How do you handle lost shipments?

Hi all!

I have a problem, I’ve had quite a few orders to Brazil have disappeared, so the nice guy I am, I ship the order again at no cost to the buyer, they have been pretty small orders but it is now stating to cost me a lot.

I’ve sold on other sites before, never to Brazil though, with absolutely no problems at all!

How do you handle lost shipments, do you refund and forget or do you only sell with tracked shipping?

Any ideas are appreciated

I’m not a Tindie seller, but I do ship hand-made boardgames. My policy is it is at your risk but I’m happy to add insurance (and charge you for it) if you want it. If you don’t get insurance and I show proof of having shipped it, it is your problem at that point.

I’ve only ever had one shipment go missing, and it was a large one - I made replacement games at cost for the buyer as a show of good faith.

1 Like

Thanks for answering!
Sounds good a nice middle way of sorts, how well would a policy like that mesh with a services like Paypal? Im thinking that they would side with the buyer anyway…

As I had good experience with shipping without tracking thats what I’m offering, with extra for a tracked option.

You can set up you shipping rates with only tracked shipping to Brazil. More info:


Paypal tends to side with the buyer unless you can prove it’s delivered. If you can prove it was sent with tracking, then occasionally they will side with the seller, but it’s fairly rare. We also accept credit card payments by Stripe.com, and they tend to side with the buyer more than Paypal.

If someone opens a dispute with either payment provider, we usually contact both the buyer and seller to confirm the details and see if can be resolved. If we can’t get the buyer to retract the claim, we submit the tracking info and any other information we can get from the seller.

Before resending anything, get the buyer to reconfirm the address in case there was a typo or missing apt number or something.