Letter tracking for eBay orders

Should I use eBay Standard Envelope or a stamped letter?

Use eBay Standard Envelope whenever an order qualifies. eBay's help says it is for items up to 3 ounces with a selling price up to $20 in eligible categories such as trading cards, includes up to $20 of protection on a single order, and needs no acceptance scan. You buy the label through eBay and the price includes postage. Our eBay Standard Envelope guide has its prices, size limits and the reasons it sometimes doesn't appear.

A stamped letter with a PigeonTrail barcode fits the orders eBay Standard Envelope can't take, such as a $25 card you decide to mail in an envelope knowing eBay will treat it as untracked, and it fits sellers who want one tracking page and one set of emails for every marketplace they sell on.

How do I download eBay orders for envelopes?

Download the orders report from Seller Hub. eBay's help says to go to Manage orders and use "Download report" at the top right of the table, or to open the Reports tab, select Download, choose Orders, pick a type such as Awaiting Shipment and set a date range of 1 to 90 days. The file comes as a CSV with Ship To name and address columns and a Buyer Email column.

How do I bring eBay orders into PigeonTrail?

Drop the file on the Orders page in PigeonTrail, as it came from eBay. PigeonTrail recognizes the file by its column names, so you don't rename or delete anything first, and when an order has one row per item, the rows are folded back into one order. Each address is checked against USPS data before anything prints, and an address USPS can't match is flagged so you can fix it with the buyer. PigeonTrail mails only to addresses in the United States.

eBay repeats an order on one row per item and ends the file with a count of records, and PigeonTrail folds the rows back together and skips the count. It reads the Ship To address, never the buyer's billing address. When the file carries each order's value, orders of $50 or more go to a separate Packages list instead of your letters, with a file you upload to Pirate Ship to buy Ground Advantage labels. You can change that $50 line in Settings, or turn it off.

How do I print tracked envelopes?

Pick the orders, choose what to print on and print from your own printer. PigeonTrail prints #10, #9, #6 3/4, A7 and 6 x 9 envelopes, Avery 5163 address sheets, 4 x 2 and 4 x 6 thermal labels, and a window slip that folds into a #10 window envelope. Each one carries the buyer's address and a USPS Intelligent Mail barcode in the places USPS's machines read them, with your return address and, if you like, your logo. You add a Forever stamp, which is $0.82 for a 1 ounce letter, and drop the letters in the mail.

The barcode only gets scanned when the letter goes through USPS's sorting machines, so keep it flat and flexible. Our letter checker tells you whether a mailer counts as a letter, whether it is machinable and how many stamps it needs.

What does my buyer see?

Every letter gets a tracking page with your shop's logo and colors, a map of the route so far and the day USPS expects it to arrive. When the Buyer Email column in eBay's report carries an address, we email your buyer the tracking link at the first USPS scan. If you're on Pro, the emails come from your shop's name, and your buyer hears from you when the letter is mailed, when it's almost there and when USPS marks it delivered.

A letter's scans come from USPS's sorting plants, and its delivered event is USPS's estimate from the carrier's route rather than a scan at the mailbox. Our guide to what each USPS scan means explains what your buyer will see.

Does eBay count a PigeonTrail letter as tracked?

No, so plan on eBay treating it as untracked. eBay's Money Back Guarantee protects a seller against an item not received claim only with a tracking number from a carrier integrated with eBay that shows a shipping scan, a delivered or attempted delivery status, and the address, with signature confirmation on orders of $750 or more. eBay's list of integrated carriers does include "IMb (USPS Intelligent Mail Barcode)," but eBay doesn't say which barcodes that covers, and it can only validate a number whose scans it can see. PigeonTrail's barcodes carry our own USPS Mailer ID, and USPS reports a barcode's scans only to the owner of that Mailer ID and the companies it chooses to share them with. We don't send them to eBay, so eBay can't validate a PigeonTrail number, and sellers on eBay's own community board report that numbers from letter tracking services are not accepted.

A letter's delivered event is also USPS's estimate from the carrier's route rather than a scan at the address, which is not what eBay's protection asks for. So leave eBay's tracking field empty for these letters, and keep eBay Standard Envelope or a package label for orders where you want eBay's protection. eBay's Top Rated standard counts tracking that is uploaded on time and validated by the carrier, and a number eBay can't validate doesn't help it.