Special Delivery - is it fit for purpose?

[arphethean]

I'd like to share my experience claiming for Special Delivery as a warning to other members and in the hope that people can use the service in the knowledge of what may ensue if the dreaded situation comes to pass and the item does not arrive. We all use SD when sending our precious metals in the expectation that the extra price we pay and the extra insurance is in place to cover for the loss of the item. It gives us peace of mind. Unfortunately a potentially false sense of security...

I share the full story as it has a few concerning aspects which potentially point to the existence of some underlying tactics used by Royal Mail to avoid honouring their Special Delivery insurance.

I sent a parcel on 17th August containing a tube of silver ounce coins (how many in a tube, I hear you ask! 20 this time) to a member of TSF worth £480, and it didn't arrive, so I refunded the buyer and started the claims process on the RM website on 25th August, sending them a bank statement showing the transfer made to me for the item.

I received a letter back from RM about on 11th September (17 days later) with a cheque for £8.95. It said 

Quote

If you wish to claim for the value of lost items in the future, we will require additional evidence, such as proof of the refund made to the recipient and proof of the cost price. Proof of the cost price must be a purchase invoice or receipt stating how much the item originally cost to acquire - as you're a business seller we'll only compensate for the cost price and not the sale price.

Note use of "in the future", a underhand implication that my case is closed and I will not be able to claim for the loss this time. The whole process is designed in such a way to discourage you to persevere with the claim. 

I responded to this letter by including a statement showing my payment to the original seller of the goods in the "submit additional evidence for a claim" form on the website, which unhelpfully only allows you to attach one file. I had to do this 3 times to attach all the evidence they had asked for.

I received this letter on 16th September.

I picked up the phone and got through to customer service to explain that having purchased the goods from an individual and not a business, I did not have an invoice, but said that I could ask the seller to knock one up for me. He said that would suffice.

I proceeded to get back in contact with the seller, provided him with an invoice template to fill in with the details of the transaction and sent that along in the same manner.

8 days later on 24th I received this rather cobbled up bit of waffle

It continued to invite me to escalate the claim with the "Escalated customer resolutions" team.

I picked up the phone to RM again and what ensued was the most bizarre and enraging telephone call I have ever had.

The man was able to see the invoice from the seller that I had provided and noted that it had come from an individual and not from a business, which I of course conceded was the case. He proceeded to put forward the argument that any Tom **** or Harry could cobble together an invoice on MS Word to fraudulently claim compensation for a lost item. I explained that I had responded to every request for evidence made in the claims process and that was the only option for an item supplied by an individual and that together with multiple bank statements I'd supplied with a clear paper trail showing funds transferred from seller to me, buyer to me for the purchase, and me back to the buyer for the refund, this, surely constituted pretty conclusive evidence of a genuine transaction. He maintained this was not sufficient and he needed an original purchase invoice from an established business. 

So I explained that goods are transferred between individuals all the time, not only from dealers. As a business I purchase items from individuals without original purchase invoices all the time. The conclusion is that SD is not fit for purpose for sending anything of value, despite the fact that this is the very basis of the selling point of Special Delivery - the only service that is suitable for sending items of value. It additionally does not state in any of the terms and conditions (which I have read closely), nor have I read anywhere or been told by anyone, that SD does not cover items sent between his individuals. 

His response? He actually told me on the phone that Royal Mail does not need to state that in their terms!

I responded with the argument that I have been mis-sold the SD service hundreds of times since it is not fit for the purpose it is advertised for. This would mean that rather than claiming for the £480 for the lost item, I should rather be claiming for the £1000s spent over years on mis-sold services by the Royal Mail when I could have saved the money spent on SD and just stuck to 1st class standard! 

I was pretty dumbstruck at this point, and getting pretty worked up, so I thanked the rep for his time, informed him that I would take my case to the CEO and ended the call. (I think I remained polite throughout, and put forward my case in a respectful way. These poor folk are doing their job and sticking to the company line. They do not deserve any abuse, but if I had continued the call I may have lost my rag as I could not believe what I was hearing!)

