Do you ever ship with out tracking?

[Deleted]

I acquired a large number of Arbonne make up samples.  They are very similar to the type you might find in a magazine, (thick paper back with a pull up foil top).
I've sorted them according to shade and type of make-up.  Some of the lots would be very small and would not sell for a high price. 

Would you just stick them in an envelope with a stamp?   Or is there a better way to ship? 

I often wonder how items are sold for 3.00 when the shipping is close to 2.00. 

Shipping gurus, please enlighten me.

[SA]

I would worry they would get crushed and pop open.
I would feel better putting them in a padded envelope and shipping first class.

Is this something that you would be selling for under $5? Under $10?

ETA:  I had a different sample in my head.  I now understand the kind you're talking about.  I still might worry about them rubbing together and opening up depending on how tight the seal was. 

[Deleted]

^^^^ What Liz said. They make small self-sealing bubble sleeves (I have a slew of 4"x 8") that would probably protect the samples within an envelope and give you just enough thickness to then ship as a lightweight FCP. Otherwise you have no tracking/DC protection.

Maybe Jeremy can weigh in on this?

[Pantlandia]

I ship almost all of my stamps without tracking, except new customers who order over $20.00. Most of the time my average sale is less than $5.00, so the potential loss on an item far outweighs the amount saved in postage for the customer.

I charge $1.00 for postage. It costs me $0.70 to ship with a piece of cardboard to secure the stamp. If you don't think they will come open during shipping, then they should be easy enough to ship in a PWE (plain white envelope) for $0.70. I would put a thin piece of cardboard in with them, tho.

I have hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of postage stamps. I basically pay 25% of face value for my mailing stamps. So, it only costs me 17.5 cents to mail something that takes $0.70 worth of postage. This allows me to sell stuff at 99 cents and still make a profit. It's like getting free money that can only be used on mailing stuff.

In the thousands of items I've mailed with just stamps and no tracking, I've had 0 claims of INR in the US and 4 claims worldwide.

If you think you are going to send out a lot, you should consider buying postage lots here on eBay. You can get postage at a deep discount, so it will also allow you to make a little bit more profit selling things like that. The trick is that you'll get a lot of lower denomination stamps; 3 - 10 cents, so you just have to put on enough to add up to the cost of mailing (ie, seven 10 cent stamps = 70 cents in postage).

I hope that wasn't too convoluted. I just got off work and am exhausted. You can always send me a message and I'll try to help you a little more later

[zoesam]

I do on occasion when it's something small & cheap like that.

[Deleted]

Thanks for weighing in on this. I've received inexpensive items without tracking. Basically I think most folks are honest. But it only takes one person trying to get over to ruin you.