BAD- Received Rocks vice Rockstead

[stonesell]

At this point, I’m willing to speculate that it was a third party responsible for the theft. Both seller and buyer seem to be very reputable.
If I was to speculate even further, I lean towards the idea that something happened on the military base, during the time that the package was out of the buyers possession.

 

[Quiet]

If PayPal did indeed rule in favor of the seller (sender), this surprises me although it does not shock me! By and large, PP tends to indemnify the buyer but obviously there are exceptions. However since double jeopardy does really exist with PP, if the buyer had paid by using a credit card, he can always dispute the transaction with his CC company.

I am really curious about Mr. Quiet's lack of confidence in the insurance process and the notion of insuring one's packages. Don't get me wrong as I am not naive and I do understand that the insurance Co's first course of action is to be adamant about an immediate payment based on hearsay followed by rigorous questioning, "investigation" ala laying out as many obstacles to obfuscate as much as possible; but still there are laws and regulations governing insurance. I am particularly interested in some examples of what claims were declined in Quite's case vis a vis the USPS. As far as receipts are concerned, this is the reason that when it comes to my own sales, I insist on sending an "invoice" to the buyer as opposed to just giving the buyer my PP email address to send me G&S fund$ but then again I run an online business unrelated to celery and I consider myself more savvy in this regard as opposed to the average person conducting infrequent online sales / purchases. Also once you have a receipt to show as to what value was received, the Ins Co ought not have too much argument against a legitimate receipt. Of course they are still entitled to independently verify the legitimacy/ accuracy of the value by researching the valuation or appraisal based on MSRP, etc. I do not think that the insurances underwritten whether by DHL / FedEX or UPS would be much different.

If I could fault the seller based on my reading through the thread and filtering out the noise, it would be lack of proper packaging! I simply find using one flimsy small flat rate USPS box inadequate, on top of having reused one! Brother, you are shipping out an $850 knife which comes in a nice wooden presentation box and I don't care if you've lost or gain on it, pay up $10 more and use a more sturdy / bigger box to just sleep a bit easier at night. Always use double layered boxing to exactly deter against such malfeasances. This is not just a criticism against you the seller, but also what I have personally experiences having bought many Shirogorov Knives in the $700-$1000 range which were shipped out to me with the exact "inadequacies".

As far as the buyer goes, if the package was indeed delivered to him in Camp Pendelton (I was not initially aware of this) there could be more steps along the way in here regarding fraud, malfeasance and theft; specially if the buyer (addressee) was known for having a side business relating to craftsmanship and valuable cutlery. This one I will just leave at this but I still find Rocksinstead of a Rockstead too much of a coincidences just to dismiss as a fluke as only highland cutlery folks find the irony in this. Someone had already mentioned maybe a prank gone terribly wrong!

I uhhhhh...yeah listen, I only skimmed this post, but let me cut to the chase: do you have a receipt for everything you've ever purchased?

If the answer's no, then you're on my side of this situation.

 

[Casinostocks]

I uhhhhh...yeah listen, I only skimmed this post, but let me cut to the chase: do you have a receipt for everything you've ever purchased?

If the answer's no, then you're on my side of this situation.

I generate receipts for every knife which I sell on the Exchange in combination with the insurance which I purchase. It strikes me as very odd that folks in the cutlery community seem to place a huge amount of faith in purchasing insurance and signature if your personal experience is that at the end of the day the insurance counts for not very much. Fortunately I have not experienced any of these shenanigans personally but if the odds of them are there, perhaps it's just a matter of time when one gets unlucky despite all the measure personally taken to bolster the transit process.

Frankly speaking, seeing more and more of these threads in here have diminished my own enthusiasm for using the Exchange as the prime venue to getting rid of whatever is surplus to my knife hobby/use.

 

[Quiet]

I agree in the essence of your opinion but my question was addressed to Quite's assassin that purchasing insurance is a total waste money and a waste of one's time if having to act on to.

I will tell you this though, since the addressee seems to live on base, this will attract and merit investigations if escalated to that stage. JMO!



Hence the insertion of the word "when"

It absolutely is a waste of money when buying/selling items that are used. If you don't have a credible receipt from a company, you simply won't get your money back. Secondly, if the postal service employee assigned to your claim DOES decide to come to work and do their job that day, and they actually take the time to look online to see what the original value of your item was, there's still no guarantee that you'll get the money. I used to buy and sell rare old toys, and sold a pretty rare figure a few years ago (back when there was still money in them) and the buyer claimed that it never arrived, and in fact, it was never scanned in, so it went into limbo. Therefore, I attempted to get the insurance payout for the figure. I had insured it for what the buyer paid, $350. In my claim, the PO employee DID do a search (they did it while I was actually on the phone with them after the claim sat for weeks with no response). They found one of the toy sites where the figure had originally sold, except it had sold for like $25. They told me that they couldn't use Ebay (where others of this toy were still selling for quite a lot) because the prices weren't consistent. So, I was offered a $25 payout. I had to send the buyer his $350 back, so I was out the figure, and then the money. My Paypal slip showing I was paid $350 for it was worthless, in fact it was rejected by the PO employee.