The story concludes happily, in that the CEO office responded very quickly to my email (which I kept brief and attached all evidence supplied) and returned the original purchase price for the goods to my bank account very promptly. Further, the goods arrived at the buyers two weeks later with a bizarre label :

Quote

This item was identified as possibly containing dangerous goods and was checked by the National Returns Centre team

This item does not contain dangerous goods, is labelled correctly and is therefore safe to transport BY AIR

 

Anyway. A long tale (and thank you for reading!) with the following morals to the story:

• If you use SD and pay for extra insurance, be prepared for a long, time consuming and stressful claim for any loss. Between sending item and receiving refund was 47 days! I could cope without £500 for a few weeks. But had that been £2500 that would be challenging. Additionally I spent over 4 hours working on the claim, in time spent compiling and uploading evidence, speaking to people on the phone and sending emails. The stress of the whole thing was rather a bore to put it Englishly.
• At Royal Mail the left hand does not know what the right is doing. At so many junctures in the process it is clear that nothing is joined up. Every stage I dealt with someone else and the messages all conflicted with each other.
• There appear to be unwritten policies and procedures to avoid giving compensation for SD and nudge tactics to dissuade pursuing claims.
• It would be easier, if a little lacking in integrity, to just find an old invoice from a dealer for something vaguely resembling the lost item in weight and value and send that in instead of being honest and saying what it actually was and who it was from.
• Royal Mail SD may not, after all, be suitable for sending valuables between individuals. I can only imagine what would have been the response if I'd told them it was cash!! (How would one prove how much it was?)
• Keep all evidence. Never throw away any PM invoices, keep all receipts, take photos. The more you have available the more likely for a successful claim.
• If the claims process bears no fruit, waste no time and escalate directly to the CEO office.
• Don't lose hope. Persevere.
• It may turn up after all!

Edited November 5, 2022 by arphethean

[jackflash123]

Wow this is extremely eye opening. It seems SD is certainly not fit for purpose, and I am becoming increasingly dubious about sending anything of value by Royal Mail at the moment.

I'm afraid that sticking to main dealers for purchasing PM's may be the only way to buy as they fully insure their deliveries.

What other choice do we have when Royal Mail are coming apart at the seams? This is very worrying indeed.

[arphethean]

3 minutes ago, jackflash123 said:

Wow this is extremely eye opening. It seems SD is certainly not fit for purpose, and I am becoming increasingly dubious about sending anything of value by Royal Mail at the moment.

I'm afraid that sticking to main dealers for purchasing PM's may be the only way to buy as they fully insure their deliveries.

What other choice do we have when Royal Mail are coming apart at the seams? This is very worrying indeed.

This.

SD is the only service I am aware of on the entire market available to individuals which is advertised as suitable for sending valuables. Every other service in my awareness excludes Precious Metals from its list of insured items. Some couriers such as DHL and Fedex offer insurance to businesses.

There are third party insurance providers who will provide contents cover for a parcel sent by any tracked service but again these are only available to businesses, not individuals. Everything I post out is fully insured through my business insurance but I usually double-insure myself by sending SD as well. But that's not much use to people who do not run a business in PMs!

So if SD is NOT in fact fit for purpose for individual use, what can we do?

[AaaGee]

A sad story with a happy ending thankfully.

Im in the middle of the process myself and have had my postage refund 🙄.

I will battle on untill they say case closed.

Believe it or not they want the original packaging i used to send the PM in. Thankfully the buyer kept it and its on its way to me as i type.

Who is the CEO? And how did you manage to get through to this person?

Rich

 

P.S feeling like ive neen shafted already but will keep going.

[BackyardBullion]

Shocking.

 

 

[James32]

Wow 😮 

This is very worrying but highly appreciated and eye opening.

Not really sure, where we go from here. Although I'd imagine if everyone on TSF stopped using special delivery tomorrow, then it would cost the royal mail millions per year in lost business.

I understand the part about any Tom **** or Harry trying a false claim, but I counter that with.. carry out the service I paid for and provide genuine proof of my item being delivered to the right address, with a genuine signature from a human being belonging to that address. Then any claim is impossible.

Seems they know the system is failing but happy to keep going based on the high-ish success rate. Then frustrate the life out of any genuine claim, in the hopes they give up.

 

 

[SheepStacker]

51 minutes ago, arphethean said:

I'd like to share my experience claiming for Special Delivery as a warning to other members and in the hope that people can use the service in the knowledge of what may ensue if the dreaded situation comes to pass and the item does not arrive. We all use SD when sending our precious metals in the expectation that the extra price we pay and the extra insurance is in place to cover for the loss of the item. It gives us peace of mind. Unfortunately a potentially false sense of security...

