Did this mail item get lost?

December 22, 2005 7:39 PM

Is my ebay item lost in the mail?

I ordered a would-be xmas present off ebay at the beginning of the month. It shipped from Canada (Toronto area, never ordered from CA) on December 6 and is going to the Chicagoland area. The package shipped airmail and today, as of the 22nd, nothing has arrived. Could there actually be such an incredible delay due to the christmas season (as the auction starter tells me) or is it lost/stolen/never sent? What are your shipping experiences? I've done the necessary 'paperwork' on ebay, but I want to know the likelihood of anything arriving.

posted by frankie_stubbs to Shopping (14 answers total)

I've shipped loads of stuff like this and it is quite possible it is still in the mail, especially if it has been intercepted and opened by customs. I also ordered something which shipped Dec 6th and it arrived yesterday (or at least I got the delivery notification, still have to pick it up from the postal outlet).
posted by unSane at 8:02 PM on December 22, 2005

It could just be delayed, having nothing to do with the Christmas season. My experience is that mail between the US and Canada takes a ridiculously long time sometimes.

Presuming you didn't buy from airnxtz, that is. No tracking number, I take it?
posted by duck at 8:02 PM on December 22, 2005

*addenedum* my item shipped from the States to Toronto.
posted by unSane at 8:03 PM on December 22, 2005

Response by poster: Seller in question has 99.6% positive ratings. I do have a friend who ordered from someone with 100+ positive ratings and the guy dissapeared after selling about twenty 20-40 dollar items, so i'm still kind of wary.
posted by frankie_stubbs at 8:12 PM on December 22, 2005

Do you have any actual proof that it shipped? I see that you noted it shipped on the 6th, but how do you know?

I had stuff from Amazon.com take *weeeeeeeeeeks* to finally get here and when it finally arrived in my town, it vanished without a trace in the UPS Store I had a box at. Oh, was I pissed..
posted by drstein at 9:18 PM on December 22, 2005

It definitely could take that long. I just sold a bunch of video games on Ebay to Americans (I'm in Toronto), and Canada Post informed me that some shipments could take up to 3 weeks.
posted by greatgefilte at 9:34 PM on December 22, 2005

I've shipped stuff from Vancouver to a suburb of Chicago and to Minnesota on the same day via Canada Post airmail ("~10 business days to US"). Took 2 days to get to the Chicago suburb, 14 days to Minessota (non-Christmas season).

So - it's possible that it's delayed due to Christmas overload (I had a lot of shipping problems with zip - a Canadian equivalent of Netflix - late last month/early this month).

Hmm, it just occured to me - wouldn't it be a good idea for the shipper to take along a digital camera and take a photo of the package (and friendly postal worker) after the shipping lables have been paid for and applied?
posted by PurplePorpoise at 9:52 PM on December 22, 2005

drstein: From what I've seen on both postal services' web sites, getting tracked/registered/certified/whatever packages between the U.S. and Canada is really expensive. You may be better off using/asking for a courier service like UPS or FedEx.
posted by oaf at 9:57 PM on December 22, 2005

Seller in question has 99.6% positive ratings. I do have a friend who ordered from someone with 100+ positive ratings and the guy dissapeared after selling about twenty 20-40 dollar items, so i'm still kind of wary.

regarding this, people DO get hacked. I'm usually the last to point to kids stealing passwords, but I do know someone who is a major seller of clothes on ebay who got their password hijacked. Now, it's possible that there's a seller that's built up a rating like that who's decided to "cash out", but if they have lots of feedback, it's more likely that they got their account jacked (just because they're "powersellers" doesn't mean they're computer savvy, and it's quite possible they have stupid passwords -- also, they're bigger targets).

I can't speak to the specific question here. I'm assuming you don't have a tracking number (which I would already think is pretty suspicious, if you splurged on airmail). My first step would be to contact the seller -- if they're incommunicado, I'd assume you got ripped off. If they respond and are sketchy about details, i'd assume you got ripped off. I would say if the seller doesn't respond in a day or so, start the mediation process before they pull all their money out of paypal or whatever and bail on you. Ebay only refunds your money if it's over a particular amount (which is BULLSHIT -- i had $12 taken this year, and ebay basically said "sorry, guy, we don't care about things that are that amount -- peace out!"), and if it's through something like paypal, it's worth starting the process before you can't get any restitution from the person in question.

Seriously, though, airmail? I'd expect it to be here like, two weeks ago.
posted by fishfucker at 10:20 PM on December 22, 2005

"I'm assuming you don't have a tracking number (which I would already think is pretty suspicious, if you splurged on airmail). My first step would be to contact the seller -- if they're incommunicado, I'd assume you got ripped off."

I am not sure about Canada Post but it is not certain that airmail would have a tracking number. (I am in the US and when I ship outside the US via the Postal Service I do not have any tracking number.) This is not necessarily suspicious at all. Also, regarding the seller being incommunicado -- being the last few days before Christmas, I can imagine a seller being hard to reach for perfectly innocent reasons.

Sadly, in my experience (I own a mail order business) delays like this are not at all unusual, especially with the cross-border aspect, and especially if the package is at all large or unusual in size.

Here in the US I have had packages -- Priority Mail -- take 2-3 weeks to get from Seattle to the East Coast on occasion, and it wasn't even the holiday season. And I've had a few go missing.

My best USPS horror story: Package sent to me in early March 2001, arrived on September 10 2001. It was from... Arizona, I think? No explanation anywhere for the 6 month delay. It just appeared in my mailbox one day.

Anyway, to the original poster: It is not at all unlikely that this is just a shipping delay. I wouldn't bring out the lynch mob just yet.

The thing I hate the most about selling things mail order is that we have no control over the delivery.
posted by litlnemo at 10:39 PM on December 22, 2005

I've had long delays over the border (more than 1 month, in many cases.)

The longest delay was 2 years, but there were extenuating circumstances: it was a box of rare-earth magnets, and when it arrived 2 years late, there was a little note from Canada Post apologizing for the delay. They had discovered the box stuck to the ceiling of one of their panel trucks!
posted by mediaddict at 11:35 PM on December 22, 2005 [1 favorite]

and there's your answer: ignore me. It's probably still on the way. Cheers to all.
posted by fishfucker at 11:59 PM on December 22, 2005

I thought that all Canada Post airmail shipping methods had tracking numbers? I can't say for absolute certain, but I thought if you shipped anything-but-land mail, CanPost gave you a tracking number. Ask your ebayer for one, or at least a scan of the receipt to prove that it was shipped to you?
posted by antifuse at 1:49 AM on December 23, 2005

Tracking numbers are $1 extra on non-Express shipments.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:33 AM on December 23, 2005