Originally Posted by
marschenegger
I guess I should have qualified what I said with a statement to the effect that the things I sell (coins and paper money) cannot be insured by Canada Post. When I say these items cannot be insured, under certain circumstances they can be, but the system is really convoluted. It was easier years ago when Canada Post said flatly that they would not insure coins and paper money under any circumstances. Also, PayPal didn't exist beyond 10 years ago. Anyhow, when CP became an official distributor of Royal Canadian Mint Products, they had to bend the rules and allow insurance for coins. They used to say that they would not insure documents, and paper money is considered a document (it is legal tender printed and distributed by the Bank of Canada). Now they say they don't insure "paper". Those are the words I hear every time I bring a package to the post office and I ask for insurance. So I usually end up telling fibs to get my packages insured because CP employees are like most normal people in the sense that they don't understand the difference between regular paper money used as legal tender and numismatic collectables (i.e. merchandise). Even if the CP rules allowed paper money to be insured, I'm not sure that it would prudent to walk into the post office and declare that your package contains rare old paper money worth X hundreds of dollars.
Merchandise can be insured by the post office, and I understand laws that say it is up to sellers to insure the items they deliver. But what about my situation when I can't buy insurance or I am breaking the post office rules to obtain insurance? I believe at least some responsibility has to reside with the buyers of coins and paper money because the seller can't properly protect him/herself since there's not a shipping company in Canada that will knowingly take a package containing money and guarantee its delivery. All of this discussion becomes rather moot when PayPal is rolled into the equation. PayPal operates under its own set of rules and it doesn't matter what are the laws of the countries in which it operates. PayPal chooses to refund the buyer almost all of the time. PayPal requires sellers to protect themselves by using only a shipping service with tracking and signature on delivery. So PayPal is twisting my arm to limit the shipping options I use. Even when I sell something worth $1, I have to use a shipping service with tracking to make sure the buyer gets it? The lowest cost of which I know is registered mail, and I charge $10 within Canada for that. The quick solution would be to not use PayPal. That's a great idea if I want to see my sales go down by at least 50% domestically, 90% internationally. Since I want to stay in business, I must keep using PayPal.
You say that you lose packages in the mail every so often. How do you know they were lost? Unless you had tracking on every one of them, there's no way to tell the difference between a genuinely lost package and a false claim made by the buyer. When I say there's no way to tell, there's probably circumstantial evidence that every seller uses to assess whether a claim is real or not. When a buyer does not communicate and goes straight to PayPal to open a dispute, I tend to believe that the buyer is not sincere and is trying to get a freebie. So instead of blackballing every buyer who files a claim against me, I would use my discretion to evaluate the situation and determine if the buyer is a high risk to repeat the behaviour. It's the same kind of discretion used by insurance companies who decide if they want to offer a car insurance policy to a high risk driver. I have to assume that every buyer is perfectly aware of PayPal's inherent bias as well. This is why I feel that I have to offer buyers the opportunity to select a secure shipping option in lieu of just telling them they have to accept one shipping method of my choosing. If I do this and the buyer turns down the secure option to save a few dollars, and then the buyer files a claim against me, I feel entitled to blackball that person, though it is completely at my discretion. Ultimately, when the post office loses a package, it should be the post office's fault and the claim should be against them, but they shirk the responsibility even though the workforce of Canada Post is composed of well-paid union members who would never knowingly do anything wrong, like stealing mail (uh-huh). PayPal certainly will not fill the void, so I think the responsibility then shifts to the seller and buyer (or sender and recipient). Of course buyers are going to want to get the things they purchase, so it's always the seller who gets the poopy end of the stick when something goes wrong. Not coincidently, it's the seller that does all of the work to sell an item, so it's only fair that the hardest-working person involved gets shafted when something goes wrong. No wonder so many sellers are leaving e**y and, to a lesser extent, PayPal.
In theory, Canada Post does pay compensation for lost packages that are insured. But you can't insure regular mail. The insurable shipping options cost a heckuva lot more.