Well, my greatest selling fear may have come true: a package may have gone missing!!! :(
I had had so many complaints from people outside North America when I sold items in the past about my insistence on shipping with a tracking number, that this time I did offer quotes for airmail, clearly marking them with the fact that they had no tracking number.
A lovely lady from the Netherlands purchased the Aidolls Little Jr Darea, so I packed her up with tons of bubblewrap (because that has to be the furthest I've ever shipped!) and put in a couple wigs as an extra, including one she'd admired on my photostream, because I love to do that, and sent the package off July 16th. It should have arrived within two weeks.
....but it isn't there yet! :( We're hoping it is just in customs, as she was told by her postal system that it could take a while, but there's no way of knowing. She's been very nice about it, and was very clear that she knows I'm not responsible for the package going missing, and acknowledges it was her choice to choose the no-tracking method of shipping.
Which is why I feel utterly horrible about it! What do you think? Should I refund half the purchase price to her, so that we split the loss? I know that isn't any sort of reasonable business sense, but maybe it's the right thing to do anyway?
I'm going back to refusing to ship by methods that don't include tracking and insurance, complaints or not, in future. :(
Don't panic just yet -- customs really can take quite awhile.
ReplyDeleteEven with tracking, if it's sitting in customs there isn't always notification of that. I had a spinning wheel sent to me from the Netherlands and it sat in US customs for 2 weeks before any update appeared on our tracking info. I finally had the sender open a claim but the wheel reached me before the paperwork reached them.
I know it's unnerving but it's not your fault. If you have proof of shipping -- receipt, customs form -- then it's out of your hands, and out of her pocket, really.
I'm really, really hoping that the doll is just in customs!
ReplyDeleteI am on the East Coast of the United States and I have had things take six weeks from Canada!
ReplyDeleteI have also had a package from China that was almost sent back. My post office had been holding it for some odd reason. I had even been in every few days asking for it, but it wasn't until the last day that I mentioned it was from China. You could just see the light bulbs going off in their heads. Suddenly, they remembered the package from China that had been put in a special place (even though it clearly had my name and address on it.) LOL
I recommend that you ask your purchaser to keep checking with her post office, but I bet that it is just slow and not truly lost (I hope so!)
Thanks, Mary! I'm hoping it will show up soon....
DeleteI'm glad to read in a later post that the doll has now turned up.....but this isn't that unusual to be honest. I sent a bjd to the US late last year and it took 7 weeks to get there.....which is just crazy!! And then other parcels to the US have taken as little as 4 days from here in Spain. I am constantly sending and receiving packages from the US (and all over the rest of the world too), and thank goodness, until now only one package has gone missing and that was actually stolen from my postman just a couple of streets away from where I live!!!
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