I share the full story as it has a few concerning aspects which potentially point to the existence of some underlying tactics used by Royal Mail to avoid honouring their Special Delivery insurance.

I sent a parcel on 17th August containing a tube of silver ounce coins (how many in a tube, I hear you ask! 20 this time) to a member of TSF worth £480, and it didn't arrive, so I refunded the buyer and started the claims process on the RM website on 25th August, sending them a bank statement showing the transfer made to me for the item.

I received a letter back from RM about on 11th September (17 days later) with a cheque for £8.95. It said 

Note use of "in the future", a underhand implication that my case is closed and I will not be able to claim for the loss this time. The whole process is designed in such a way to discourage you to persevere with the claim. 

I responded to this letter by including a statement showing my payment to the original seller of the goods in the "submit additional evidence for a claim" form on the website, which unhelpfully only allows you to attach one file. I had to do this 3 times to attach all the evidence they had asked for.

I received this letter on 16th September.

 

I picked up the phone and got through to customer service to explain that having purchased the goods from an individual and not a business, I did not have an invoice, but said that I could ask the seller to knock one up for me. He said that would suffice.

I proceeded to get back in contact with the seller, provided him with an invoice template to fill in with the details of the transaction and sent that along in the same manner.

8 days later on 24th I received this rather cobbled up bit of waffle

It continued to invite me to escalate the claim with the "Escalated customer resolutions" team.

I picked up the phone to RM again and what ensued was the most bizarre and enraging telephone call I have ever had.

The man was able to see the invoice from the seller that I had provided and noted that it had come from an individual and not from a business, which I of course conceded was the case. He proceeded to put forward the argument that any Tom **** or Harry could cobble together an invoice on MS Word to fraudulently claim compensation for a lost item. I explained that I had responded to every request for evidence made in the claims process and that was the only option for an item supplied by an individual and that together with multiple bank statements I'd supplied with a clear paper trail showing funds transferred from seller to me, buyer to me for the purchase, and me back to the buyer for the refund, this, surely constituted pretty conclusive evidence of a genuine transaction. He maintained this was not sufficient and he needed an original purchase invoice from an established business. 

So I explained that goods are transferred between individuals all the time, not only from dealers. As a business I purchase items from individuals without original purchase invoices all the time. The conclusion is that SD is not fit for purpose for sending anything of value, despite the fact that this is the very basis of the selling point of Special Delivery - the only service that is suitable for sending items of value. It additionally does not state in any of the terms and conditions (which I have read closely), nor have I read anywhere or been told by anyone, that SD does not cover items sent between his individuals. 

His response? He actually told me on the phone that Royal Mail does not need to state that in their terms!

I responded with the argument that I have been mis-sold the SD service hundreds of times since it is not fit for the purpose it is advertised for. This would mean that rather than claiming for the £480 for the lost item, I should rather be claiming for the £1000s spent over years on mis-sold services by the Royal Mail when I could have saved the money spent on SD and just stuck to 1st class standard! 

I was pretty dumbstruck at this point, and getting pretty worked up, so I thanked the rep for his time, informed him that I would take my case to the CEO and ended the call. (I think I remained polite throughout, and put forward my case in a respectful way. These poor folk are doing their job and sticking to the company line. They do not deserve any abuse, but if I had continued the call I may have lost my rag as I could not believe what I was hearing!)

The story concludes happily, in that the CEO office responded very quickly to my email (which I kept brief and attached all evidence supplied) and returned the original purchase price for the goods to my bank account very promptly. Further, the goods arrived at the buyers two weeks later with a bizarre label :

 

Anyway. A long tale (and thank you for reading!) with the following morals to the story:

• If you use SD and pay for extra insurance, be prepared for a long, time consuming and stressful claim for any loss. Between sending item and receiving refund was 47 days! I could cope without £500 for a few weeks. But had that been £2500 that would be challenging. Additionally I spent over 4 hours working on the claim, in time spent compiling and uploading evidence, speaking to people on the phone and sending emails. The stress of the whole thing was rather a bore to put it Englishly.
• At Royal Mail the left hand does not know what the right is doing. At so many junctures in the process it is clear that nothing is joined up. Every stage I dealt with someone else and the messages all conflicted with each other.
• There appear to be unwritten policies and procedures to avoid giving compensation for SD and nudge tactics to dissuade pursuing claims.
• It would be easier, if a little lacking in integrity, to just find an old invoice from Chards for something vaguely resembling the lost item in weight and value and send that in instead of being honest and saying what it actually was.
• Royal Mail SD may not, after all, be suitable for sending valuables between individuals. I can only imagine what would have been the response if I'd told them it was cash!! (How do I prove how much it was?)
• Keep all evidence. Never throw away any PM invoices, keep all receipts, take photos. The more you have available the more likely for a successful claim.
• If the claims process bears no fruit, waste no time and escalate directly to the CEO office.
• Don't lose hope. Persevere. It may turn up after all!

