In November Amazon.com was having a Black Friday sale that started at 3AM. After a long Thanksgiving and an early day at Apple coming up I set my alarm for 2:50 and literally sat there refreshing the Wii page until it was in stock. Other sales I took part in were very cheap copies of Bioshock, The Darkness, Rainbow Six Vegas, Halo 3 Legendary, and perhaps a few more to get a quick jump on some Christmas shopping. I actually already owned a Wii but was buying it for my girlfriend and when they finally popped up as being in stock I made my purchase only to find out she also had managed to get one from the sale. I decided to just keep the order and turn around and sell it on ebay with the hopes that I could make a nice profit with Christmas coming up.

I never used eBay prior to this nor do I have a PayPal account so it was all set up under my girlfriend's account where it wasn't long before we had a winner who got it for around $500! My girlfriend, who was awesome about all of this, then went and shipped it out setting up as a must sign for package and insuring it (the post office said legally you could only insure for the retail value so $250 it was.) I then found out the buyer was only about an hour and a half away and would have just driven it down when it seemed to take a little bit longer for the package to reach her.

Days go by and she starts sending angry e-mails our way and we sent her the tracking info and still nothing. We called our post office in Mahwah, NJ and they tell us it was arriving that day through their Trenton hub. According to her nothing had arrived. Trenton then says that the package was delivered at the address. We go to the Mahwah post office that we sent it out from and on their computer it says it is delivered however the space where there should be a signature was blank. The package was not to be delivered without a signature. At this point the woman disappeared and we haven't heard from her since.

The only sign of life we have from her was when we received a call from PayPal stating there was a charge back to her credit account and we owed her now more than what she even paid for it due to extra charges from PayPal. WTF? The post office in Trenton and the one we went to in Mahwah tell almost two different stories as to what was going on and even with the paper work the Trenton hub basically said too bad. We couldn't file an insurance claim for 90 days and the post master would not take our calls nor would the Postal Police help us out. 

We appealed the PayPal issue and in the end a few weeks later she wins and they say "okay, pay up." I'm still flustered about it all so there's most likely a few more details I'm skipping out on because it's almost April now and it's been a long time. Does this make sense though? We have proof of the purchase, receipts for everything, proof that we sent the insured package with a MUST sign for delivery, the scanner ID of the delivery person, etc. and the post office still says well it's not our fault....?

Paypal states that since we don't have a signature we have nothing and it's like, well were we supposed to follow the delivery truck and do the job for them? 

i just don't see how you can do everything you can possibly do on your end including helping this woman find her stuff and she is nothing but an ungrateful shithead about the whole thing. 

We were scammed whether it was by her or the post office and the whole thing sucks. We still have her money and do not plan on giving it to her because I don't care what any of these guys policies are we did our job and it's not our fault. Tough luck for her if she got screwed because we weren't the ones who screwed her. She never went after the post office so if she wants to eventually take this to small claims court or something I think we got all we need. 

*A quick note for anyone who uses USPS to deliver insured items in the future. They stamp a huge INSURED stamp on the box letting anyone know if they were to steal it or lose it then it's no big deal because it is covered. Also it's a good giveaway on whether the item is valuable or not. I've never had mail problems and do almost all of my shopping online. FedEx and UPS have never given me problems and I would advise to select them whenever possible.