Another time. I bought a knife from a custom maker in the maker's exchange here. The guy packed the knife in a heavy duty envelope (I know, right?), and it "somehow" escaped from the heavy envelope, and I received the aforementioned heavy, empty, semi-shredded envelope. I informed the seller, and the seller went to file a claim and was denied. Actually, in this instance I don't remember why it was denied. The seller DID refund my money, but then left the seller out the money, and the knife.

Lastly, I've stated my position before, I personally think USPS insurance is a scam. It's an additional charge that actually provides no peace of mind, because it doesn't provide any sort of service. It WOULD be worth something if it was as simple as you reporting that the item was missing, and the USPS cut you a check on the spot. But they don't. They do the bare minimum of attempting to corroborate value, and don't value actual transaction data like an Ebay sale screenshot, or a Paypal transaction receipt.

Maybe this has changed, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't.

 

[Casinostocks]

^ thanks for this. I just wanted to know about your personal experiences. That's all.

 

[Quiet]

I generate receipts for every knife which I sell on the Exchange in combination with the insurance which I purchase. It strikes me as very odd that folks in the cutlery community seem to place a huge amount of faith in purchasing insurance and signature if your personal experience is that at the end of the day the insurance counts for not very much. Fortunately I have not experienced any of these shenanigans personally but if the odds of them are there, perhaps it's just a matter of time when one gets unlucky despite all the measure personally taken to bolster the transit process.

Frankly speaking, seeing more and more of these threads in here have diminished my own enthusiasm for using the Exchange as the prime venue to getting rid of whatever is surplus to my knife hobby/use.

Oh, no, I DON'T place any faith in insurance, and in fact, when I sell knives I never buy insurance. If the buyer asks, I simply tell him that he's going to pay the upcharge. I'm open with any potential buyer who asks me, and (knock on wood) as far as transactions here on BF go, I've never had a knife go missing. As for the mail: every time we mail something, it's a gamble. Understand that. It just is. You are taking the chance that your merchandise is going to be lost into the ether, and that will be that. That's what kills me, even if the USPS loses the package, they still will not just pay you the insurance claim. They are going to try to find a replacement item, or else just deny the claim outright because the item in question was used, and therefore current value cannot be established. Used knives? How many times have we seen desirable knives go for more than they sold for new? Exactly.

 

[Quiet]

^ thanks for this. I just wanted to know about your personal experiences. That's all.

I apologize if I came off as antagonistic. I just hate getting rooked, and when attempting to use services which are supposed to protect us from it happening, it happens anyway. As I said, if both the buyer and seller are on the up and up in this transaction, I feel bad, because ONE of the two is going to get stuck with nothing. I simply don't think USPS will pay the seller the value of the insurance on a used knife. Hey, maybe he has a receipt from its original purchase, and maybe his claim investigator will have come to work that morning ready to actually do his job and this all works out in the end.

But, I'm too salty to count on that. LOL

 

[91bravo]

My gut feeling still tells me it's either the buyer or the seller... Hell, they may even be in on it together and just split the insurance money...

 

[Casinostocks]

I apologize if I came off as antagonistic. I just hate getting rooked, and when attempting to use services which are supposed to protect us from it happening, it happens anyway. As I said, if both the buyer and seller are on the up and up in this transaction, I feel bad, because ONE of the two is going to get stuck with nothing. I simply don't think USPS will pay the seller the value of the insurance on a used knife. Hey, maybe he has a receipt from its original purchase, and maybe his claim investigator will have come to work that morning ready to actually do his job and this all works out in the end.

But, I'm too salty to count on that. LOL

I was genuinely interested because as you know at the end of the day as a seller it comes down to purchasing insurance (which seems to be almost universally encouraged on this Site) vs self insuring. As you know in most "Bad" threads in GBU, the question of insurance or there lack of comes up and this Community in here appears to be a huge proponent. I was merely interested in the lone voices of dissent like yours and it wasn't a set up job

 

[Norcaldude]

...if the postal service employee assigned to your claim DOES decide to come to work and do their job that day...