Never had a "bad" experience with Royal Mail Special Delivery personally. The "before 1pm" is a bit of a joke, but they've never not attempted delivery on the day.

My only nitpick would be that if you miss the delivery, they don't let you reschedule for the next day for some weird reason, it's always the day after.

Edited November 5, 2022 by SheepStacker

[ady]

I have had the argument with royal mail long ago about worth and value on a claim, which I could not get them to understand. I said I may have a large receipt for an item bought decades ago that only has sentimental value or may be sending a Rembrandt worth thousands only having paid 10s of pounds. There has to be a better way than how they are operating.

[arphethean]

3 minutes ago, ady said:

I have had the argument with royal mail long ago about worth and value on a claim, which I could not get them to understand. I said I may have a large receipt for an item bought decades ago that only has sentimental value or may be sending a Rembrandt worth thousands only having paid 10s of pounds. There has to be a better way than how they are operating.

This is another big concern I have. What about sovereigns? They may have never been bought from a dealer and originally worth £1

[Tn21]

I have had experience of a lost SD package which eventually turned up thankfully. 

Im going to keep this short, in my opinion peer to peer transactions on the forum will not be covered by the royal mail if in the event an package goes missing. You need an invoice, and a proper invoice from a company to show proof of purchase. Most items on the forum are second hand so no invoice is provided. 

After making the initial claim the royal mail will write to the intended recipient to confirm whether or not the item has been delivered, cost of the item and other details. 

I send via special delivery as the treatment through the system is slightly more secure but I do have severe doubts any items lost in transit will not be reimbursed by the royal mail on a forum member to forum member basis.

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Tn21

[arphethean]

In fairness to Royal mail, to my knowledge none of 500+ items I have ever sent using SD have ever gone missing....

[dicker]

Sorry to hear about your experience and disappointing from the RM.

Large organisations are often poor at resolving issues fairly, therefore:

In situations like these, I use:

- Ombudsman

- Small Claims Court

- Lawyer (if there is larger money at stake)

Works well!

 

[Luketeach]

I have had recent similar experiences, although selling collectible figures to help fund shiny goodies (recently often from yourself @arphethean😂). 
 

Although I have a lot of sympathy for the staff striking I do wonder if the resulting scale of issues with delays/ lost parcels is causing a hardline approach then from on high to refunds.

As a seller I took the decision to pause things until it settles down as more stress than it’s worth. When paying a premium to send, once the parcel is at the PO you should have peace of mind 🙁. 

[shawy2510]

Unfortunate to hear this story & you have been lucky to get the money back.

I on the other hand have only claimed once & had no issues claiming. I think my saving grace was that any invoices I have ever received in the past 5 or so years I stored away. In my claiming case I just picked an invoice that was of similar value (£480) & sent this. I had a cheque within 2 days of claiming for the full amount.

Keep those invoices even if its auction winnings

[ArgentSmith]

My one experience with RM was similar, they wanted original purchase receipt 🤣 not interested in sale price of item. Private sale on eBay.

you send PF70 Una and Lion to favourite uncle for Xmas, item goes missing, best case scenario £250 compensation... if you kept receipt 🥳

[sixgun]

Things have changed in England a lot over recent decades. i remember going into HFC bank with my wife to withdraw some money or maybe it was deposit cash. This would have been in the late 1980's or very early 1990's. We had to provide ID. Neither of us had ever been asked for this before. It was some BS about money laundering - the terrorism stunt hadn't come in yet. A few years later we saw the terrorism canard. i have asked more than once, do i look like a terrorist? (It would seem some of the content i post online has classified me as a terrorist in some parts of the world - according to the real terrorists and assorted criminals).

It seems that as more and more shysters appear in our land, more and more fraud is taking place, so businesses are obliged to disbelieve their customers. 
i mean take RM, i could claim i sent proof coins when they were bullion, i could claim anything and plenty of people will have done so. They see it as an opportunity to inflate their claims - the world is full of chancers. 

