What should I do?

It is the seller's responsibility to get the item to the buyer. The shipping on the French side of the transaction is not performed by USPS.

I don't know if I am thinking about someone else, but you seem to be having a lot of problems with eBay and Paypal recently. I would cease use of them as both a buyer and seller and educate myself about what you need to do in both roles for your OWN safety.

Do you have your receipt? Some times it shows item mailed to France but that might not be enough.. its hard shipping to Europe.. I try to get resgistered mail which takes longer to arrive but safer on our side.

If you used Priority International you should be able to enter the customs # at usps.com and track some of the package's progress, at least when it left the US.

If you had used Global Express shipping you would have had tracking and insurance included.

First class mail was a bitch for domestic mail for me - I sent a TR pair on the 11th and the guy didn't get it till Jan 2. He was ready to file a dispute or get a refund because the tracking number wasn't showing any info!

I feel like I should keep prices down and ship by first class int'l but to cover your own ass you should really send things priority or express. Remember that in Europe, the same thing here costs more there so they can afford to pay the higher rates anyway. I hope you don't lose!

Well I can tell you right now that you can't do anything. As far as I know, people in France cannot get confirmed addresses. Any item not received claim should be lost by the seller just because of this.

Anyways, either way you have no proof of delivery since you shipped First Class. This also leaves you without insurance (I am guessing).

If all goes according to plan with Paypal, you will lose. If the shipping it just taking forever, then this person might just get the item and get a full refund. Kind of jacked up, but thats how Paypal works.

I have delt with this exact thing several times and I can tell you from my experience that you are out of luck with the Paypal dispute.

You see, Paypal will ONLY find in your favor if the tracking information shows DELIVERED. If it says anything else, like ACCEPTED or IN CUSTOMS, they will not find in your favor and the buyer will get a refund.

First Class Internationl is NOT trackable at all. When you ship an item out that way, you are bsically sending it without any insurance, no tracking, and no idea when and if their package even makes it to them. If you ship Global Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope, it is also NOT trackable and you cannot file a claim with it at the post office. If you send regular Global Priority Mail then you are supposed to get detailed tracking information, but with my experience it is also not fully reliable. The only form of shipping that is reliable is GLobal Express. Although expensive, it is worth it. You get $100 in insurance and it will be fully trackable and will make it to the destination quickly.

What you can tell the buyer is that they paid for First Class International and to please give the package 60 days to arrive. Also, advise them that the package may also being held in their local customs office and should check there to see if it is being held for any custom fees. Did you put a receipt in the package? Did you mark it as a gift? If there is no receipt in the package, it will delay it. Also, if it is marked as a gift and it is an Ebay purchase, your package will get lost., I guarentee it. I used to have tons of packages lost out there when I marked packages as a gift. As soon as I started putting receipts in the package as posting the real Ebay value the packages stopped dissapearing.

ANyway, good luck!

Let me add that 99% of my packages to France get delayed in customs.

NEVER EVER ship this way.

and a heads up it doesn't matter that you have a receipt from the PO that you shipped it out. unconfirmed address = automatic loss in paypal dispute

yes, youre screwed.

When you say those marked as gifts would disappear - do you think it was postal workers keeping the items? What happened to the "gifts"?

having a receipt for shipping does not mean jack squat, and i promise you that you will lose any claim or dispute against you unless the item was mailed to a confirmed address with delivery confirmation at the very minimum. when shipping internationally, the only way you should ever ship is via usps global express, which comes with a tracking number and insurance. for domestic priority with DC is fine, bur for international you cannot get tracking or DC with priority mail. plus almost any address you ship to will not be confirmes, in which case you automatically lose any dispute against you anyway. if you would have used global express, you would have a tracking number to prove if the item was delivered or not and if it wasn't you could recoup your loss through the insurance. as it stands now without any kind of tracking or DC, even if the item was delivered the buyer could say that it was not received and you will be out the money since you have absolutely no way of proving that it was delivered to them. basically, the fact that you merely shipped the item does not matter since you are responsible for the buyer actually getting the item not just putting it in the mail and beong done with it. not to be rude, but this is what happens when people buy and sell things on ebay or even in the mall here without knowing the ins and outs of everything involved in the process and fully understanding how to protect themselves. given that you ship 1st class mail and pay for stuff with your paypal balance, you are lucky that something like this hasn't happened long before now.

need paragraphs!

he said paragraphs, i believe he was referring to jskidder's comment

Well, my suspicion is that they were on to me at certain custom offices that my packages frequent. They probably saw my Ebay name on the package and said "this one wont get through". It is just a guess, but it sure was wierd that all of a sudden I had a problem with packages never making it to their destination and no tracking. And as soon as I changed it by adding a receipt and marking it as an Ebay purchase, rarely a problem now. Pretty suspicios to me.

If you accept paypal from international buyers, ship to unconfirmed addresses and ship with untrackable methods you are setting yourself up to loose money.

I would not accept paypal from unconfirmed addresses. Only the US, UK and Canada can confirm. Some great new idea of eBay's is to make every address confirmed for powersellers ... only problem is even USPS express cannot be tracked to ever country so unless you use a method that has international tracking you will not be safe (UPS, FedEx DHL) So that just pisses off the buyers since paypal pretends like its safe to ship to them but you are still not safe as a seller unless you use a super expensive shipping method which the buyer will not pay for!!!!!!

You can go to other websites like Canada post, Parcel Force etc and get tracking info but not every international site offers that.

In this case you are SOL.

It's currently US, UK, Canada and Germany only that are trackable - right?

I couldn't figure out how to track it on the German website. They use DHL to deliver USPS packages in Germany I think ... and I couldn't track them on the DHL site.

I know for sure you can track on UK, Canada, Cronopost (France), Australia ...

But just because you can track it doesn't mean its safe to accept paypal.