Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Importance of Packing Slips and eBay Search Problems

On February 19, I wrote about a lost package that I mailed on January 5.
The package was mailed January 5, and the delivery confirmation showed the normal information up until a scan on January 10 at a USPS sorting center in the buyer's home state. The sorting center is within 50 miles of the final destination and was probably the last stop before the package would have reached the buyer's post office. The tracking information ended at that sorting center with no updates since January 10.
I refunded the buyer's money in early February since it was apparent that something bad had happened to the package. I still had hope that the package might eventually surface, but I could not keep the buyer's money any longer.

On March 22, the buyer paid for the book again and let me know that the package had finally arrived. The delivery confirmation no longer showed the old information from January. The first date was March 19, showing the location as in Georgia. From that point, the package quickly traveled back to Michigan where it was delivered on March 22.

Apparently, the shipping label had come off of the package. The postal service opened the package, and found my packing slip with the buyer's address on it. This situation serves as a good example of why packing slips are important. Should a shipping label come off of a package, then the address can still be found inside the package.

I use plain paper for my labels, and I use glue on the package before I affix the label with tape covering all four edges. I also tape across the middle of the label. On several occasions, I have had to remove one of my shipping labels due to a change in an order, and I have had trouble getting the label off. Even though my labels are affixed quite well to the packages, they can still come off, as this recent example shows. Remember: Packing slips save packages!
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eBay has been having problems with its saved searches for at least a couple of months. I recently reported on my Facebook page that I could get past my saved searches problem by deleting them and saving new searches. Unfortunately, none of my newly saved searches work. Now, nearly all of my old saved searches that I have not yet deleted are also broken.

I am having to rely on manual searches from eBay's Advanced Search page. This is a throwback to how I used eBay many years ago. While a burden at first, I am growing used to running the manual searches, just like I used to do.

2 comments:

stratomiker said...

I use AOL and do my eBay searches via the AOL favorites (bookmarks). I've never had any kind of trouble with it in all these years. I've also set up searches on Mozilla and Google Chrome, and they work just as well. Never did it via eBay searches. Would there be any differences?

Mike

Jennifer White said...

I think your method would produce the same results as eBay, and currently, it probably produces more accurate results. I have heard of that method, and I really need to set up some bookmarks.

I don't see that eBay is going to get this problem fixed anytime soon. At this rate, I won't be buying much on eBay if I don't get some bookmarks set up. While I am running searches manually, I find that I am running fewer of them and less often.