If you send valuables by RM, as i mentioned on an ebay thread, i think you have to video it all. To show what went into the package, to show the package, to show the address label. Video the package being handed over at the post office - showing it is the same package. Describe on video what you are putting into the package and the value. 

i went to this website to create a legal Bill of Sale. https://www.lawdepot.co.uk/contracts/bill-of-sale/?webuser_data_id=150432302
It is a legal document in England and Wales. You can put all the details into the document as you follow the steps. How many members would want to do this is debatable. You could show this Bill of Sale document as you packed the sale item - i am sending the 20 x 1 oz silver Britiannias to Jack Jones - here is his name and address on the package label - this is the price. This is the bank transfer online / paypal payment - you can fake a pdf bank statement but not a real time video of the computer screen. Maybe you even show your passport (photo ID) and then turn the camera on yourself to prove it is you, John Smith.
This is all way OTT and 99% of the time with sales to TSF members it won't be needed - it might be needed more often with ebay scammers who claim you never sent the item advertised. What more could we do for those unfortunate incidences?

Edited November 6, 2022 by sixgun

[flyingveepixie]

What a nightmare, but sadly it doesn't surprise me. 

It's been my experience over the years that most of these over-inflated companies have become so big that their policies reflect their attitude of  "We're so big and so puffed up with our own importance now that we can behave as we like"  and most of them seem to have taken specialist lessons from insurance companies on how to dodge making payment on claims.   It's a sad state of affairs which as well as putting me off even further than I already was from sending valuables through the post, simply reinforces my low opinion of these companies, their policies and attitude towards their customers,  and the direction our country is headed in general on all fronts, ie down the pan.  

My own recent personal experiences with SD - which pale before yours incidentally - is that the last two purchases I have made here on TSF have arrived not in the promised 24 hours, or by 1pm the following day, but by 1pm the day after that and therefore 24 hours late, which I believe makes each of them eligible to make a claim, but would there be any point to that?  TBH I really couldn't be bothered with the hassle of trying to find out.

I'm glad you got it all sorted out in the end.

Edited November 6, 2022 by flyingveepixie

[sixgun]

39 minutes ago, flyingveepixie said:

It's been my experience over the years that most of these over-inflated companies have become so big that their policies reflect their attitude of  "We're so big and so puffed up with our own importance now that we can behave as we like"  and most of them seem to have taken specialist lessons from insurance companies on how to dodge making payment on claims.   It's a sad state of affairs which as well as putting me off even further than I already was from sending valuables through the post, simply reinforces my low opinion of these companies, their policies and attitude towards their customers,  and the direction our country is headed in general on all fronts, ie down the pan.  

Once upon a time you would get to deal with people - more often than not, this was face-to-face. They saw who they were dealing with and you looked them in the eye. As local branches closed down and more and more went online, we no longer dealt with a human being - we dealt with a flow chart and AI. We dealt with people in a call centre 10 thousand miles away, we dealt with people who had metamorphosed into something nearer a robot. We should boycott these companies but where else is there to go? Nowhere.

The only way to deal with this is to record and document everything - record all conversations, such as where the guy says the Royal Mail doesn't have to put conditions in the terms and conditions. This is a lie or at best someone else lied to him.
Keep all the evidence and documents - then if necessary you take it to the small claims court. They will fold at that point b/c it becomes too expensive to defend the case and if you have all the evidence and everything is documented you would win the case anyway. The issue is of course there is only a £1000 annual turnover for online sales before you should be declaring what you have been selling. i suspect many members breach the £1000 and want to keep their private business, private.

[Arganto]

Something that doesn't seem to have been yelled about in this thread yet, apologies if I've got the wrong end of this particular stick, is the fact that the Royal Mail will only pay out compensation for the "purchase price" not the "sale price". Excuse me? That is not acceptable in the slightest. If you keep inventory for an amount of time and the cash value of that stock goes up you should expect any insurance claim to cover the value of the sales transaction. If I bought a Ford Capri in 1994 it may have cost me £500, that same car in comparable condition would be £thousands today. If the car is stolen/written off/damaged in transit I would be receiving the market value of the vehicle at the date of claim. The same goes for sales, a Ming dynasty vase that was lost/stolen in transit would garner the insurance value relevant to the sale amount/contemporary value. Why are Royal Mail trying to alter reality for personal sales of precious metals? I can't see this argument standing up in court, but then even approaching the idea of legal action is costly for the applicant so we'll probably never find out 🤷🏼‍♂️

[Zeuk]

I do quite like the idea of having a bill of sale as a pre-canned way to provide RM with the invoice they look for, if we had an available template to use it would be relatively low effort admin wise.

