I'm with Vincentarisen, and at this time I don't trade with anyone except fellow SA goons for exactly the reasons he argues above.
I had a huge problem recently with two separate Canadian traders. One was resolved nicely, but the other was a month-long debacle to recover a lot of lost value. The trader delayed in sending my cards in the first place, then they never materialized after weeks. Because of it being an international shipment, we had to wait longer than usual to agree that it was not going to show up.
There was a second attempt to send replacements, and once again no DC was added because of the expense. Once again, it failed to show up for weeks. Eventually I had to get the value via paypal. In the meantime, I had to modify a deck to run without the missing, expensive cards; didn't exactly have cash to replace a Sphinx's Revelation and a Hallowed Fountain on a whim when they were at their peak value. This trade was made 34 days before the tournament in question, plenty of time to receive them you would think.
Because of the lack of DC, I also have no evidence the cards were ever even sent, as I find it highly unlikely that two separate shipments disappeared back to back like this. With US traders, without fail if a trade goes missing the replacement gets DC to not only prove the sending of the replacement but to ensure its arrival.
LootPinata is also entirely correct, and the BIGGEST issue is that the USPS is horribly inconsistent. I have had over 130 successful trades on this site alone, and for cheap trades, a stamp on a PWE is sufficient for mailing. However, every so often a batch of envelopes gets kicked back to me for insufficient postage.
Someone mentioned going in person to mail every single trade, but that's just not an option for many of us. It's a 17 minute drive to my post office, and given how frequently I trade, that adds a significant hidden cost of gas and time to each trade if I had to do that. For trades requiring DC (read: anything over $15 at this point), I can now use PayPal and it's actually way cheaper than the post office ($1.69, and so far I've sent up to 6 oz of cards without the price going up, whereas 3 of the 5 employees at my post office try to make me send a bubble mailer as a package and tack on all sorts of fees to push the price up over 3 bucks for a 1 oz envelope, god forbid I ship 6 oz...that goes up to over $5). Note that PayPal's shipping system does NOT allow for international shipping labels to be created at this time unless they are generated in relation to a money transaction, like for an ebay item.
I guess the overall point is that DC is an absolute must for me given the issues I've had with traders in the past 2 months, and shipping to Canada makes that prohibitively expensive. Time is sometimes a factor in trades, where I can't get a card locally but need it in time for a tournament. Having to go down to the Post Office to fill out customs form and get a needlessly inflated price is also a big drawback that makes all but the most expensive trades not worth doing.
Aside from the problem cases I've had, I have nothing against Canadian traders....but the USPS makes it such a giant pain in the ass to trade with you that unfortunately it's not worth the added hassle. Maybe if the USPS gets its act together and tightens up their system, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen this century.
Last edited by BaronVonVaderham (2013-03-13 22:13:39)