Give Your Customers a Heads Up! This Holiday Season, Shipping Times Will Take Longer.
Posted on Nov 2, 2021
Here we are. Another holiday season is quickly approaching, and Santa’s elves (our mail carriers) are already working hard.
The main picture of this blog post was what USPS distribution centers looked like all around the United States during the holiday season of 2020.
Some packages were sitting for days and, in some cases, even weeks before they would arrive at their final destinations.
Customers were demanding refunds from the merchants, which made things hard because the packages technically weren’t lost, but they were taking forever to be delivered.
Putting merchants in a tough spot, because they were now out of the value of the product, in addition to their shipping costs. Unfortunately, many merchants had to issue refunds or receive surprise chargebacks through the customer’s credit card companies.
The worst part about it was that some of the customers that received refunds ended up receiving their orders later on but didn’t reach back out to the merchant to repay for the product they recently received.
Basically, the customers were receiving their orders for free, and the merchant not only gave away their products but paid for shipping costs as well.
This is where our Free Blueprint: How to Reclaim Postage Costs from the US Postal Service is so beneficial.
Another issue that we are facing this year is worker shortages; luckily, the USPS has been hard at work sending mailers out to recruit temporary help for the holiday season.
So it’s very important if you’re an E-commerce business owner to let your customers know ahead of time that their package might take longer than usual due to all the packages moving through the network during this busy time.
Giving your customers a heads-up on these possible delays on the checkout page of your website will let them know ahead of time and might save you from having an upset customer who might insist on a refund or, worst-case scenario leave a bad review that you can’t remove.
Customers are more prone to leave a bad review due to the fact that their package arrived late, and even though it wasn’t your fault, they are probably already upset and not in a positive mood and will find something to complain about with the item itself and leave a bad review. You and I both know, bad online reviews can kill your business and lower your search rankings.
Another important thing to note, as we get closer to the holidays, I understand that First class mail can save you a good deal of money, but if it doesn’t affect your margins too much, try and shy away from sending packages via the First Class Mail Service.
Reason Number One: with First Class Mail, you don’t get tracking on the package if it gets lost, and you can’t file a claim to reclaim shipping and/or product cost.
Reason Number Two, Priority Mail packages are going to take priority over First Class packages. They are called 'Priority' for a reason.
Finally, if you can, pay someone to keep track of your shipped items to ensure things are getting delivered on time or notify a customer if something is running late.
This will keep you a step ahead of your shipping so you can put out a fire before something even starts.
We go over this in more detail and cost-effective ways of automating these tasks in our ShipSmart Training Course.
Thanks so much,
ShipSmart this Holiday Season
Brett Beachner
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