Forum Moderators: buckworks
- customer ordered mid-december, shipped next day via 5-10 day mail (with tracking)
to date, customer has not received it. tracking still says "received by postal outlet" nothing stating it has been sent to the sorting facility or delivered.
i have contacted both the postal outlet AND the courier. postal outlet says it's not there, and i need to contact the courier.
courier states an insurance claim cannot be opened until 35 or whatever business days... customer is furious! (as would anybody!)
here's the kicker:
the majority of missing packages for december were all shipped on THE SAME DATE. so somebody has either stolen a batch of mail, misplaced it or thrown it away?
(generally, i can ship hundreds of different packages all over the world and NONE go missing. there's the odd overseas package sent via ground that gets delayed, but rarely do i ever have to make an insurance claim.)
some of the missing purchases are for high-ticketed items. at this point i cannot afford to refund each of them and wait for the insurance claim to kick in (which takes 1-3 months to clear!)
and, in the past (similar experience) i refunded the customer.. then magically the tracking is updated a week or so after the refund stating it has been delivered (way beyond the estimated delivery date). customer cannot be contacted, won't respond to emails or phone calls. lost money AND the sale... and most definately lost a future customer!
-Corey
It is extremely unlikely that the package(s) was stolen by someone inside the postal system. It is remotely possible, but very unlikely. The penalties are just too high for most people to risk it. So, the missing order(s) could either sitting in some mail carrier's delivery truck that went to the shop for servicing, or they are buried under a bunch of other crap somewhere. Or they got put into the wrong pile and accidentally went to Europe. :) But in my experience, the goods will probably be delivered to the customer(s) eventually.
But in the meantime, it may be worth justing getting the customer what they ordered (plus a coupon or something for their inconvenience) just to save as much of your reputation as you can at this point. Either that, or refund their money now out of good faith to try and avoid a chargeback.
But nobody here is as familiar with the situation as you are, so just think about the most probable outcome of whatever action you decide to take (or not take) and make the best call you can. Godd luck!
canada post sends them a letter asking them if they ever received it.
if they had already received a new item, reimbursement or done a chargeback... they're likely to just throw this letter away.
and without their response, canada post won't issue me a refund.
We've actually run into similar situations with Canada Post on a few occasions. A couple of times they just flat out lost our stuff. We learned our lesson. Now, we generally only use them for packages we can afford to lose. If it is something valuable we are shipping, we never send it with them. We use UPS instead. UPS is great b/c you can set up an account with them and they'll come pick it up free right from your place of business, even if it is just one item. They've never lost anything of ours yet and they're pricing is reasonably competitive when compared to expresspost.
could you be more specific about their pricing? when i visit their site and try to calculate a test purchase, their shipping is quite pricy. is there a special department you must speak to; or a quota to meet in order to get more generous rates?
some of my best-selling items are petty items (clothing), and some are more expensive. it always seems the more expensive articles are having problems in canada post's system as of late. i usually send these via expedited parcel so i have the tracking and insurance (which is essentially useless)..
