 3/4" or more high. If a flat envelope is mailed via 1st class, delivery confirmation cannot be used.

The post office may automatically upgrade a flat envelope to priority mail, whereby delivery confirmation CAN then be used, but which generates additional charges. The recipient will receive the post office's famous pink slip, asking the addressee to come in and pay the difference between 1st class and priority mail as well as the delivery confirmation charge. You do have the option to refuse the envelope, of course, in which case it'll be returned to the eBay seller. But then you're out of your money as well as your auction win.

If you're lucky, your seller will resolve the situation quickly and to your satisfaction. In one of my personal situations, I refused the envelope (I didn't want to pay MORE postage than I already had!) and it was returned to the seller. The seller remailed the item without additional cost to me. So the only problem was the delay in receiving my auction win. The seller, of course, incurred additional expense because of remailing the item.

For my second (personal) situation, I paid the extra postage (after emailing the seller to tell her what was going on), then scanned and emailed the paperwork on the extra charges to her. The seller reimbursed me in full for those extra postal charges.

So both auctions had a happy ending for me but the sellers ended up with extra cost (or less profit).

So, sellers, please familiarize yourselves with postal regulations instead of just automatically hitting the "print" button to create a mailing label. It'll save us all time and money.