Hi,

I joined Deckbox this year and made 16 trades. In several of these trades, I was sent cards that were not even close to properly described, but in the end we worked something out that was fair.

Recently, not once but twice in 2 months I've had cards that "didn't make it to the receiver".

I've made well over 300 trades on MOTL (and have 232 refs) over 10+ years and have never had even a hint of a problem.

Have I just had awful luck with the site or have others encountered what I have encountered here?

Sorry for your bad experience. Deckbox is definitely not full of scammers, there are thousands of trades successfully finished every month here :)

Since I'm doing work right now on the new dispute and feedback system, I'm actually wondering if perhaps a "cards lost in mail" indicator would be useful on trades. That way users that have repeatedly had issues with lost mail (either incoming or outgoing) will stand out.

ryanghall wrote:Hi,

I joined Deckbox this year and made 16 trades. In several of these trades, I was sent cards that were not even close to properly described, but in the end we worked something out that was fair.

Recently, not once but twice in 2 months I've had cards that "didn't make it to the receiver".

I've made well over 300 trades on MOTL (and have 232 refs) over 10+ years and have never had even a hint of a problem.

Have I just had awful luck with the site or have others encountered what I have encountered here?

I have over 100 trades here (probably close to 130-150 if you count people who are to lazy to leave feedback) and I have had the following issues. 1. a trader in canada who got hit with customs fees, was adjudicated by DB. 2 times I failed to receive cards, once the user got them back roughly a month later, the other I am not sure. Twice user did not receive my cards, once I compensated him (was like $5) and the other i got it back wrong address, confirmed address and resent, no issue. (stupid post office)

MOTL is frankly more work to engage in a trade, so I'm sure the effort level weeds out some people. Deckbox is a better platform, but the ease of use probably attracts a few more undesirables? I don't trade heavily but I still use deckbox on a regular basis and feel confident in the system. I just use a simple rule of thumb, if I'm not comfortable with accepting a loss on a trade, I pay for tracking. If I shrug about the cards getting lost and possibly having to replace them, I send it PWE.

As far as condition, I find it isn't just a deckbox thing, but a cards thing. If condition matters, ask. If they swear its NM after you double checked, open a BTR. (assuming you can't work it out with them) I deal in less than NM cards a good bit from collections, but I do 2 things. I don't mark cards as any condition, and I will make sure a trade partner knows if a card is not nm. I also am happy to take pictures of any card. I haven't had anyone contact me about condition issues yet.

Perhaps. I guess I'd just been overly lucky in the past.

I just know that things don't really get lost in the mail (stolen by employees looking for gift cards this time of year is another story).

I'll continue to give it a try, as I love the layout of the site.

ryanghall wrote:Perhaps. I guess I'd just been overly lucky in the past.

I just know that things don't really get lost in the mail (stolen by employees looking for gift cards this time of year is another story).

I'll continue to give it a try, as I love the layout of the site.

You really think the post office doesn't lose mail? I tried to find some facts or figures, apparently it is not something that is really tracked, but most estimate come in around 1% ? That does mean that out of roughly 154 billion parcels sent, a billion or so don't arrive. It is a small percent but a large number.

I saw an estimate of 0.025%. There's really no reason why non-stolen mail that's addressed properly should ever get lost. What could possibly happen to it?

ryanghall wrote:I saw an estimate of 0.025%. There's really no reason why non-stolen mail that's addressed properly should ever get lost. What could possibly happen to it?

Really? How about vehicle accidents mail trucks/planes. Destroyed beyond delivery (ie not just ripped/torn but damaged to the point where they can't read either address). Misdelivered and the accidental recipient doesn't put it back in the mail to be redelivered. Dropped/lost by the carrier and not recovered or recovered by another party. Can you seriously not think of things that could happen to an envelope on a 1000 mile journey that it may not arrive?

Even if the number you quoted is correct, and it would be nice if it was that insanely low (I don't believe it is) that is 38.5 million pieces of lost mail a year.

I'm not really trying to stir something up, you just seem really incredulous about undelivered mail to the point where it seems kind of silly. It happens to millions if not a billion or so pieces of mail a year. Like even if its 99.9% of all mail is delivered, thats still 150 million parcels not delivered successfully. It isn't a trivial number. There are 117 million households in the U.S. That means per year it happens to everyone at least once. Which means really it happens to some people more than once per year. It happens.

I'm fairly confident that 1% is way high. All of the things you mentioned obviously happen but most should be pretty rare. I'm guessing attempted theft is how the majority of packages get lost.

I've received enough mangled pieces of mail to know that sometimes there are sorting machine mishaps. Toploaders increase the risks of a sorting accident.

I'm at ... a lot of trades, and can only remember once or twice that either my envelope or the other person's has gotten lost. Sender replaces, and all is right with the world. Card conditions are definitely an issue, but all you have to do is ask. The other thing people can honestly mistake pretty frequently (and I have to verify) is "is it actually black border [Legends||AN||AQ||etc] or white border chronicles?" or "is it actually unlimited or revised?".

Personally, pretty much everything in my tradelist is SP or better. I have only had one or two cases where someone actually cared about condition and asked about it, or assumed that everything was NM even though no condition was flagged and was unhappy. Most of the time I'll mention condition and my trade partner totally won't care as long as it isn't noticeable through a sleeve.[/Legends||AN||AQ||etc]