![]() I could have filed a claim with PayPal, but I probably would have lost it. In fact, on the its Buyer Protection page, PayPal lists a number of things not covered by its policy, but somehow it forgot to mention items lost in transit: For the buyer, this offers little solace. ![]() But for the buyer, it offers little protection in the event of a lost package. This is a lesson for sellers to save those shipping receipts and to take a photo of the box with shipping label before shipping, so that you can prove shipment should it come to that. According to the full PayPal user agreement, “If the seller presents evidence that they delivered the goods to your address, PayPal may find in favor of the seller for an Item Not Received claim even if you claim you did not receive the goods.” If the seller shows proof of shipment or proof of delivery, the buyer’s claim will not qualify for PayPal’s purchase protection. While PayPal has a “ Buyer Protection Policy,” PayPal’s policy doesn’t actually cover items lost in transit. This brings me to the point of this article: what if the package were really lost? Would I have gotten my money back from PayPal or USPS? Who knows if the USPS investigation would have uncovered anything, but I wasn’t hopeful - they’re processing thousands of packages just in my town, how were they ever going to find a little watch box? PayPal is not Actually Protective of Buyers Perhaps it was in the back of a USPS truck and a delivery person had forgotten to drop it off. I have no idea where it was in the intervening time, but it was finally in my hands. ![]() Thankfully, about a week later, the package finally arrived at my door. I started dealing with the local USPS customer service in my city, and they were (surprisingly) very helpful, if not a little slow (the first day I called, all of their computer systems were down. ![]() If it’s not insured, they don’t really care. To even start an investigation with them, you basically need to have an insured package. So, the seller and I started an investigation with the USPS. Forum members lent a sympathetic ear as well as some good advice, but my watch remained missing for an entire week. So worried that I made a Watchuseek post about it. FedEx, USPS, UPS all have targets to meet in delivering items that are sent as priority or 2-day shipping (think Amazon Prime 2-day delivery and the massive contract it has with the USPS), and people have claimed before that delivery workers will mark items as delivered even when they’re not to make Amazon and other shippers happy.Īfter a few days, I started to get worried. It’s not uncommon for couriers to sign for and mark packages as delivered at the end of a business day when they haven’t actually been delivered yet. I waited a couple days before getting too worried. I had no idea who had actually signed for a package that had allegedly been dropped off at my building. But, the USPS tracking showed a rather uninformative signature: it was nothing more than a straight line through the signature box. The watch was delivered as “signature required on delivery,” meaning that I was supposed to have to sign for the watch before the USPS courier could actually drop it off. I went down to my door person (I live in a large building in a city center), and he’d seen no such delivery. A few days later, I got a notification from USPS tracking that my watch had been delivered. I used a debit card to pay through PayPal, and the seller shipped the watch insured through USPS. That money is gone as soon as you send it. This is the first note: never pay with PayPal Friends and Family. Like most forum transactions, we negotiated price and then I paid with PayPal Goods & Services, which charges a 3% fee on top of the sales price. That said, I had quite the scare when buying my newest watch, a Tudor Black Bay 36, from a forum seller. Plus, I’ve been around these forums long enough that I find the people to be generally trustworthy and nice. There are also “trusted seller” sites like eBay, Chrono24, Torneau, and WatchFinder & Co (recently purchased by Richemont), but buying and selling peer-to-peer on a forum cuts out the middle man and the accompanying middleman markup. I rarely buy watches new from a store or authorized dealer - I buy and sell so much that it’s not worth it to me to pay the brand-new MSRP markup - so look to forums for the best prices. Even eBay largely falls in this category). I recently bought a watch from a forum seller (Watchuseek, Reddit, Rolex Forums… it’s all the same for purposes of this article.
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