[Bogart]

Royal mail are a disaser from beginning to end. From accusing their post office people of stealing from them, look up Royal Mail Horizon, to trying, as here to wriggle out of their responsibilites.

SD guaranteed what a joke nothing is guaranteed.

[Bogart]

On 06/11/2022 at 12:07, flyingveepixie said:

What a nightmare, but sadly it doesn't surprise me. 

It's been my experience over the years that most of these over-inflated companies have become so big that their policies reflect their attitude of  "We're so big and so puffed up with our own importance now that we can behave as we like"  and most of them seem to have taken specialist lessons from insurance companies on how to dodge making payment on claims.   It's a sad state of affairs which as well as putting me off even further than I already was from sending valuables through the post, simply reinforces my low opinion of these companies, their policies and attitude towards their customers,  and the direction our country is headed in general on all fronts, ie down the pan.  

My own recent personal experiences with SD - which pale before yours incidentally - is that the last two purchases I have made here on TSF have arrived not in the promised 24 hours, or by 1pm the following day, but by 1pm the day after that and therefore 24 hours late, which I believe makes each of them eligible to make a claim, but would there be any point to that?  TBH I really couldn't be bothered with the hassle of trying to find out.

I'm glad you got it all sorted out in the end.

You would get postage refunded due to generosity of RM😃

[GoldStatue]

It seems like the question is more like is the royal mail fit for purpose?

It can certainly be improved that's for sure.

Why don't they do the insurance based on the value of the goods the customer declares the package to be worth? Then people would pay a fairer rate for the insurance and the Royal Mail can pay an insurance company to take the risk with a little admin fee for themselves.

I also noticed when I put in a claim for a missing parcel when I sold something on ebay, the process was straight forward up until the point they posted me a cheque as a payment for the successful claim, the year is 2022 not 1922, what happened to bank transfers?

A postman in my area told me they haven't even got a sorting machine in their delivery office, so they still sort everything by hand, apparently they did have one and then it got shipped off to another area.

Seems like a bit of modernization wouldn't go amiss!

[Bogart]

Going all electric on vehicles in the new year. Wonder who is going to end up paying for that🙄

Edited November 14, 2022 by Bogart

[Piperscoins]

On 06/11/2022 at 11:36, sixgun said:

Things have changed in England a lot over recent decades. i remember going into HFC bank with my wife to withdraw some money or maybe it was deposit cash. This would have been in the late 1980's or very early 1990's. We had to provide ID. Neither of us had ever been asked for this before. It was some BS about money laundering - the terrorism stunt hadn't come in yet. A few years later we saw the terrorism canard. i have asked more than once, do i look like a terrorist? (It would seem some of the content i post online has classified me as a terrorist in some parts of the world - according to the real terrorists and assorted criminals).

It seems that as more and more shysters appear in our land, more and more fraud is taking place, so businesses are obliged to disbelieve their customers. 
i mean take RM, i could claim i sent proof coins when they were bullion, i could claim anything and plenty of people will have done so. They see it as an opportunity to inflate their claims - the world is full of chancers. 

If you send valuables by RM, as i mentioned on an ebay thread, i think you have to video it all. To show what went into the package, to show the package, to show the address label. Video the package being handed over at the post office - showing it is the same package. Describe on video what you are putting into the package and the value. 

i went to this website to create a legal Bill of Sale. https://www.lawdepot.co.uk/contracts/bill-of-sale/?webuser_data_id=150432302
It is a legal document in England and Wales. You can put all the details into the document as you follow the steps. How many members would want to do this is debatable. You could show this Bill of Sale document as you packed the sale item - i am sending the 20 x 1 oz silver Britiannias to Jack Jones - here is his name and address on the package label - this is the price. This is the bank transfer online / paypal payment - you can fake a pdf bank statement but not a real time video of the computer screen. Maybe you even show your passport (photo ID) and then turn the camera on yourself to prove it is you, John Smith.
This is all way OTT and 99% of the time with sales to TSF members it won't be needed - it might be needed more often with ebay scammers who claim you never sent the item advertised. What more could we do for those unfortunate incidences?

This is a good idea