This is a continuation of this thread where a customer was frustrated about shipping taking too long. Currently the policy is 4 weeks and then an order is automatically refunded. As you’d imagine, most customers want their order within days and not weeks.
What do you all think is an appropriate time to ship? Working with sellers, what can we do to improve this?
I think it depends on what the item is.
Maybe the base should be 7 days. Items which require extra stuff such as soldering could be allowed 14 days?
I know that I aim to ship within 48 hours for most orders and 72 for soldered. I know I am slightly behind on Tindie at the moment but partially due to the fact I know I have this long to ship within.
I think 14 makes sense. Ideally we lower this over time as we build more tools to help sellers manage their orders/ time (like giving more time if something requires additional assembly).
I may give a suggestion to check how the aliexpress works.
They wait 60 days. If user receive it in a meanwhile, he can confirm the delivery and transaction ends. If user don’t confirm it and before time expires, the system will send an advice that you (customer) didn’t confirm the delivery and ask if you want open an dispute. If the customer don’t open a dispute it will be automatic end the transaction.
If customer open the dispute, merchant need to enter in contact with customer and they need to agree with the next actions (like extend the waiting… or cancel order…).
Ok, but for Tindie… maybe a simpler way will be the merchant add the delivery time for each product, so the customer will agree in the moment of the purchase.
Regards.
@mrluzeiro interesting… seems very hands on (more so than necessary). However I like the idea to open a dispute vs automatically refund
Seven days is a reasonable amount of time to ship. Fourteen would work if you’re on vacation or travelling.
As a seller I would feel very bad if I did not ship an in-stock order by the very next business day unless it was obvious that the order was a customized item. If I made a buyer wait 2 days to get confirmation I would feel horrible and if I made them wait 3 days I would feel like a total failure.
I’m sure there are occasions where something happens and a seller can’t ship within 2 days. The seller should definitely notify the buyer of the delay in this case.
This topic brings back the idea from another thread of a “Processing” state in which the seller can use it to notify the buyer that their order has been received and it’s being processed.
I ship the next business day. There is no reason to wait 4 weeks unless it’s a customized item. How about adding a new attribute for each products that will indicate when it will ship like other stores do. I don’t think there should be any period to ship the item and auto refund if the item is not shipped within that period, instead buyer will have ability to initiate cancellation if they can’t wait any longer and if it’s not resolved with the seller within a week the transaction gets cancelled.
The reason for the autorefund, we would get customer emails (as you’d imagine) wondering where their order is. Having a hard stop is good for everyone (esp customer service).
However I think the main thing is there are 2 real cases-
Can customers cancel the order after placing it?
They can if they email Tindie, but not directly on their order
I have been doing some research. Etsy gives their sellers 2 days for domestic shipping and 10 for international shipping. Thoughts?
2 days seems overly aggressive. Life happens. A week should be plenty though, even if assemby is required.
Even using Shipwire I would sometimes be hard pressed to get things out the door in 48 hours.
Short deadlines also raise the question of how vacations etc should be handled. Does a seller have to close their whole store?
Well I’ve just got over the christmas rush with orders via Tindie and around 100 on my own store.
Some of this may be the same as I’ve already said but this is better.
Due to Tindie saying I have 30 days to ship I normally accidently put it at the bottom of the pile compared to the orders I get in from my web store.
I think maybe sellers should get 3 options in their store which they specify what they ship within. Maybe 14 days or 7 days.
I normally at the least have to post stuff once a week. Sometimes I may go multiple but if I don’t have any orders in then I do around the once or twice a week but this is my job now.
For those who do Tindie as a Hobby I would say 14 days as you can only go to the post office when you can.
To update everyone on our thoughts on this, we will be changing our policy on it in the new year. 3 things we know we will be doing
Splitting orders into 2 types:
(( Still need to figure out how we’ll make this distinction ))
We’ll also add:
By adding Vacation Mode, I’m leaning towards making the turn around 7 days or shorter as we’ll have the tools to ensure if a product is for sell, it should be shippable. The better experience each customer has, the higher chance they tell their friends. Every order that takes a long time to ship, is a lost customer. They are frustrated and I can totally understand why. Ultimately that hurts every seller - not just Tindie or the seller that takes forever to ship.
2 other things I’m wondering -
Show the number of days it takes a seller to ship (even if longer than 2 days). Right now we only show if 2 days or shorter. If we show it takes a seller longer, then my guess is that would incentivize them to ship quicker.
Include the # of days it takes to ship in product placement algorithm. Meaning, the quicker you ship, it will directly impact how high we show your products in search/sort/categories.
Thoughts?
I’m not a seller (…yet) but this approach sound like a solid plan with good implementation. Incentive for sellers to ship quickly will benefit everyone.
Disabling orders in vacation mode seems the wrong approach. Backorders can wait up to 90 days; shouldn’t vacation mode either enable a longer shipping time (with a notice to buyers letting them know first), or convert regular orders to backorders?
Unfortunately 90 days is a hard number by Paypal. I see what you mean, however with backorders we do get a lot of support tickets from customers wondering when their order will ship. Is it better to wait or backorder? Tough call but definitely a good point
I wasn’t suggesting extending it past 90 days necessarily - just pointing out that you already provide a mechanism for taking orders for items that can’t ship immediately. It doesn’t make much sense to then refuse to take orders for in-stock items because the seller is away; if you inform the buyer of this and they want to go ahead anyway, let them!
