ABSTRACT: For shipping, your choices
are: Option 1) Save money,
but accept the risk inherent in the USPS system, or
Option 2) Pay for Priority Mail, and
I'll self-insure.
Option 1: If you wish to take the less expensive route, great. Just order as usual and I'll ship USPS. However, if it gets lost in the mail, I will not send a replacement shipment. At the prices I charge, I just can't absorb postal losses and other abuses. The USPS has been very reliable, and I attribute a lot of 'shipping' problems to buyers who were either dishonest or disorganized. The gamble with USPS is minimal, but it's YOUR GAMBLE. Just order your parts and ignore the box for Priority Shipping.
Option 2:
If you are risk-averse, I now offer USPS Priority, and your item will
ship in the Media box (the size of a VHS tape). You pay the $4.80
that it costs me*, and I'll pay for the Delivery Notification. You'll get
the barcode number via email. These I'll self-insure,
meaning that if they go missing, and the Delivery
Notification System agrees, I'll send another. The downside is
that with my schedule, I won't guarantee I can get it to the post office the
next day. It might take two. Of course, that might negate any
delivery time savings, so take that into consideration when choosing.
If the Delivery Notification shows that a
package was in fact delivered, then it's between you and the post office.
Go talk to your postmaster. You'll have the bar code
number, but I still won't send a free replacement. Only if the
notification shows that it vanished within the postal system will I send
another at no cost to you.
If you don't agree with these terms, I'm afraid I can't help you.
* If you're ordering fasteners, I'm already
charging you $1.65 postage, so for Priority, you pay just the difference ($4.80
- $1.65 = $3.15).
BACKGROUND (Verbose):
I've done this for years, using USPS
exclusively, and on occasion, a package will go missing. For a long time,
it wasn't a big concern -- but the customer will contact me ten days later
wondering when I'm going to ship the parts. Of course, they should have
arrived a week earlier. I'd then ship a replacement package, at my
expense, and hope for better luck.
In
the past few years, the loss rate went sky-high (about the time I started
offering fasteners and items that require the padded envelope). 2007 was
by far the worst, with a loss rate that just about drove me to close up
shop. It turns out that in some cases, it was the customer who'd
dishonestly report a loss simply to get a 'free' second shipment of parts. It
takes all kinds, I guess. In other cases, the item would be delivered on
time, but the buyer (or his/her spouse) would throw away the envelope
with their junk mail. Other times, the buyer would fail to update his/her
Paypal address, so their package would be delivered
-- but not to their
address. I'm sure that in some cases the package was genuinely lost
(or stolen) in the mail.
In any event, I'd get that familiar email about how the part never arrived, and
my blood pressure would climb, along with my supply costs. I bumped my
prices up to adjust, which pissed me off more than being taken advantage of,
because the whole idea of this project, from the very beginning, was to
undercut the slimebags who sell overpriced junk carb kits to people like us who had no other choice.
For $12, I could set you up with what you needed, and they lose $100 for every
kit I sold. That feels great.
2008's loss rate has been much better (though not perfect); my state of mind,
on the topic of pilferage, hasn't improved a bit, so I
finally put this current policy into place.