Ebiz Stress
October 26th, 2009 by KenricWhat a busy month for my stores. There are 5 days left in October and I have over 120 orders this month. That is just about 6 orders a day! It’s getting to the point where I don’t want any more orders to come in. The stress isn’t really due to the paperwork, money or processes. It’s stress because I actually care about my customers. I can tell from the orders that people need things by Halloween. However, as soon as I get the order, I know that I can’t ship from Cali to NY in 4 days. So I have to call each order and let me know and them find out if they want to cancel or ship it 3day or 2day.
Will Halloween coming on Saturday there has been a crazy run on my stores and everyone needs the stuff yesterday. Of course there are still those people who think that Saturday and Sunday are included in shipping days. I can’t believe the number of people who think that! What is stressful to me is that when a parent orders a Halloween costume for their kid and it’s last minute, I have to scramble to make sure that it will get there before Friday. This means that I have to be on top of the dropshippers. If they miss a day now, the order is no good to my customers if it arrives on Monday. If they miss a day, I will have to eat the Fedex 3 day shipping price as long as the order was placed on time.
My dropshippers have never said that they will turn an order around on the same day. So they don’t owe me if they can’t do it. But I feel I owe it to my customers to get their orders to them on time within reason. Most orders coming in now are Next Day or 2nd Day Air and when people pay $30-$50 for shipping, they expect it to ship within 24 hours.
I knew that this would have and the same thing will happen at Christmas time too. On the flipside, it’s nice to have so many sales but it does turn the stores into a full time job for a few weeks out of the year.
Posted in General | 4 Comments »
Stumble it!
Could you put some sort of shipping calendar on your site? Or maybe on the order confirmation page, give them an estimate of the delivery date based on their selected shipping method? It wouldn’t be exact since,as you say, your drop shippers haven’t committed to same day order fulfillment, but it might help cut out some of the confusion with Saturdays and Sundays. I know Amazon gives an estimated delivery date.
By Shaun on Oct 27, 2009
My sites use many dropshippers and they are located in different states. My store says that items ship in 1 to 2 days. It’s just during holidays that the shipping times get very important.
By Kenric on Oct 27, 2009
Agree with Shaun. I pay close attention to that estimated delivery date, especially when I have something I need by a date specific. Always try to plan ahead so I can use their Super Saver.
By Ken on Oct 27, 2009
In that case, maybe you can just use the maximum time for ground deliveries. I think UPS will ship all the way across the country in 5 business days, so no ground shipment should take longer than that. Maybe add a day or two for the dropshipper to fill. And if it gets there before your estimate date, the customer is happy.
By Shaun on Oct 29, 2009