Kind of a crappy way to talk about half a million people. Most of them do their jobs well, every day, sometimes in terrible conditions or while dealing with a very annoying public.

 

[Lotmom]

Hey, EurAzn12 if you send me pictures of the rocks and answer some questions I can ID them. The idea that there is a very unhappy rock collector with a rockstead out there tickles my fancy.
I'd love to see if the rocks are worth anything.

 

[mb>]

That's pretty disheartening about USPS insurance. Their whole system leads you to believe the value you pay to insure is what would be covered, especially since you don't declare what the item is upon shipping.

 

[luh1202]

Hey, EurAzn12 if you send me pictures of the rocks and answer some questions I can ID them. The idea that there is a very unhappy rock collector with a rockstead out there tickles my fancy.
I'd love to see if the rocks are worth anything.

And maybe the origin of the rocks, and if it is even available to me or not. I know it's a long shot but who knows

 

[Lotmom]

And maybe the origin of the rocks, and if it is even available to me or not. I know it's a long shot but who knows

Honestly, I'm no use as a legal reference, but I am more than happy to help either side retain their reputation.

 

[Quiet]

Kind of a crappy way to talk about half a million people. Most of them do their jobs well, every day, sometimes in terrible conditions or while dealing with a very annoying public.

I'm not concerned if you don't like my tone. I've been to enough post offices staffed by people who aren't concerned in the slightest with helping you, along with having mail constantly misdelivered (I live in a large city, not a rural town) or mis-scanned that I'm just fine.

Oh man, did I ever tell you about the time that I opened a claim on a small used paperback book I'd ordered on Ebay which was listed as delivered, but wasn't actually IN my mailbox when I got home that day? Three days go by as I wait for it to show up before I file a claim. I called into the hotline, and opened a claim. The person on the other end of the line said "Not to worry, we'll find the package, we'll get it sorted out."

I check the claim number the very next day, and saw that the claim was closed! Yep, that lazy asshole employee looked up and saw that the package had said "Delivered", noted on the claim "Item was delivered." and it was closed. This is right after we had spoken on the phone where I specifically stated that it WASN'T actually delivered. I called back to reopen the case and was told "We show it as delivered, nothing we can do."

I was pissed. It was an old original run sci-fi novel I'd been looking for for ages. It was like $7 shipped, lady acted like I was trying to pull a fast one over on the USPS. I never did get that book.

 

[Casinostocks]

That's pretty disheartening about USPS insurance. Their whole system leads you to believe the value you pay to insure is what would be covered, especially since you don't declare what the item is upon shipping.

I fear that talking about insurance will derail from the topic but I have to mention this:

If selling on eBay and wish to purchase insurance, eBay defaults to another 3rd part insurer with slightly higher rates. You can still elect USPS insurance by opening that insurance choice menu, but that's eBay and who's to say that the other ins Co is any better? I have never used so I can not comment!

When generating labels through PP, the only insurance you can choose is through USPS which is the only choice one has when going directly ti USPS, whether through their website or by going to their retail stores. I have no experience with place like Stamps.com. Perhaps the lesson is to use FedEx or UPS for higher value items and pay their much higher freight/insurance charges but then again, none of those I suspect are failsafe.

 

[sharp_edge]

At this point, I’m willing to speculate that it was a third party responsible for the theft. Both seller and buyer seem to be very reputable.
If I was to speculate even further, I lean towards the idea that something happened on the military base, during the time that the package was out of the buyers possession.

That was something jumping to my mind after reading the OP. However, based on his reply to my questions, he seems to be certain that nobody touched the package after it was delivered, except his wife and himself.

 

[stonesell]

Hey, EurAzn12 if you send me pictures of the rocks and answer some questions I can ID them. The idea that there is a very unhappy rock collector with a rockstead out there tickles my fancy.
I'd love to see if the rocks are worth anything.

I think that you have a good idea, so I paused the video to see the bag of rocks.
My friend collects fossil rocks from the California coastal areas, and I was in the mineral business for many years. To me those look more like something from Oceanside, Ca, than Tennessee.
I hope that you can get the chance to further ID them.

 

[Lotmom]

I think that you have a good idea, so I paused the video to see the bag of rocks.
My friend collects fossil rocks from the California coastal areas, and I was in the mineral business for many years. To me those look more like something from Oceanside, Ca, than Tennessee.
I hope that you can get the chance to further ID them.

me too. It's nearly impossible to determine what they are when they're dry in a bag that's been shaken around in postage... Id love to get a better look

 

[CPP]

No one seems to care that this could all be a misunderstanding and the Rockstead in question could be lost somewhere, all alone and far from home.