Ebay – Important Tips for Shipping Items to Buyers

Selling on eBay is great but can also be a lot of work. Part of that work includes shipping. Not only does shipping determine whether you get good feedback or not but it also determines whether you will get ripped off or not.

The following is important information about shipping items correctly not just to protect your customer’s purchase but to protect yourself as well.

It’s always wise to ship items to the winning bidders as quickly as possible. Nobody wants to receive an item a month after they paid for it; that usually will get you either neutral feedback or in some cases negative feedback. So, do yourself a favour and ship people’s items in a timely matter.

When shipping any items to winning bidders, you must ship the items with delivery confirmation (DC). It is not something that you should take as being optional but mandatory.

Delivery confirmation, or DC, is a way to track a shipment and allows both the buyer and seller to see if the said item(s) have been delivered to the address of the buyer. However, it’s imperative to the seller because it’s proof that you as the seller sent the item.

So, if a buyer claims they never got an item they paid for, you have proof that you sent it. Because if you don’t have evidence (DC) that you sent the item and the buyer complains to eBay, eBay will rule in the buyer’s favour and make you refund them their money even if you did send their item(s).

In fact, it’s essential to have DC not just because the item(s) could get lost by the mail service but because there are many unscrupulous buyers on eBay who will claim they didn’t get an item or items even if they did.

There is a chance a buyer might rip you off by saying he or she never receive an item when there is no tracking or proof.

However, with more expensive items that you sell, you may want to have signature confirmation for the item as well as DC not to mention insurance. Signature confirmation is just having someone sign for a delivery, and if you want a specific person to sign for the delivery, you will wish to ‘restricted signature confirmation’.

Even if the item(s) are insured, if it’s not packaged properly and it gets damaged, you will lose the insurance claim. And this could result in you having to either issue a partial refund or a full refund to the buyer or at the very least offer something for free to keep the buyer happy.

You will get negative feedback if you choose not to issue a refund for damaged items or not to rectify the situation in any way.

Likewise, insurance is usually necessary for purchases that are $100 or more, but that’s a call you as the seller should make.

So hopefully this information on shipping items sold on eBay was food for thought and will prove useful in your eBay selling.