3-months to deliver (domestic) - apologies for the length

Sorry so long but maybe it'll help someone prevent a similar issue. I've been selling off/on over a decade; daily the last 2 years but this is a new one for me.

In January (2026), I sold an item and purchased the shipping label through eBay. My printer was down and I'd been having QR codes scanned at post office when taking in a package. Before my printer crashed, I printed labels myself but a few times when the line was out the door and I was on a lunch break, I just left the package (with permission from a postal worker at an adjacent window) without waiting for a receipt showing it scanned into the system. Had never been a problem and I figured I had proof enough purchasing postage from eBay. (Wrong - don't do it!)

I track my sold items to make sure delivery goes like it's supposed to. I had a shipped item with trouble and was communicating with multiple buyers through ebay with messages also delivered to my personal email account. For a bit, I had 2 different items/buyers confused - the one that was having delivery issues and another item/buyer that sold the same day and I was communicating with both buyers via messages. (And working.) After much confusion, the item with the delivery issue finally delivered. In the meantime, the buyer I'd been confused about previously? The tracking number for that item had a status saying the post office was still waiting on me to bring them the package to ship -- the package that had already been dropped off - and left without getting a paper receipt.

Went round after round with post office. All efforts got the same answer - if it's not in the system, we have no way to track it. Buyer was very understanding during the process. Because it never showed up at destination and I could get nowhere with the post office, I gave buyer a total refund. So here's the timeline -

Dropped package at post office January 12
Issued buyer refund February 10

Wait for it -

Got notification through eBay MARCH 21 that the item was delivered! The buyer says it wasn't at his residence but he would check the mailbox center the following day (apparently like a complex where all the mailboxes are in one location). He messaged me back the next day and said it wasn't there either. Not that it matters. He got his money back and may or may not have the item but through no fault of his - or mine. The post office screwed up from the beginning. And mind you, eBay has the item marked as sold-delivered now (before it only showed as postage purchased/QR code generated) but has made no motion to refund my refund (which I read somewhere in ebay's policy/terms). So, I'm out the cost of the item originally, plus had to pay ebay back the refunded amount including fees and postage.

Lesson learned - Buying postage through eBay offers you no extra protection, just savings. And ALWAYS get a paper receipt when you drop packages at the post office so you can later prove to them that they did indeed take your item/s. After dealing with it for a 3 months, I haven't had any inclination toward fighting another 3 months for ebay or the post office to make it right.