Lazy Traders

I'm having a problem with one if the same traders you are. My cards took 5 days to arrive and his have yet to come after over 3 weeks. I told him I was going to open a bad trader report and he said he would send me them again with DC. But is been 3 days and still no word our a DC number to track, so I'll prolly open a report.

Last edited by Almundjoy (2013-02-07 18:07:43)

I still think trades over a certain dollar value should require Delivery Confirmation. If you can't afford it (and it's like $1.50), then you should stick to local trading and leave online trading to the adults. The DC# would allow you to see, without fail, if they actually sent the cards when they said they did. If you look up the number and it says, "Electronic Shipping Info Received" for 2-3 days with no forward progress - you know they only registered the number and never sent it.

That bullshit gets them an immediate ding on the transaction.

I'd be careful about this one... you could definitely get the 2-3 days legitimately, especially if you buy the postage on a Saturday afternoon/night. In my case, the mail carrier also shows up around 5PM, which means sometimes the stuff I send doesn't get scanned until the next day (and at times they DO miss the departure scan completely).  This doesn't matter in MY particular case since I drop stuff off in our USPS bin at work, or just get it at the post office, but I could see it being an issue for other people.

That said - communication reigns supreme. If you expect the cards inside a week, actually mention that!

Last edited by asmodeanreborn (2013-02-07 18:24:10)

Interesting. Yeah some of mine went and reported successfully while others just never got any update yet they've received it.

I usually mark my cards as 'sent' once I've packaged and addressed them, but before I've actually physically dropped them in the box. On the other hand, I basically swing by the post office every day, so that means at most it goes out 24 hours later. I think this behaviour is caused by Deckbox leaving traded cards in your inventory until you've actually sent them.

Say I'm trying to trade away the Domri Rade I just cracked. I start a trade for an Aurelia's Fury with some user, and they accept. Now, because they've accepted, my Domri is no longer for trade, but it's still on my inventory/tradelist until I actually physically send the card. The easiest way to manage this is to click "I have sent my cards" to remove it from my tradelists, but that gives the false impression of having actually mailed the card. Multiply that by having several trades on at once, and it's easy to accidentally commit to trading cards you don't have!

Maybe when a trade is confirmed, the number I have for trade should change, and then when I actually send the number I own should change? I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions to that as well.

I keep having the same issues as most of you have, but there have been times where my cards took at least two weeks to reach someone and at the same time I still haven't recieved the cards from his part(it's been 3 weeks still nothing) I've had to contact support and ask what I should do I usually give a set day when I send so it gives them a time frame of when to expect the cards this helps me set a day to send multiple trades in 1 day but I've had the problem of sending something and not getting a response back even though I see the persons last time on. The least some one could do is tell you what's going on and a reasoning for not sending but no communication really ticks me off.

I definitely have a hard time doing tracking with trades that send less than $10 either way. I'd rather make it right if it somehow gets lost (which hasn't happened yet in probably 30 such trades. 

BUT!

If you use PayPal anyway, shipping out 3 oz with tracking is about $1.75 (not sure exactly now that they raised the prices, it used to be less) or so - you just have to print the label yourself.

On the one hand I can understand the argument about putting DC on EVERYTHING that you send out, in a lot of instances, the added shipping cost defeats the purpose of the trade and results in the trade really not worth it.  If something gets lost, I'm fully ready and willing to replace anything that is lost (it's part of playing the mail trading game). 

I'll openly admit, I haven't had any issues with cards I've sent to anyone (at least not yet *fingers crossed*).  But I can say that I do not mark anything as sent until AFTER I've put it in a mailbox.  I agree that people who mark things as sent before it's in the mail are just asking for problems as any delays, and we can all admit they come up, end up making you look like a lazy or irresponsible trader.

But, a brief aside on USPS delivery confirmation, as I have family that has been a mail courier for more than 25 years, just because the delivery confirmation says something gets there doesn't mean it's actually there.  Often times the USPS will be lazy much like the traders we're railing against and will mark something as delivered when it arrives at the local post office, not when it's actually been delivered (which typically happens the next day).  As such, it's possible to have DC things show they're delivered but they actually get lost.  It is the best way to cover your arse, but it's certainly not insurance against something getting lost in the mail.

In either event, I think the best message here would not be that there should be changes in the site's trading policy or anything.  Rather, how about we hold everyone to a higher standard with regard to communication.  If something comes up, TALK to your trade partner.  Oddly enough, 95/100 times you will be able to work things out without having things come down to trade disputes and whatnot.

It's simply not worthwhile to send with tracking on anything under about $15-20 minimun. If you think about how often cards really DO go missing (I've only had ONE instance of this in over 110 trades by mail), look at the cost of getting tracking on each of those trades versus the cost of replacing the one that went missing. It's just not worth it on cheap trades, and I'm perfectly fine without it for those. I'll be more than a little annoyed if you're not tracking $50 worth of cards, though.

As was said in the post before this, most of the time you can resolve issues without escalating the problem to a bad trading report. This is absolutely true. As has been said over and over, communication is key.

My problem is that people aren't communicating, and even if the problem is resolved, it's sometimes incredibly inconvenient to have to wait an additional SEVERAL WEEKS to receive cards you expected to receive within a few days.

If I need cards for an upcoming tournament deck, I say so....it just doesn't seem to make a difference.

Yeah Canadians I make an exception for, though I'm currently having some difficulties with one whose cards supposedly went missing in transit.... Pretty pissed, we traded almost a month ago and I need one of the cards to run a deck in a tournament this weekend. Can't really spare the cash to get an extra Sphinx's Revelation last minute.