I ALWAYS use delivery confirmation.  It's the Post Office, trust me....

I have had 3 items broken in the last week as well.  No wonder they are going down the tubes, kind of like ebay.

Since January I have been insuring all my domestic packages and wrapping my stuff like King Kong was going to handle it.  The USPS is like most US businesses, doing twice as much with half as much.  That leaves one and a half in the wind.

When it is privatized to some half wit grafter, you will discover what was killed.

We always use Ebay labels for our shipping along with the tracking, always try to go Priority. Buyer bought item Sunday night, item was pre-packaged, dropped off at post office Monday morning, if you had deliver directly to clerk they give us a receipt. But a lot of times my husband not wanting to deal with them just sticks it in the box. I on the other hand get it so I have one more thing of proof if I get a loon buyer. We have it set up clearly in our policy will ship out in 1-3 days after payment, well he paid right away, we had to pass post office on way down hill so we dropped it off Mon. morn. Not even 48 hrs and hes freaking on me, threatening me, accuses me of falsifing the tracking number. I informed him I did not hack into the USPS system just to alter his tracking number. So Im checking everything, checked tracking and there was an ACK, went to post office, btw shipping was estimated 5-6 days but he was going nuts, turned out they shipped but sent it back to themselves. They apologized, said it was their fault and would ship it right away back out. We also found out that in lower populated areas like where we were living the post office is now holding its packages for a couple of days till they get a larger number of packages worth sending to the distribution center because cost of gas. I'm thinking great, this guy is going to totally flip out, he wanted a refund, he was going to tattle to Ebay, bla bla bla. When we informed him of what happened and that we technically had 5-6 days shipping window, it was as if we were talking to a whole different person. Suddenly nice and polite..... somebody took their meds, I thought for sure this was going to end in an epic battle with Ebay. But he did a 180 on me and became a very nice person, maybe he just had a bad day, dunno.

As everyone knows the postal system is "cutting back" employees; etc.  You don't have people that REALLY care about your package. In some cases they are angry due to cutbacks.  Anyway why try to explain everything. I am sick of it.   The concept of selling on Ebay when it started up was wonderful and now you get the postal system and EBAY,  I am finished with all of it.  I am a little person and cannot compete or complain.   Ebay has no conception of what the little person goes thru.  Here is an example:

We yardsale and buy an item for  $1.00 to 2.00.  Sell it for $10.00 if you are REALLY REALLY lucky.  Now EBAY you figure what a small person makes after all your fees and God only knows what else.  Not to mention the gas you use buying these 1.00 and 2.00 items.  Your out of pocket  money you spend and the item eventually does not sell.  AND you have the audacity to suggest that we ship FREE SHIPPING.  Get Real you are only making these suggestions on the people that sell on EBAY with hugh sales, new products; etc.  Us little people CANNOT do that.  I continue to try but it is not worth it.  I have enjoyed my years selling but it is no longer profitably at all.