Blue Boxes VS Tracked Mail

[Blammo]

I live in the US, and was wondering about your guys' thoughts on tracked packages vs dropping off at a blue box.

One, the tracked is less anonymous. You have to show your face, or someone's face, at an actual shipping store.

The blue boxes, you just drop it in a slot. However, you are limited in weight. They can have a max of 10 oz, including the packaging, so your scale is limited. But still, there are many less chances of your identity being found, as you are not in a place with cameras. There might be cameras, but they will be from a farther distance, less chance at being identified well.

However, not having tracking means people are going to abuse your system. It would likely mean a very firm reship system, say where you have to give them one reship, and they have to make another purchase after that, no exceptions. Maybe have good prices in return for an inflexible reship system.

That is a very large barrier, and basically guarantees half of potential profit, as people will absolutely abuse the system.

I just can't see a way around the barrier of having to identify yourself, in some manner, in order to ship things through the mail.

Anyone care to give thoughts on this subject?

 

[miner21]

You can use something like pirate ship (I think thats still a thing? Or something like stamps.con?) to print tracked labels at your house. Then just use those priority shipping boxes at the post office. You cant ship anything paint but those small priority boxes should fit in a blue box.

Tell buyers to use informed delivery to see all the mail coming to that address

 

[SamBent]

You can get shipping labels that are prepaid, and in bulk. BUT you need to stay far away from the actual purchasing of them yourself.
In the US, feds tend to LOVE this because they can track EVERY package you send.
So, why would I suggest it?
Well, if you stick boxes in blueboxes tarred in stamps, it's a red flag, why? Because, it's not practical of convenient, which means nobody does it.
Which means your creating a clear pattern. LE loves patterns. Not only that, do you know how long it's going to take to actually apply said stamps to every package you ship?
Avoiding using your own credit card for the prepaids is easy, you can also buy them in smaller bulk sizes and they don't stand out.
You can also drop them off easier, and send them from virtually anywhere.
When I was a vendor, I didn't do this.
Instead I sent someone into the post office with packages.
NOT having tracking was a no go for me. I wanted to be able to win disputes. Alternatively you could include on your ToS that you do no refunds or reships IF someone elects to use the non-tracking method and just hope that the dnm admins don't shotgun the dispute resolution. There are a ton of actual methods, this is just one. Learning about logistics and opsec around it is a 3 month endevor on it's own. I've not used any of these but I think I would start by looking into pirateship, shippo or easypost.